Do S'mores Go Better with a Red or a White?

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...

Celebrations (all of which involve food)

The great thing about moving to Chicago is that it has given Cary Anne and I a chance to pursue our dreams; the bad thing is that so much dream-pursuing has resulted in limited "quality time." Cary Anne has been working on shows for weeks on end, and when I'm not in improv class, I'm out trying to hit local open mics. Luckily, we have been able to squeeze a date into our busy schedules every now and then. A couple of weeks ago, I was able to see Cary Anne's show, "The Sea," and it was highly entertaining. I'm so proud of her for being a part of it. Afterwards, we walked down to a new burger joint of Belmont called Indie Burger, which combines great food and great music. The place had only been open for 3 days when we went, so everyone was extra nice and eager to please. It definitely has the potential to become a hipster hangout with all organic food and walls lined with concert posters. And since we discovered it so early on, we're like hipsters at the hipster place. Hipster Inception. However, we're not always so hip. Sometimes we just go to the Dunkin Donuts with a Baskin Robbins attached and eat with all the other fatties.

That same week end, we had a cook out at church. Three of our members were having a birthday during the following week, so after worship, we pulled out some tables and set up a feast. We probably should've started the cooking a little earlier because everyone had to wait and graze on pita chip while Zach cooked the meat (slowly) on a small grill by the parking lot, while Sam & I alternated holding the flashlight. Eventually, everyone got stuffed on burgers, brats, and chicken, and the board games came out. I passed rude, intimidating notes to the other teams during Cranium, and Cary Anne got way to into Apples to Apples. Later I created some racial tension. We started cutting and distributing the cake when Lisa came back with a slice and said, “Darius doesn't want his. He doesn't like chocolate.” Across the room I yelled, “Darius! How can you not like chocolate? You are chocolate!” He pretended to be made and flip a table. While I'm excited for our church to grow, right now I'm enjoying looking around the art gallery filled with 30 people, knowing I know everyone's name.

Then, on Monday, UK played Kansas in the NCAA Championship. I was hoping Cary Anne and I could  go to The Pony Inn for the game since it's the official UK alumni bar here in Chicago, but Cary Anne wasn't crazy about the idea since we went to the The Pony for 2 other tournament games and it was absurdly crowded. Luckily, our friend Josh called ahead. (Josh also moved to Chicago from Lexington. During the years I was working at Krispy Kreme, he was working only a few blocks away at the Movie Tavern.) The Pony informed Josh that there had been a line of UK fans waiting to get in since 4pm, and they were gonna stop allowing more people in over an hour before tip off. That successfully squashed that idea, so instead Cary Anne and I met up with Josh and his roommate, Courtney, at a surprisingly quiet bar in Wrigleyville. In the end, we all enjoyed watching Kentucky beat Kansas 67 to 59. Cary Anne kept rolling her eyes as I took to the streets yelling, "C-A-T-S! Cats, Cats, Cats!" No one joined in, and even the homeless people tried to avoid contact with me.

What comes before Part B?

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been doing plenty of partying here in the Windy City. The festivities kicked off a couple of weeks ago when Ben invited a bunch of people to Dave and Buster's to celebrate his 28th birthday. Ben is a friend of ours from church whom I've hit it off with particularly well thanks to our mutual love of writing and comedy. (In fact, we've already been working on stuff together.)

If you don't know, Dave and Buster's is like a Chuck E. Cheese for adults, where you binge on unhealthy food and then spend too much money on arcade games. Only Dave and Buster's is better than Chuck E. Cheese because D&B serves alcohol, and it's always fun to watch somebody try to have the coordination to master air hockey or skeeball after they have a few drinks in them. In fact, those two games we're quite popular amongst our friends, probably because they're good group games with smack talk potential. Although, in retrospect, skeeball smack talk sounds pretty stupid. (ie- "Oooh, you see that? I got my ball in the 50 hole! I know how to roll a ball up a ramp more accurately than you!") After skeeball, a small air hockey tournament broke out. Kelly succeeded in taking down Josh and Cary Anne before I came along and knocked her off her high horse. Air hockey is another one where smack talk is a bit weird (ie- "Yeah, I know Geometry, bitch!") But air hockey wasn't the only game I dominated; I also took everyone down in Pop-a-Shot, which shows you just how unathletic our Chicago friends are, when I'm the one dominating basketball.

After basketball, Ben took me down a peg by challenging me to a Nascar race on a simulator. After a fierce 4 laps of crashes and wall slams, Ben succeeded in beating me by .01 seconds! (Of course, I just let him win. I mean, it was his birthday after all.) Shooting games were also popular among our friends. Whether we were busting a cap in some aliens or foiling the plot of international terrorists, everyone seemed to have fun killing other living things. In the end, we all had fun and got to enjoy some chocolate cake after we sang to Ben and watched him blow out his candles. Cary Anne and I got him a Spider-Man bobble head as a gift because...well, what else could a 28-year-old want?

