Birthday Month Comes to an End

As all good things must end, so does my Birthday Month. I really couldn't ask for a better one so I have no complaints. The Surprise Concert, a couple of great weekends out of town, trips to the beach, my sailing class... everything's been really fun.

Last night we had a great time with a friend's art book release, the purchase of a new sink for our planned bathroom redesign, a visit to my new favorite restaurant, Bite (I had the Lamb Salisbury Steak, M had a Philly Cheese Fake) and finished it off with a visit to Chicago's most amazing ice-ery, Miko's. The ice-ista at Miko's gave us as fine a consultation as you would get in any five-star restaurant as he leaned out his window in Logan's Square and advised us on the best flavors (Hot Tip: Peach is coming next week!)

In other news, I happened to find myself in a batting cage a few days ago and I was unexpectedly KILLING. Since I was doing so well, I decided to leave the "slow" pitch and progress to a faster ball. The Guy warned me that it was "much" faster, but I was not worried. I actually went from completely confident to crapping my pants terrified in about .2 seconds, which is how fast that ball came flying at me! When I stopped screaming I fought my way out as fast as I could. And that's why I don't play sports, people.

Here's a great picture of M and G inspecting limes for cocktail-worthiness. We took 90 limes to the lake house. That's how we do it.

Birthday weekend

This weekend we went to our friend's lakeside "cottage" along with the whole crew - it was the most fun I could possibly have had on my birthday weekend! Now I have a (un)healthy tan, am well-swum, and pleasantly full of delicious food. We saw a couple of amazing storms and went night swimming! It's heavenly out there!

Camping weekend

Last weekend we went camping up in Wisconsin - actually, not far at all from us - at Lake Geneva. Beautiful lake up there and a lovely little camp ground. It was fun sleeping outside and having a big fire at night. Here's a pic of M and a typical book he takes on vacation.

and here's our campsite - it was under a marvelous tree - we really liked that tree:

When we came home again we couldn't wait to pet Kaya and also to go see Harry Potter! I'll post my thoughts on the movie soon.

dark and hot

Well, it's been an utter shit storm of a past few days because we had this wee giant storm which lasted about 15 minutes and tore up a bunch of trees and left us without power for just over 24 hours (along with 868,000 other people). Power was off at work and at home and one was obliged to spend a lot of time at both places sitting around in the sweltering darkness.

Our power finally came on around noon today, but only after we had thrown away all the food in the fridge. ComED owes us a variety of fine cheeses, I'll tell you that.

Here's a crazy ass video of the storm.

It's very sad about the trees, especially on the campus where I work. It's really weird because the wind just knocked them right out of the ground. Some of those trees were my friends. I knew them from nut and acorn.

The Secret Event!

Well, I know you're all dying to know what the Secret Event was (assuming anyone still reads my blog?)! It was very exciting. We drove down to Uptown, to the Aragon Theatre, and I couldn't tell from the marque even what it was - in fact, I didn't find out until we were inside and I had been (gently) frisked - The Flaming Lips concert! What a fun surprise! I don't go to a lot of concerts and don't know if this is normal, but they had all kinds of balloons that got bounced around, and the lead singer got in a giant bubble and road all over the tops of the crowd and they shot out a bunch of confetti and there were lasers... it was pretty cool.

Otherwise, we spent most of the weekend in our backyard, which is nothing short of a suburban wonderland:

(I got new shoes.)

birthday month update

Ooo boy, you would not believe how excited I am because M has written "Secret Event" on the calendar for tomorrow and all I know is it's part of my birthday month celebrations. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

So far it's been a lovely birthday month and looks to get even better and better. The garden is in full bloom and really gorgeous. This weekend we will undoubtably spend as much time as we can lingering there with the odd cocktail, the hammock and our precious little angel, Kaya!

These are tiger lilies and my new favorite: Rose Champion - pretty, rite? Also some crazy curly grass.