At the end of July, two of Cary Anne's old college roommates, Laura and Allison, came to visit us in Chicago. It was kind of a spontaneous trip. Laura and Allison were two of the people we were able to see when we went back to Kentucky for the 4th. (Before that, we hadn't seen them in a year and a half.) Then, about 2 weeks after we returned to Chicago, we got a text asking if they could come up for a few days. By that time, Cary Anne and I were on different work schedules (since I had started working evenings at Target and Domino's), so we had fun showing them around town separately. Cary Anne took them to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and I took them up on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel (which I hadn't been on since my 8th grade class took a trip to Chicago back in 2001). Luckily, we didn't have some time where all four of us could hang out together.
At the beginning of August, Cary Anne and I took a free motorcycle safety course offered by the state of Illinois. We figured the course would help us be more comfortable on the Vespa, and if we successfully completed the course, we would get our motorcycle license without having to take the test at the DMV. Neither of us had our full motorcycle license (only permits), despite the fact we had already owned the Vespa for over 2 years. The course was 24 hours of training over 2 weekends. It involved classroom time and riding time. I was hoping our experience on the Vespa would give us a little advantage, but motorcycles with clutches and gear shifts are quite different. There were a number of wobbles and spills throughout the class. At the end, there was a skills test, which was rather nerve racking. Luckily, CA and I both passed, and we now officially have our motorcycle licenses. We celebrated by going to get ice cream.
Cary Anne's birthday was in the middle of August. Part of her gift from me was a tennis racquet because she had been talking about how she wanted to learn to play. We started spending a lot of our free time at the court. Sadly, on our first outing, Cary Anne managed to injure herself. She was collecting a ball that she had hit out of the court and stumbled into a pothole. I laughed a little because I thought she had just tripped, but she had a pretty good scratch on her knee and her ankle had twisted, so then I kind of felt like a jerk. Thankfully, it was only a minor setback. Within a week or so, she was ready to get back out on the court. While the weather was warm, tennis kind of became our go-to date, which was a nice break from dates like eating and going to the movies where we just sit around.
At the end of August, our friend Lisa came back to visit from the west coast. Lisa was one of the first people we met at our church, Community Edgewater, when we moved here. Sadly, about a year ago, she moved to Seattle, but she still returns from time to time to visit. This time, she convinced a friend of hers to host a rooftop party downtown. So for a few hours one night we got to live up on a swanky high rise. It was a pretty good way to end the summer.
April flew by here in Chicago, highlighted by several fun events...
First, Cary Anne and I had the chance to see some live theatre, which, sadly, is not something we get to do very often. Luckily, I found a good deal on some tickets at a small theater in Evanston the week before the show closed. The production was "Everything is Illuminated," which was an original adaptation of one of mine and Cary Anne's favorite novels. I decided to make the date a surprise for Cary Anne; I told her to get dressed up and made her wear a blindfold during the car ride. The production was very entertaining, and now Cary Anne is insisting we be more deliberate about seeing live theatre.
Not long after that, my parents had the opportunity to come visit. My father's work sends him to the area for training every now and then, and, of course, my mother insists on tagging along. The last time my parents came to visit, CA and I were still living in our studio in Roger's Park, so we got to show them our new(ish) apartment and neighborhood. Though we were only able to spend about half a day with them, we still got enjoy lunch and take a walk along Lake Michigan.
The next weekend, a group of us from church went to see our friend Lana's piano recital. Lana was graduating from Moody, a local Bible college, so it was her final senior performance. Of course, she did amazing, and now she has moved off to New York to pursue her dreams. After the recital, Kelly and I hopped on the train and went to the Chicago Theatre to see Jim Gaffigan's newest stand-up show. We had bought our tickets a little late, so we weren't exactly close to the stage, but there's not really a bad seat in the Chicago Theatre. It was a great show, and I'm sure Cary Anne grew tired of us quoting it for the next several days.
At the end of the month, our friend Craig announced that he was moving to Kentucky, to be closer to his family, so we invited him over for a farewell dinner. We told Craig that we were going to cook up some steaks, and he offered to bring over some crab legs that he had won in a local meat raffle. (Yes, I said meat raffle.) So, the dinner turned into surf and turf night, which is probably the fanciest meal we've had in this apartment so far. The evening was great. Craig was a huge part of the muscle that helped get all of our stuff into this 3rd floor walk-up, and he has been a big part of our church over the past several months, so we're really going to miss him.
