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 learns the meaning of the word "humidity"

guys. seriously. guys.

it is miserable outside.

according to weather.com, it is 96 degrees out with 51% humidity. and this is an improvement over yesterday. AN IMPROVEMENT, PEOPLE. yesterday when i left the apartment it was 103 degrees with 83% humidity. how is that even possible?

in case you are, like i was before this week, not familiar with what 103 degrees and 83% humidity feels like, imagine that you are taking a shower wearing all your clothes. a very hot shower. and there's a ton of steam. and instead of being in the comfort of your own bathroom, you are outdoors and the sun is pounding on you, 103 degrees fahrenheit of pounding sun hitting you, surrounded by steam, in all your clothes, taking a very hot shower. that is what 103 degrees and 83% humidity feels like. and at the end of this hot, steamy, clothed, poundy sun shower, instead of being nice and clean you are sticky and drenched in sweat. disgusting. now imagine trying to breathe in that nonsense. it's enough to make a girl wish she had gills.

because i do NOT have gills, today i am staying holed up in my beautiful air conditioned apartment pretending to work. unfortunately i am experiencing intense writer's block, which is why i've been absent from blogging for several weeks despite having gone on many blogable chicago adventures. send me your writing vibes, internets.

gnat celebrates one year

i'm posting today from the floor in terminal d of laguardia international airport in new york. exactly one year ago i was sitting on the floor at las vegas mccarran, waiting for a flight that had been delayed due to a tornado watch in chicago and wondering what the hell i was getting myself into. that's right, today marks the one year anniversary of my chicago residency. i can't say this year has been anything at all like what i expected it would be, but i suppose that isn't surprising and it certainly isn't bad - quite the opposite, in fact.

it looks like i'm stuck here for at least a few more hours, but if i ever make it back to chi i think a celebratory cupcake from more is in order.

gnat eats all she can eat

aleck has been talking about all you can eat fish and chips at duke of perth in lakeview for months. because i LOVE fish and chips, for months i have been responding positively to the idea and yet for some reason we never went.

well, last friday we (cara, aleck and i) finally did it, and boy was it delicious. and painful.

every wednesday and friday duke of perth offers all you can eat fish and chips for the same price you would normally pay for one serving. upon receiving my first serving, i began to wonder who really needed more fish and chips than they typically cram onto one plate.

nevertheless, we finished our first plates and, feeling confident, asked for second half plates. while we waited, we had a lengthy discussion about peas. i don't recall having a problem with peas as a child, but i don't think we ever ate them plain so i never had the chance to do the following experiment: do they look like more when they're all clustered together in the corner -

or spread out all over the plate?

i may have cheated and eaten some in between.

our second plates were far smaller than the first, so by the end i still thought that maybe one more half plate would be a good idea...

(notice that it's beginning to get dark. at this point we have been fishing and chipping for just shy of two hours.)

it was an epic struggle. i finished the fish, but without the relief of peas on the final half plate the chips proved insurmountable.

while we were doing battle with the fish, cara was also completing an entirely different eating feat. our table started with a full bottle of ketchup:

which cara had singlehandedly demolished by the end of plate two.

she claims that peas taste better with ketchup. i don't buy it. (blech. ketchup.)

yeah... i hate ketchup.

all you can eat fish and chips is, i think, both one of the worst and one of the best food related ideas ever. my taste buds were delighted - i can only imagine that my arteries were not.

gnat discusses the pitfalls of craigslist furniture

longtime readers may remember my complicated relationship with the ugly chair, which was left behind by the previous tenants of my apartment and for several weeks was the only furniture i owned in chicago. once cara moved in and we assembled a respectable collection of real furniture, i gleefully relegated ugly chair to the trash room.

well today i finally had to do this:

see, it turns out "real" furniture purchased dirt cheap from craigslist isn't always of the highest quality. the chair pictured above is one of three (the other two are also of questionable structural integrity, though this one is the worst) which were generously included free of charge with our $30 dinner table.

this particular chair has collapsed under an unwitting diner not once but twice, and since my attempts to reassemble and secure it with packing tape have failed into the trash it goes. taco tuesday regulars will either be very excited about this or disappointed that they will no longer experience the brief, exhilarating moment upon sitting down when they wonder whether the chair beneath them will hold up or take them tumbling to the ground.

gnat says cheese

let's begin with a photo today, shall we?

if you looked at the picture above and immediately thought, "my god, that's a grilled cheese sandwich with macaroni and cheese spilling out of it!" then you would be absolutely correct. where can one find such a sandwich?

at cheesie's!

cheesie's is a brand new restaurant and bar dedicated to the art of the grilled cheese sandwich. the spot it occupies formerly belonged to a kickass hole in the wall mexican restaurant which closed its doors shortly after the first and only time i ever had the chance to eat there. let's be real - had it been replaced by just about ANYTHING but a grilled cheese restaurant, i would have been thoroughly annoyed. as it stands, and i am only very slightly ashamed to admit this, i was at cheesie's no fewer than three times within a week of its opening and have tried almost every sandwich on their menu.

the restaurant's walls are decorated with parodies of great works of art, which are in my opinion vastly improved by the inclusion of sandwiches. (seriously, though, what isn't improved by the inclusion of sandwiches?)

