gnat procrastinates

coming to you live from elly's, where i am sitting in the corner (creepily taking covert pictures with my phone) attempting to get some work done.

i am outfitted with an endless supply of decaf and bopping to the 80s pop pandora station over the speakers. send me your productivity vibes, internets!

gnat sings the praises of elly's pancake house. again.

yes, i'm coming to you live from elly's, in the seat where i spend several evenings a week desperately attempting to do productive things.

my typical vantage point:

this is where i am when i'm not adventuring around chicago. it's my favorite place to study.

thank you, elly's. i would not be able to succeed as a graduate student without you.

gnat celebrates the american pastime

do i look like a convincing baseball fan or what?

last saturday sarge, harmony, and taylor took me to my very first baseball game. yes friends, i made it 24 years without having ever been to or even watched a baseball game. what can i say, i have foreign parents. baseball is not a thing we do.

baseball is, however, a thing chicago does, which is surprising considering the cubs haven't won a world series since 1908. in fact, they haven't even appeared in a world series since 1945 - the year the curse of the billy goat was placed. according to legend billy sianis, founder of chicago's billy goat tavern, was ejected from the park with his goat murphy (for whom he had purchased a box seat ticket) because of its offensive odor. sianis, a greek and therefore a lover not only of goats but of ominous superstitious things, declared on the spot that the cubs would never win a world series again. since then numerous attempts have been made to break the curse on chicago's "lovable losers," most of them involving bringing goats to wrigley field.

well, the cubs didn't get a goat last saturday but they did get a gnat.

sarge, harmony, and taylor, all lifelong baseball fans, were extraordinarily patient about explaining some of baseball's complexities to me, as well as amused by my complete ignorance of the baseball-going experience. for example, i always thought the seventh-inning stretch was... ok honestly, as i write this i realize i had no idea what the seventh-inning stretch was, but i definitely would not have guessed it meant that everyone in the park literally stands up and stretches.

as we left i got a picture with the statue of harry caray, (only slightly less ridiculous than one i have tucked away somewhere of me with the actual han solo frozen in carbonite prop) who only now after reading his wikipedia bio do i know anything about beyond "hey! would you eat the moon if it was made of ribs?" in fact, i tried to emulate will ferrell's harry caray in this photo... let's not talk about how widely i missed the mark.

there were no peanuts and no cracker jacks, but there were hot dogs and beer and i had a great time.

since then i have been camped out at elly's (remember elly's?) furiously preparing for the mcat, which i am taking on saturday. not only do they have marvelous pancakes but they are an excellent study venue! i know what you're thinking - "gnat, saturday is not very many days from today. shouldn't you be studying right now instead of blogging?" and you are absolutely right, here i go. wish me luck!

gnat has pizza for breakfast (and breakfast for dinner)

for those familiar with chicago's illustrious deep dish pizza purveyors, there may, as of yet, be a few conspicuous absences from this blog's pizza discussion. for example:

giordano's famous stuffed pizza! i tried it when i came to visit in february, but as no photos exist of that experience and i was not yet a seasoned chicago resident we'll pretend that doesn't count.

(note: when cara and i went to pick up the pizza the place was was packed, people spilling out onto the sidewalk waiting for tables, presumably most of them visiting for the weekend. as we were snaking our way out with the pizza, i stopped to take the above photo and a woman behind cara said "see? that girl is taking pictures of the giordano's sign!" to which cara immediately turned and replied, "it's ok, we live here." seasoned chicago residents indeed.)

giordano's was chosen best by chicago tribune, new york times, chicago magazine, nbc tv, and now, also gnat's chicago experiment!

solely by virtue of its beautiful soft crust. one of my main dislikes about all of the deep dish pizza i've tried is that once you get through all the delicious cheese and toppings you find yourself faced with a crust that has the consistency of particle board. at giordano's, not so! it's spongy and wonderful.

also delicious this week, elly's pancake house at clark and north.

aleck ran the "hot chocolate 15K" downtown this weekend, (and kicked ass, congratulations!) and his night before carbo-loading meal of choice was pancakes.

(another note: i don't like pancakes, really. i am not a sweet breakfast foods person. elly's pancakes are amazing. all pancakes should taste like elly's pancakes, and then maybe i would like pancakes.)

i opted for potato benedict, which is eggs benedict on potato pancakes instead of english muffins with hash browns, and we split side of french fries.

we were ambitious and intended to try their pie (sweet potato!) for dessert but for reasons that are probably obvious that just didn't happen. even so, i was all carbo-loaded up and ready to sleep in the next morning and wake up just in time to congratulate aleck as he arrived home from the race (and have pizza for breakfast: see above).

FALL FOLIAGE UPDATE!!!

rather unexpectedly, the leaves have turned abruptly from yellow to, well, no longer there, without any of the transition to oranges or reds i was hoping to see. except for the ones that are still completely green. what gives?

the temperature has been in the 30s and 40s all week and my girl guy is undeterred - he's still been hanging out on this corner, still singing the same few lines of my girl, still making me wonder how long my water balloon throwing range is. (that's my bedroom window all the way on the left, two floors above the brown and white striped awning.)