About six weeks after we moved into our new place with our friend Kelly, we decided the apartment was finally organized enough to throw a house-warming party. Though the walls were still pretty bare, the furniture was in place and the dishes were in the cabinets, so we moved what was left of our boxes into the back bedroom and invited our friends over.
Since the fall was beginning to transition into winter here in Chicago and since we wanted to make use of now having a working fireplace, we decided to make it a s'mores party. So we went to Costco and bought chocolate and graham crackers and marshmallows in bulk, and in the Facebook invitation that went out, we encouraged people to bring firewood. Whether it was a whole bundle or just a few sticks found on the side of the road during their walk to our place, we figured anything would help keep the fire going for a few hours. But this is how I know we go to a progressive church: no one brought any wood at all. Instead, all of our nearest and dearest Christian brother and sister (who were the bulk of people we invited) showed up with various forms of alcohol. Though I may prefer to pair my s'mores with milk, others apparently prefer champagne or ale. Either way, the party went on smoothly...though with a limited amount of firewood.
A couple of weeks after our housewarming, Thanksgiving arrived. Like last year, Cary Anne and I planned on sticking around Chicago for the holiday, and luckily most of our friends decided to do the same, so we arranged a couple of potlucks. The night before Thanksgiving, Cary Anne found out she would be largely responsible for cooking the turkey, a task she had never before done. So on Thanksgiving morning, she headed over to Nick and Michelle's place (since they were hosting the potluck) to get started, while I stayed back to oversee a couple of casseroles. I am by no stretch of the imagination a cook. I've managed to mess up instant mashed potatoes in the past, so I was a bit nervous, but thankfully things turned out OK. By the time I arrived with the dishes, the table was already full of delicious looking food.
Josh was brave enough to step up and take on the turkey carving responsibility while the rest of us piles our plates high with green beans and sweet potatoes. Cary Anne did a great job with the bird considering her total lack of experience, and we all spent the afternoon eating way too much food, talking about the recent discovery of a meth lab in a Kentucky Walmart bathroom, and watching reruns of "How I Met Your Mother."
Later that night, the two potlucks merged for a night of board games and dessert at our place. Our kitchen counter became crowded with several different kinds of pie as we stood around drinking coffee and talking about our day. Soon, we decided to open up the board games. One of the highlights of the night came when we opened the "Cranium" box and realized that the playdough used in the game had grown hard and was starting to crystalize and mold. I told my friend Ben I'd give him a dollar if he put it in his mouth for 2 minutes. I said it as a joke, but to my surprise he actually did it. Somewhere out there, there's cell phone footage of him enduring a very long 120 seconds of a mouthful of germy clay. I ended up giving him $1.50 for sheer commitment and ballsiness.
Overall it was a great holiday, and the next day, on Black Friday, Cary Anne went crazy at Michael's, buying up all the Christmas decorations she could fit in her cart. Within days she had our place decked with garland and wreaths. But more on that next time...
Back in the spring, about half a dozen of us from CCC Edgewater got the idea to move into a community house together in the fall, once our leases expired. Though we did some looking and planning, in the end, things kind of fell through. Our friend Lisa moved off to Seattle, and our friends Ben and Sam decided they just wanted to room together on their own, as two bachelors on the prow, I suppose. So that left Cary Anne and I and our friend Kelly. Last month, we started looking at 3-bedroom apartments together in Edgewater, and soon we put a down payment on one.
Back at the start of October, several of our friends from church were generous enough to help us move all of our stuff. For CA and I, it meant saying goodbye to our studio in Roger’s Park and for Kelly it meant abandoning the 1-bedroom place she was living in only a few blocks south of our new place. Getting furniture up the stairs to our new 3rd floor walk-up was about as fun as going to the dentist, but we did it (with a lot of help) and we managed to only break one bookshelf.