Then, just a couple of days ago was the Super Bowl, of course. Because of the big game, church got pushed to earlier in the afternoon, and after the service everyone headed just down the block to a bar called Norse. That's where I met up with Cary Anne and the rest of the gang since I had to work that afternoon. Norse provided everything one could hope for for the Super Bowl, which is mainly junk food and big screen TVs. Not only was there a free nacho bar, but they also allowed us to bring in our own chicken wings and cookies. The whole thing was pretty relaxed, with the two bar tenders coming out from behind the bar and sitting in stools for most of the game, only walking around occasionally to see if anyone needed another drink.

Like pretty much every Super Bowl party I've ever been to, the whole thing was more of a social event than a "let's play close attention to the game" event. No one seemed particularly passionate about either team with most of the "Who are you rooting for?"s being met with "Eh...no one, really." One of my favorite parts of the evening was watching our friend Kelly trying to convince us she knew something about football by sprinkling her sentences with the one or two football terms she knew, like "Ah yes. That quarterback really tossed the ol' pig skin good on that...drive?" Of course, all eyes were on the screen for the spectacle of Madonna's half time performance which somehow shifted from a Ancient Greece theme to a modern day Gospel choir theme in the middle. It made me think that somewhere out there an old man was having an awkward conversation with his army buddies...

"Hey guys, did you see my son in the Super Bowl?"

"Your son played in the Super Bowl? You must be so proud!"

"Well, he didn't play football. But he did play a fake harp while he was dressed like a Trojan soldier, dancing behind Madonna."

In the final moments Cary Anne pretended to be a passionate Patriots fan since our friend Zach was rooting for the Giants. For a few fleeting minutes, they exchanged some fiery smack talk before the Patriots came up short, and Cary Anne was left crushed as the team she put all her hopes in for less than a quarter of the game let her down.

So far it's been great year for fun and community, and hopefully that trend will continue on into the coming months.

"Each new year brings hope and meaning..." - Paper Route, "Sing You to Sleep"

Happy New Year! 2012 has been great so far here in Chicago. We kicked off the new year with a party at our friend Kevin's apartment. He had the whole church over, which isn't that large of a feat when the whole church is only, like, 25 people.

Since we're pretty far from the heart of the city, driving isn't a terrible ordeal and it's how we usually get around when we're both going to the same place (Cary Anne isn't as keen about driving the Vespa around when the wind chill is in the teens as I am). But one of the great things about New Year's in Chicago is that the trains and buses are free from the evening of the 31st through early morning on the 1st in an attempt to discourage drunk driving (though I guess it could have a negative back lash because if a drunk driver happens to hit a bus it will most likely be filled with more people than normal). So we decided to take the L down to the party, but even without riding the Vespa, we still had to endure the chill of standing on an elevated platform waiting for our ride. Luckily, most stops have heat lamps, which Cary Anne thoroughly enjoys sunning under.


The party was everything you'd expect at a New Year's party for sensible 20-somethings, half of which are married. While there was no drunken debauchery, I was happy to see things were a bit more lively than all of us sitting around a table enjoying a rousing game of "Apples to Apples" (Actually, I think that's how Cary Anne and I spent New Year's last year...). As expected, there was plenty of junk food, alcohol, and loud conversation, and in the end, we actually did play a game, but after about 40 minutes it just broke down into a living room full of people laughing and yelling at each other. And at midnight, we all cheered and drank as Coldplay played on TV, and my new friend Nate made inappropriate resolutions like, "Here's to finally tellin' 'em what I did with Natalie Holloway's body in 2012!" A good night, overall.

The start of the new year also brought with it the start of my first class at Improv Olympic. Originally, we weren't sure how long it would take for us to be financially stable enough for me to start taking classes, but thanks to God's grace and some unexpected generosity, things fell into place rather quickly. So far, I've only had one class, but it was a lot fun, and I'm already getting to know some of my very nice and funny classmates. I think I will really enjoy spending 3 hours a week dedicated to improv. Also, Cary Anne recently got hooked up with a theater company through a friend so it looks like she'll be doing some back stage work over the coming weekends. Since CA hasn't done any work on a show since her last semester at Cumberland in the spring of 2010, you can imagine how excited she is.

During our first small group of 2012, our leaders, Rich and Dori, told us to think back to where we were at the start of 2011, both physically and emotionally. Then, they asked us to examine how we've changed over the course of the last 12 months, and ultimately asked us to boil our entire 2011 to a single word. For me, the word that came to mind for CA and I was "longing." Longing for better jobs. Longing to leave Lexington. Longing to pursue our passions. It's so remarkable to think about how God has answered nearly all of our longings in one way or another in such a short time. We can't wait to see how He moves over the next 12 months.