(note the bitterness in the cow's face. upon further consideration, i'm not sure how i feel about a cow coveting dairy...)

in the far corner below is my favorite, "cheesy night."

now, i make a pretty damn excellent grilled cheese sandwich. (in fact, i remembered that i had yet to blog about cheesie's while concocting such a sandwich in celebration of finally having turned in a 25 page philosophy paper...) perhaps that's why, once i had tried most of the sandwiches and the novelty was gone, i was basically over cheesie's. still, it brings me joy to know that there exists, not very far from here, an entire restaurant dedicated entirely to one of my favorite foods.

gnat promises better blogging

yes, i've been absent for almost a month now. i promise - it was for a good reason.

you may recall at the end of my last post, during which i gleefully announced the beginning of summer, that i said this:

"stay tuned for more whining when the weather takes its inevitable sharp downturn and i am forced to wear a jacket again for several more weeks."

well folks, i was right. after three or four days of gorgeous weather that almost made me forget i was upset that winter ever happened in the first place, chicago chuckled and slapped me across the face with more cold. remember the beautiful tulips? most of them were beheaded by 90mph winds. (i made that number up, but it feels about right.) the ones that weren't ended up looking like this:

so, as the temperature dipped back down to 39 degrees (i didn't make this number up. on the evening of may 26 it was 39 degrees in chicago, which would make me less upset if it had not, at the same moment, been 69 degrees in anchorage, alaska...) i made a calculated decision not to update, knowing that if i opened this window all i would do was curse this whole city and swear up and down to move as soon as opportunity struck. rather than subject you all to (more) diatribes against chicago and all of its inhabitants i waited for summer to actually arrive and improve my spirits before blogging again.

you're welcome.

anyway, it has been consistently beautiful out for several days now and i have been in a consistently excellent mood. i have a long wishlist of chicago adventures which i will be executing in a calculated and methodical fashion (lies) so that i have things of substance to tell you about outside of the weather, how bad the weather is, and what a horrible mood the bad weather puts me in. get excited.

gnat is relieved of her seasonal affective disorder symptoms

andy williams is an idiot.

i guess that isn't fair - andy williams sang the song "it's the most wonderful time of the year" but he didn't write it, eddie pola and george wyle did. well misters pola and wyle, i respectfully disagree. scratch that - i outright question whether you were in your right minds when you called the middle of winter the most wonderful time of the year. maybe you were on drugs. maybe you lived in the arctic circle and had never experienced summer. in any case, you were wrong.

it's 80 degrees and sunny right now. people are outside walking and there isn't a sleeping bag coat in sight. i wore a dress to school today.

the poor naked trees are starting to get their leaves back.

the city planted tulips EVERYWHERE. billions and billions of them (probably).

christmas is ok i guess, but THIS is without doubt the most wonderful time of the year and it's about damn time it got here.

(stay tuned for more whining when the weather takes its inevitable sharp downturn and i am forced to wear a jacket again for several more weeks.)

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 incurs an unexpected amount of muscle soreness

i am not an athletic person. by the time i hit high school i had tried and sucked at just about every sport there is, at which point i gave up and became a theater kid instead. by this point in my life i have made peace with the fact that i possess the coordination of a drunk ostrich (i have no data to support the assertion that drunk ostriches are uncoordinated - this is purely conjecture) but at the same time i tend to shy away from opportunities to showcase my profound lack of sporting ability.

this is why several months ago, when zain first tried to explain to me how badly i needed to experience the phenomenon that is whirlyball, i was completely closed to the idea. had he thoroughly explained what a game of whirlyball actually entailed, i might have been more amenable to it.

basically you take ten of these:

ten of these:

and ten of these:

and play a game somewhat akin to basketball.

my passing and shooting abilities were, predictably, nonexistent, but i feel my aggressive LA driving skills offset my other weaknesses. action shot!

...sort of.

i woke up the next morning with a surprising amount of soreness in a surprising number of areas, considering i had played a game throughout which i remained seated. this is, i suppose, a testament to how out of shape i am. i blame winter.

whirlyball wasn't invented in chicago, nor is it unique to chicago, but i had never heard of it before moving here. in fact there are only 17 whirlyball venues in the world, none of which are in california. (chicago has three; kid rock's house in the suburbs of detroit has one. the rest are mostly in places to which there is no reason to go except to play whirlyball.)

my apologies to zain, who for several months attempted to introduce me to something excellent and was met with nothing but staunch resistance. whirlyball is awesome.

gnat complains

the phrase "april showers bring may flowers" has never made any sense to me. in my experience by the time april rolls around the flowers have long since appeared, the rain is long gone, everyone is in shorts and sundresses and my spring fever has kicked into high gear.

not so, in chicago! it's been 45 and raining for weeks, and weather.com seems to think it's going to go right on doing so through the end of the month at least. upon returning from california after spring break i somewhat triumphantly put my sleeping bag coat in the back of my closet... last week i had to pull it right back out again.

(side note: i always thought spring fever referred to a warm weather induced upswing in mood and crazy increase in energy, a phenomenon that inconveniently struck me, without fail, during finals week of winter quarter every year throughout college, causing me to spend more time at the beach than was probably prudent right before exams. as it turns out, spring fever can also mean a feeling of low energy and weariness that occurs with the onset of spring. in german it's called "frühjahrsmüdigkeit," which according to wikipedia translates to "spring tiredness" and which i have been attempting unsuccessfully to pronounce for several moments now.)

so, i have spring fever, and not the fun kind. this, in combination with mcat studying and subsequent attempting to catch up on all the things i wasn't paying attention to while i was mcat studying, has prevented me from having exciting chicago adventures to tell you about... sorry.

april sucks.

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 blogs from SPACE!

ok, i'm not in outer space, but i'm about as close to it as i am likely to ever be (barring the occurrence of any of the dystopic future off world colonies described in many of my favorite books, or, way more unlikely, me becoming an astronaut).

i have nothing chicago related to say, except that i'm on my way there! currently cruising at 7,000 feet over (probably) nebraska... it's looking pretty flat down there. for some reason screwing around on the internet up here is approximately nine times more exciting than doing it at sea level.

one hour and 49 minutes to chicago!