As you can imagine, Cary Anne and I super excited to be living in a place that is more than just one room. Our new place has a dining room, a living room with a working fireplace, a balcony, a sun room, and a washer/dryer in unit. It’s basically a palace compared to where we were living, and we’re very thankful to have the opportunity to upgrade. We’re also thankful for our new roommate Kelly who is the Ted to our Marshall and Lily (for you “How I Met Your Mother” fans). Kelly is a night nurse at a local hospital, so sometimes it feels as though we don’t have a roommate at all, but we’re excited to have her as a larger part of our life when she is around and awake. In fact, she has already started trying to pry us into renaming this blog “Two Gingers and the Things They Do Together…with Kelly.”
There has also been a recent change on the job front for me. As many of you know, since we moved to Chicago, I’ve been working at a restaurant called Cosi, taking orders, making drinks, and serving food. I was also helping part time at Cosi’s corporate offices in the suburbs, taking care of some clerical work that no one else seemed to have the time to manage. Recently, the corporate office lost their receptionist, so I applied, and I now work there full time. It’s great to finally have a “real job” with benefits, and for the first time in our marriage, Cary Anne and I are on the same basic work schedule so we’ve been enjoying our evenings together.
Not too long ago, we spent one of those evenings at our first Cubs game together. Cary Anne bought the tickets off of a co-worker, and I was excited to go because the Cubs were playing the Reds. Though the Cubs fell behind early on (surprise, surprise), they did make a comeback and tied things up by the ninth inning. After that the Cubs had multiple chances to win and blew them all, CA insisted we leave when it was after 11pm and the game was about to enter the 12th inning. Though I was sad to go without seeing the end, it was OK, because the Cubs ultimately lost by a single run.
For now, we're excited for the future: a new place, a new roommate, and a new schedule. So stayed tuned to this blog...now with more Kelly!
A couple of weeks ago, Cary Anne and I had the chance to travel back to Lexington for a long weekend. Though we travelled to Kentucky back in May to spend Memorial Day with our friends Chris and Hannah, we hadn’t been back to Lexington specifically since Christmas, so I was excited…and CA seemed mildly amused.
I was determined to jam in as many visits as I could during our short time there, so on Friday afternoon we headed to my old high school to catch up with my old English teachers, Mr. Egan and Mrs. Wilkinson (though I guess now that I’m an adult, I can refer to them as their real people names- Gary and Tara). We told them all about our lives in Chicago, and they told us all about their continuing adventures in teaching and how Tara taught on a broken foot for half a day when she stepped off a curb wrong, but refused to admit it was actually broken. Apparently she gave her Creative Writing class the exercise of writing short stories explaining how she broke her foot, but soon realized that was a bad idea when half of the stories she got back began with, “Mrs. Wilkinson was so drunk…”
After that, we hopped over to see my old co-workers at Geno’s Formal Affair. It was great catching up with everyone. Since my departure, they’ve hired multiple new people, 2 of which are local beauty pageant winners, so Hunter made sure to inform me I’m not pretty enough to work there anymore anyway. We also caught up with Jordan, who we know from college and who has been the Assistant Manager at Geno’s for a couple of years. She and her husband, Tyler, are planning on moving to the Big Apple next year (unless we can soon convince her that Chicago is infinitely better) so Jordan can pursue a career in fashion, so we shared our knowledge of living in a tiny apartment in a big city. In fact, Jordan recently launched a new fashion blog and you can check it out here.
That night, we grabbed dinner at Waffle House with Sharonda and her boyfriend, Jay. Waffle House is a place of nostalgia for Sharonda and I since we spent many late nights there during the summers I was home from college, and Cary Anne and Jay like greasy breakfast enough to tolerate our insistence that we eat there. Neither Sharonda nor I are great “phone people,” so it was great to hear all about what they've been doing over the past several months.
On Saturday, we drove down to London, because our old college friend, Cam, was getting married. This was the highlight of the weekend because it allowed us to see so many of our old friends from University of the Cumberlands (most of whom we hadn’t seen in over a year). The ceremony was beautiful and simple, and was followed by a reception at a local country club. There were vases of water beads on every table, and many of us UC people sat in the back and tried not to make a scene as we took turns bouncing them and throwing them at each other. The older people around us kept staring and frowning; I don’t know why.
On Sunday, my whole family got together to celebrate my brother’s 29th birthday. He was a bit predictable in his selection of a Mexican restaurant for dinner followed by frozen yogurt from Orange Leaf for dessert, but I’m not complaining.
