Chicago Loves Food & Music

Regarding the comments from Meg's post...

The "horrific" crab wasn't so horrific actually. His leg span was no more than 5 inches and he was quite entertaining. He looked like a leaf blowing in the wind when he ran and could bury his entire body, except his eyes in a matter of seconds.

The other photo, the purple and blue balloon, on the other hand could have been quite dangerous. It was a portuguese man-of-war. Apparently something had already had his potentially lethal tentacles for dinner. This is probably one of the strangest things I've come across in my life. They are actually not single animals, rather communities of zooids that work together as one unit. Strange.

The people in the top photo are:
• Two fish that my dad caught at the same time
• The fella on the left is the First Mate of the charter fishing boat
• The one in red is my brother-in-law Josh (who is soon to be a father)
• The one facing him is my Aunt Beth from New York
• The one with the beard is Dad
• The one in the foreground is my sister Kris (who is soon to be a mother)

And regarding our "IKEA" house... the shelves in the bathroom & above the oven, the wooden cart next to the oven, and the lanterns in the living room are all from IKEA. I think the frame Brielle put on her print (in the bedroom) was from IKEA too. I think we'll get a table from IKEA pretty soon as well. Then we don't have to eat on the couch and we can play RUMMIKUB again. (I hate playing on the floor).

In other news...

I haven't posted in quite some time because mostly I've just been looking for work. I'm sure that most potential employers will probably come across this blog so I hesitate to write anything about job searching. I'll just say that I've pretty much decided that for the time being I will consider myself a freelance graphic designer who, depending on the outcome of my interview tomorrow, works part time at a department store.

Meg had little trouble finding a job. I'm guessing the industry she's working in is somewhat less likely to dig up blogs and such, but none-the-less I never want to too much about work. As much as I'd like to keep family and friends up to date with our lives, I think we'll probably be posting mostly stuff about the stuff we do with our free time.

That being said, I'll try to post more often... stuff like this:



On Saturday we went to check out Linoln Park's Pizzafest. They advertised the event as having every kind of topping and crust imaginable. It turned out that only three pizza vendors were represented and with just cheese, beef, and pepperoni. Apparently this was the first year for the event and they didn't really know what to expect. Oh well... the music more than made up for what the festival may have been lacking in culinary diversity. Over the Rhine played a free show. We snagged seats (on the ground) quite close to the stage and the show was excellent.

Yesterday afternoon we braved the crowds at the mind-bogglingly huge event known as Taste of Chicago. We tried the small portions from various vendors, but the highlight was these crazy homemade potato chips from Harry Caray's. This isn't a great shot, but you can see the drill contraption that they spin the potato on to make one super-long curly pile of chips. The hot BBQ sauce was quite tasty.



After slowly maneuvering through the crowds by the food stands, we headed over to the band shell to catch a few country shows, Craig Morgan and Sara Evans. As much as I enjoy country music concerts, give me the Sioux Empire Fair over Taste of Chicago any day. I think Meg and I were the most "county" people there. And we're not very "county". Don't get me wrong, they put on a good show. It just felt kinda wrong.