gnat enjoys free summer music

this morning i realized i hadn't yet posted about what is probably my favorite chicago summertime activity - evening concerts in millenium park.

regular attendees include cara,

myself,

eileen,

and sean,

with occasional guest appearances by aleck

and andrew

among others.

about once a week cara and i load up bags of snacks, wine, and blankets and head down to millenium park, where we all play card games and listen to free music all evening.

this summer we've heard everything from rachmaninoff to egyptian music to iron & wine, all from this patch of grass.

in other news, all of my pictures are going to be in hipstamatic for a while, both because i'm basically obsessed with it and because carmine II is in the hands of the geek squad after sustaining a fall. (yes, again. shut up.)

gnat and eileen's hipstamatic chicago afternoon

shortly after i posted today's blog entry, in which i complained about how miserable humidity is, my tutee cancelled our lesson for today leaving me with a free afternoon. i immediately enlisted eileen's aid in coming up with an exciting activity that was both free and air conditioned. without hesitation, she suggested the art institute. little did eileen know that i very recently (and by very recently i mean last night) finally jumped on the hipstamatic bandwagon and was itching to play with it, and a trip to the art institute was the perfect opportunity to do so.

(for those of you who, like me, are not well versed in the exciting world of iphone applications, hipstamatic is a program that takes vintage looking pictures with your phone's camera. it is shockingly addictive.)

what follows is a sample of the photographic results of our afternoon in the museum:

because we worked up quite an appetite at the museum we adjourned to devon seafood grill (also air conditioned) for happy hour. i have been obsessing about oysters since my visit to the publican last month (which i just realized i have yet to write about... this is awkward.) and have been intending to go to devon's happy hour for 75 cent oysters on the half shell for weeks.

eileen and i started with wine flights,

before receiving our oysters. (they were magnificent, and made even better by the fact that they are served with teeny tiny bottles of tabasco sauce that are now floating somewhere at the bottom of my purse.)

you can't have too much of a good thing, so we also tried their oyster shooters.

now, a dozen oysters is not actually that much food, so we supplemented them with an order of mussels. (i'm not kidding anyone. the real reason we got mussels is because we are a couple of fat kids. if you don't think so now, you will in a minute. i didn't even tell you about the smoked salmon flat bread, because i was so busy eating it that i forgot to take a picture.)

at the very last possible moment, five minutes before the end of happy hour, eileen and i decided that despite all the seafood we had already consumed, the deal on lobster (at cost) was just too damn good to pass up. so we did what any reasonable people in our situation would do - we ordered a lobster.

and it was the best idea ever. he was delicious. and cheap. but mostly delicious.

predictably, the meal ended in lobster carnage.

thoroughly stuffed with seafood, we braved the heat once more to return to our respective places of residence. as a result of our adventure i am feeling far less upset about the climate outside. if it means more air conditioned adventures, i say bring it on!

gnat survives the snowpocalypse

let me preface this by saying that of all the chicago adventures i have had thus far, snowpocalypse has been without doubt my absolute favorite.

it all started on monday morning when i had the following conversation with my mother:

ma: tomorrow and the next few day there will be a blizzard storm you need to go get food to store

gnat: i went today

ma: candles there might be power outage

gnat: but the store is very close

gnat: a blizzard?

ma: i am telling you whats on the news

gnat: in chicago?

ma: yeah all over and they said chicago. the next few days worse on tuesday and wednesday

ma: just check it

ma: go to walgreen get a couple of flash lights and a lot of batteries

ma: you dont want to find yourself alone at home pitch black

ma: your stove is gas?

a quick google search turned up a story from the chicago sun-times with the headline "'life-threatening' blizzard on its way to chicago area."

naturally i did what any scared californian who had never lived through a blizzard before (and who had a fear mongering parent sending doomsday messages from the other side of the country) would do - i prepared for the worst. over the course of monday and tuesday i amassed a respectable collection of candles, flashlights, snacks, and water in anticipation of the impending snowmageddon.

what i forgot to get (and what would later prove essential) was wine. by the time cara and i realized the omission, the winds had picked up and the "falling" snow was flying horizontally. we suited up in our snowpocalypse survival gear and trudged through the abandoned streets to the nearest trader joe's.

our provisions:

we dined and caroused with our taco tuesday guests (because i wasn't about to let the end of the world get in the way of taco tuesday, and neither were they, although we ate slightly more blizzard appropriate foods) and then somewhat foolhardily headed out to experience the storm.

it was chaotic. frenzied. helter skelter. really the only word for it is apocalyptic.

the next morning (my first snow day!) we examined the aftermath of the storm. things i found buried in the snow included my street,

a fire hydrant,

and (probably) a bicycle.

we snowball fought - well, i attempted rather pathetically to snowball fight and the andrews pummeled each other with continent shaped chunks of snow,

and i made my first snow angel, which is truly as satisfying as all those little kids frolicking in the snow on tv make it look.

snowpocalypse is, sadly, over, and it's sunny and beautiful (albeit really, really cold) outside, but the streets and the sidewalks are still piled high with snow. i'm not sure how long it will stick around, the snow plows have been at it outside my window since about six o'clock this morning. thanks, assholes.

(side note: perhaps due to the sun coming in through the windows and the garbage-truck like beeping of the snow plows i woke up thinking i was on kelton, that it was wednesday, and that i was late for work. i even strained to hear if patty had beaten me to the shower.)

there's a small part of me that wishes it could be snowpocalypse every day.

well, not every day.