Summer is coming to a close here in
Chicago. The past several months have been packed with all the things
you'd expect from summer in the city: we had the chance to take in
some "Shakespeare in the Park," we enjoyed some local outdoor festivals
(where we tried our 1st bacon doughnut), and we grilled
out at the community garden.
A few weeks ago, we even had a chance
to see by brother, Jon, and his wife, Andrea...for about an hour. It
was rather unexpected. They were flying back from a mission trip in
Haiti with the youth group from their church, and they were supposed
to catch a connecting flight home to Kentucky from O'Hare. Because of
a delay, they ended up missing their flight and made the decision to
“sleep” at O'Hare. So Cary Anne and I drove out to meet them, and
we spent about an hour catching up and hearing about their trip.
A couple of weeks later, CA's birthday
rolled around. After she opened her gifts, we decided to head
downtown to eat at an Irish restaurant Cary Anne wanted to try.
Sadly, as we were walking out, Cary Anne shut the door before turning
to me and saying, “You have keys, right?” I did not. So CA
managed to lock us out. Luckily, since it was just the push-lock on
the knob, we were eventually able to successfully McGuyver our way
back in to our own place. (You can read about the whole ordeal over
on my comedy blog.) So we ended up at dinner at The Kerryman about an
hour later than we anticipated. It was actually a really nice night,
and we got to dine out on the patio. The food was good, and we were
endlessly entertained by the people next to us who were far too old
to be having a conversation sprinkled with gems like, “In a decade,
I don't think people will be getting married, because if I like a
guy, I just want to have sex with him, not fight with him about
loading the dishwasher” and “You can come over to my place
tonight. My wife is out of town. I mean, we're not gonna do anything;
just an adult sleepover, you know?”
Around that same time, I had to venture
out the DMV to register our car here in Illinois. When I walked in, I
was “greeted” by a large, older man on a chair wearing the
lifeless expression every DMV worker has in TV sitcoms. He handed me
the proper form to fill out. About half way through, I realized that
the title was solely in CA's name , and she was supposed to be
present to sign the form. I looked down at the fine print and saw
that forging someone's information on the form could result in a
$10,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison. I walked back to the large
man and asked him for advice.
“Couldn't you just sign her name for
her?” he said, barely looking at me.
I looked back down at the fine print.
“I could...I guess?”
“Well, geez, that's what I would do,”
he said, looking off in another direction to inform that the
conversation was over. In the end it didn't matter because CA ended
up having to fax her ID and written permission to add me to the new
car title. Overall, the whole process was about as painless as you
can expect from the DMV, and now were legitimate Illinoisans.
Lastly, here's our 5 seconds-a-day footage from July. Enjoy...
If you follow this blog with an
regularity, you may remember that Cary Anne's brother got engaged to his girlfriend on a year, Makenzie, shortly after CA and I moved to Chicago, and just a couple of weeks ago,
it came time for us to fly out to Denver for the actual wedding. Our
friend Ben drove us to the airport, and he brought along with him a mix CD he apparently used to use to get pumped during his 45-minute drive to Six Flags when he used to work there a few years ago. Surprisingly, it was largely U2, Coldplay, and show tunes. He cringed when a Gin Blossoms came on, but CA and I just laughed and proceeded to sing along. Our flight to Denver was pretty uneventful, except that we sat next to an old woman with a dog under her seat, and I kept trying to get Cary Anne to let the things loose mid-flight. She refused. CA's parents picked us up in Denver, and took us to the hotel. It was nice to see them considering we hadn't since they visited Lexington back in May of last year. The drive was a bit bizarre, coming from a metropolis like Chicago and being transported to a place where flat land stretches for miles until the mountains rise up to meet the sky.
Cary Anne was actually in the wedding
so when she was involved in wedding activities, I was often running
on the treadmill at the hotel. Therefore, I let her give you the run
down on the actual rehearsal and wedding itself (since it was her
brother and because she rarely contributes to “our” blog)...
"I was incredibly blessed to be asked to be Makenzie's bridesmaid, which came with additional responsibilities (unbeknownst to me at the time of acceptance) such as lip-syncing a song and dance organized by Aunt Summer at the rehearsal dinner, which naturally turned my brother the most flattering shade of red you've ever seen on a man his age/size. After we were all rehearsed and ready for the impending ceremony, I was able to sit and hang out with family and friends from Virginia and just reminisce about our time together there (I haven't been back since I got married almost 2 years ago).
The ceremony was gorgeous. I don't think you could've asked for more perfect weather or flowers or venue… We were up in the mountains on a deck that overlooked the valley. It was beautiful during the ceremony and after when the sun went down and you could see all the lights. Makenzie didn't want the bridesmaids to match (other than in color scheme) so I made the mistake of decided to make my own dress. Needless to say, the weeks prior to the wedding were full of sewing and avoiding sewing and nervousness that the dress would look awful and wouldn't match… but it all worked out fine and I was fully clothed walking down the aisle and I have to say we bridesmaids looked pretty good together. The reception was fun and I danced my heart out, which didn't take much, the thin air up there is no joke!
It was a fantastic wedding and I can't believe my brother is MARRIED and I HAVE A SISTER! (can you tell I'm still super pumped about it?)"
The day after the wedding, Cary Anne
and I had the chance to meet up with my friends Hunter and Ashley. I
lived in a beach-side hotel with Hunter and Ashley back in the summer
of 2006, when we were all part of a Campus Crusade summer project. Hunter and I were accountability partners, and we would often spend afternoons at In-N-Out, eating burgers and talking about Jesus and girls. In
2008, CA and I went to H&A's wedding in Kansas City, but we
hadn't seen them since, so it was great catching up. We were actually
crashing the 1st birthday of their daughter, Lily, who apparently had no interest in taking part in our photo.
That evening we caught a flight back to Chicago with Cary Anne's parents since they had were planning on visiting for a few days and learning about our lives in the Windy City. But more on that in our next post...
Life has been progressing as normal
here in Chicago since Memorial Day Weekend, with both Cary Anne and I continuing in our theater endeavors. CA recently finished
running sound board for a show at a theater only about 3 blocks from
our apartment. Though I thought she was going to take more of a break
after her last show, she decided to work on this one since it wasn't
a huge time commitment and she even got paid a little. I also
recently completed level 2 of my improv training at Improv Olympic.
This class was a little more calm than my last one, probably because
we met on Sunday afternoons rather than the evening, but it was still
a good time. A lot of this course focused on group work and collaborating as a team, so it was fun bonding with my classmates for 8 weeks.
Also, our church, CCC Edgewater,
recently changed it's worship location. For the past several months,
we were renting out a small, single-room art gallery every Sunday
evening, but the space was starting to get a little tight and we
worried that an evening service with no child care wasn't an ideal,
welcoming environment for families. (Though it was perfect for us
20-somethings who enjoyed getting to sleep in, then going to grab a
drink at the bar around the corner after worship.) So for the past
couple of weeks we've meeting in the mornings in the auditorium of
George R. Swift Elementary School. It has lots of space, and the
walls and curtains are a wonderful powder pink. (During announcements
recently, I made fun of the place by calling in “Barbie's Dream
Theater” and saying, “These walls are so pink they should call
this Taylor Swift Elementary”.) But despite the odd color-scheme
and fact that I'm still mourning my loss of lazy Sunday mornings, the
move has been great, and we're already seeing some new faces.
This week Cary Anne and I went on a
date night to Skokie Sports Park. I discovered the park when I drove
past it on my way to somewhere else and immediately got excited
because I'm a huge fan of miniature golf. In Lexington, there was a
Biblical themed mini golf course (which we kindly refer to as “Jesus
golf”) that, despite the cheesiness, was actually pretty good. We played there multiple times every summer. The Skokie course is supposed to
be like an adventure around the world. You start off putting around
the Sears Tower and Statue of Liberty, and soon you're golfing
through the coral reefs of Australia and under the Great Wall of
China. Overall, it was an entertaining course, and I think we had as
much fun posing with the scenery as we did actually golfing.
After the golf, we walked over to the
batting cages. The only park with batting cages in Lexington closed over 5 years ago and I don't think I had been in one since. CA told me she had never
been in a batting cage. “Never? What have you been doing with
your life?” I asked. "I'm a girl! And I'm worried I'm gonna get hit...in the boob." Luckily, that didn't happen. We basically stuck to the slow
pitch softball cages while the 10-year-olds gearing up for little league laughed at us from the faster baseball cages. Overall, it was a fun evening.
Later this week we'll be flying out to
Colorado to see Cary Anne's brother get married. As you can imagine,
we're pretty excited. CA is a bridesmaid in the wedding and much of
her time lately has gone into making her own bridesmaid dress. I'm
always impressed by her ability to create stuff like that. I took the
easy way out and just went to the store to buy new khakis and a tie.
After the wedding CA's parents will be hanging out with us here in
Chicago for a few days. I'll be sure to share details from our trip on the next post.
It's finally starting to feel like
summer in Chicago...most days. Everyone keeps talking about how great
the city is during the warmer months, and Cary Anne and I are starting to see it
for ourselves.
One of the best things about warm
weather in the city is that the beaches of Lake Michigan are actually
useable. (Walking down and sticking your bare feet in the sand isn't
exactly pleasant when it's in the 40s.) Just a few weeks ago, our
friend Kelly invited Cary Anne and I down to the beach for an
afternoon of reading in the sun. Turns out, there wasn't actually
much reading involved. We mainly just sat around and talked and threw
rocks at seagulls. (We're sadistic in that way.) Sadly, I learned
that just because the weather is warm, it doesn't mean the water is. Guess I'll
have to wait a few more weeks to actually go swimming.
After the beach, we picked up our
friend Sam and headed to a custard shop Cary Anne and I had been
wanting to try called “Lickity Split.” During our year in
Lexington, a self-serve frozen yogurt place called “Orange Leaf”
got really popular, and expanded from one location to at least four
in just a few months. With tons of flavors, lots of toppings, and
reasonable prices, it wasn't uncommon for us to swing by on a nearly
weekly basis. We've been looking for a suitable alternative here in
Chicago, but so far nothing has blown us away. But it looks like we
may be switching to custard now. Though “Lickity Split” only has
3 types of custard on tap at any given time, there are dozens of
toppings assorted into different glass jars, like an old-school candy
shop, making the combinations basically limitless. (I had vanilla custard with hot fudge and dark chocolate covered pretzels.) Kelly and Sam seemed equally impressed by the shop, and I would not be upset if it became a summer staple.
Recently, we got to travel back to
Kentucky for Memorial Day. Our friends Chris and Hannah in
Louisville were nice enough to put us up in their spare bedroom for
the long weekend. The great thing about our friendship with C&H
is that we're able to have great time with them even when we're not doing anything particularly exciting. That was evident over the
weekend based on the amount of time we spent playing “Settlers of
Catan,” looking up videos for old bands we used to listen to during
our middle school years (think BBMac, Bwitched, and LFO), and the
hours Chris and I spent shooting zombies on “Call of Duty” while our wives reevaluated their life choices.
However, we did leave their apartment a
few times. On Saturday we went for a walk down by the water front,
where we stumbled upon bus loads of old English dancers. They had on
puffy white shirts and bells strapped to their shins, and they
marched around in a line twirling ribbons. It was very captivating
and confusing. Sadly, it was over 90 degrees outside, so we quickly
returned home. After cooling off, we decided to go bowling. Somehow,
during the course of the second game, it was determined that Chris and Cary Anne, as a team, were trying to out score Hannah and I. Things looked
bleak when Hannah stepped up for the final frame and we were down by
10 pins. She only succeeded in knocking down 9, and Chris and CA
leapt into celebration. However, their cheering quickly turned to
tears when we realized Hannah had gotten a spare in the previous
frame, so her 9 pins were enough to put us in the lead. I started
telling people to suck it. (I'm not a gracious winner.)
On Sunday, CA and I visited Chris and
Hannah's church. I was distracted during the sermon because the guy
sitting beside me had his iPad out. I thought he was taking notes,
but when I glanced over I realized he was actually surfing Cracker
Barrel's website. Later that night, my folks drove up to have dinner
with us and show us photos from my cousin's wedding, which, sadly, CA and I couldn't afford to go to. On Monday, our other college friend Shelby came over for a big brunch. It was great catching up with her considering we hadn't seen her in well over 6 months.
So far, summer has been off to a great start, and hopefully it will only get better.
Last month, we (mostly me) also started a journaling project where we film 5 seconds of our life everyday. I'll be sure to post the videos here...
About a month ago, Chicago hosted a
“Clean and Green” weekend. Part of what our church, CCC Edgewater, did to take
part in the event was to get our community garden cleaned up and ready
for the growing season. I have no real business in a garden, but Cary
Anne invested in a plot with our friend Lisa so they can grow their
own veggies this summer. CA took the morning shift in the clean up,
and she was put to work helping to build the raised garden beds, which means she was right in her element considering she spent her entire college
career as a student aide in the theater helping to build sets. I
took the afternoon shift, and my work was much less sophisticated.
Mainly, I moved rubble. After the morning clean up, there was a large
pile of rocks in the lot, so my team lined the perimeter with chicken
wire to keep nosy animals out, and we placed the rocks at the base of
the fence to keep it down. Overall, it was a successful weekend, and
I know we're all excited to see things blossoming when the weather
gets warm.
Then, a little over a week ago, my
brother, Jonathan, and sister-in-law, Andrea, came into town for a
weekend visit. It was exciting because not only had we not seen them
since Christmas, but also because both them hadn't been to Chicago in
years. Though the weather wasn't great, we were still able to do all
the touristy stuff we wanted.
First up was a trip to The Bean...
Up next was Navy Pier...
After that, we took a short bus trip to
the Willis (Sears) Tower, and a shaky elevator ride up to the 103rd
floor. I was a bit worried about the view considering skies were
overcast, but once we got up there I realized there was nothing to be
worried about.
One of the coolest things about the
tower is the Skydeck, which consists of several retractable glass decks that
visitors are invited to stand on, so they can look down and make
peace with their God.
Andrea, a portrait of total confidence
The final thing we all did together that Saturday was drive out to the 'burbs for a professional soccer game. Jon is a big fan of the Kansas City team, and it just so happened they were playing the Chicago Fire during his visit. (Yes, our soccer team is named the Chicago Fire. Why name the team after a national tragedy, I don't know. You don't see the Amish naming a sport's team the Pennsylvania Schoolhouse Shooting, do you?) Anyway, what I don't know about soccer could fill a book. We sat in the section with all the other KC fans, and they seemed to keep getting excited or mad about things I didn't understand. Everyone was very energetic despite the drizzling rain. In fact, there was one KC fan there with a trombone who only seemed interested in playing music and leading the crowd in cheers. I legitimately think he only watched a few moments of the actual game.
One of the funnier things about the event is that while we were there, our friend Jesse tweeted a picture of he and his wife, Ruth, at the game. Cary Anne and I studied the picture then went on a hunt to find where they were sitting. They were right in the front row, so it wasn't too difficult to find and surprise them. Oh, the perks of social media...
In the end, Chicago defeated Kansas City, and thing started to turn ugly fast. There was a lot of shouting and cursing, and I quickly realized why there are so many soccer riots in Europe.
The next day, we had some pizza with Jon and Andrea before they got on the road back towards Kentucky. Overall, it was a great weekend and makes me hope some of our other friends will be able to visit us here in the Windy City this summer.
At the beginning of August, Cary Anne and I took a free motorcycle safety course offered by the state of Illinois. We figured the course would help us be more comfortable on the Vespa, and if we successfully completed the course, we would get our motorcycle license without having to take the test at the DMV. Neither of us had our full motorcycle license (only permits), despite the fact we had already owned the Vespa for over 2 years. The course was 24 hours of training over 2 weekends. It involved classroom time and riding time. I was hoping our experience on the Vespa would give us a little advantage, but motorcycles with clutches and gear shifts are quite different. There were a number of wobbles and spills throughout the class. At the end, there was a skills test, which was rather nerve racking. Luckily, CA and I both passed, and we now officially have our motorcycle licenses. We celebrated by going to get ice cream.
At the end of August, our friend Lisa came back to visit from the west coast. Lisa was one of the first people we met at our church, Community Edgewater, when we moved here. Sadly, about a year ago, she moved to Seattle, but she still returns from time to time to visit. This time, she convinced a friend of hers to host a rooftop party downtown. So for a few hours one night we got to live up on a swanky high rise. It was a pretty good way to end the summer.
