chicago or bust!
This was a good idea.
2536 N Clark St, Chicago IL
Get the peanut butter nutella. Or anything.
And there’s a sprinkle bar.
Do it do it do it.
More than just corn fields and rolling hills and bluffs by the river, more than stunning, sweeping vistas, bald eagles and morning glories and friendly, friendly people, more than just the state I’m proud to have called home for a year and a half,
… Iowa becomes today the third state in the union to overturn the ban on gay marriage, and for that reason, all of Iowa is receiving this week’s coveted Gold Star.
Perhaps you never thought of Iowa as particularly cutting edge. Well, think again. Despite the stereotypes about cornfields and only cornfields, Iowans have always seen themselves as ahead of the curve: As Iowa goes, so goes the nation, they say, right? They were right on Obama a year ago, and hopefully they’re right on this too. From the ruling, as quoted in the New York Times:
“Since territorial times, Iowa has given meaning to this constitutional provision [of equality], striking blows to slavery and segregation, and recognizing women’s rights. The court found the issue of same-sex marriage comes to it with the same importance as the landmark cases of the past.”
Iowa now joins Connecticut and Massachusetts as the first states to uphold same sex marriage. It is, as you can see, also the first state in the Midwest to do so. Quoth one of the activists involved in the suit:
“We are blessed to live in Iowa.”
Indeed. A big fan of wide open spaces and corn fields and friendly people myself, I’ve always felt this way. And today Iowa has done me proud once again. Pay attention, other states! Iowa is makin’ moves.
Springtime in Chicago
(Or, Why You Should Get Married And Have Our Good Friend Megan Bake Your Cake)
You guys.
I said there were a lot of pictures.
(I said it to someone, might not have been you.)
Well.
There are a lot of pictures… though none of them are satisfying my craving for another bite of that wedding cake…
Megan Woods is a wedding cake goddess. Write it down. Goddess.
I tried uploading all the pictures here, to the blog, and it was just too many, too much… and your page would’ve taken forever to load, longer than usual, even. And I would’ve been so stressed by the process that I wouldn’t have had the mental energy for clever comments. We can’t have that! So instead, I threw the pictures on facebook, where it’s easier and where I’d also wanted to put them anyway. And you don’t have to be on facebook to see them, you can just click here: Megan Makes Wedding Cake
You know, there are a lot of decisions to make when you’re getting married, even if it’s just a big old family wedding and you don’t care about swarovski crystals or chair dresses that were shipped in from somewhere fancy to coordinate with your napkins. This was an easy one. Mac and I are trying to stay on top of everything else, and we’re doing pretty well… no, we haven’t registered anywhere, we haven’t reserved a block of rooms at a hotel for our out of town guests, and we haven’t looked at wedding rings… we’ll get on that… next week, I think. In all of this, it feels really good to know that our cake is in such good hands.
Think about how great a wedding cake is. Now think about how even much more great it becomes when it’s made by one of your best friends. What makes Megan a wedding cake goddess is not only her culinary genius, but her happiness at opening up her home and her kitchen while she spends seven hours making cake… for five. Next step: cake for 175. We’ll have to dig up a few more pans… and maybe a few more hours…
Shout out to Jill, who was also there to “help” (see photos) and generally share the love, and to Alex, this guy we just met. He’s a friend of Megan’s so he’s a friends of ours. Mostly, a big bravo to Megan, and a big, big thanks. Can’t wait for August.
Today, after just getting back from a lovely weekend in DC, where the weather’s not much warmer than here but warmer enough, and where the sun was sunning, and the flowering trees flowering (my favorite thing in the world)…
… AND with us having crossed that oh-so-certain but sometimes oh-so-far-away line that is March 21, I cannot help but endorse: Spring.
As if we have a choice, right? It’s not like you can choose Spring, so I don’t know that I can technically endorse it, but wow, I’m so ready I don’t even care. Our weekend in DC really got me in the mood – warm weather, birds chirping, daffodils, crocuses, tulips, farmer’s markets and flower stores, heavy coats and scarves left in the back of the car… man oh man, Mac even got a sunburn on the back of his neck Sunday afternoon! Here are some pictures from our completely lovely time at Frager’s Garden Center (those in DC should check it out, if you haven’t already) minus – don’t worry – any kind of photo documenting of the back of Mac’s neck:
Oooooh, you want it, don’t you? It’s sooo pretty. Right down the street from your house, don’t you want it?? Colors! More than just “dead grass green” and “dirty white” and “really dirty white”! Pink! Red! Blue! And that’s just the watering cans!!! Oooh, you can just taste it now, can’t you? Your mouth is watering now, isn’t it? Well, that’s weird of you, because you can’t eat watering cans.
At any rate, back here at home, crossing from March 20 to March 21 means that the days are now longer than the nights, and that we will, for the first time since we moved here in October, get sunlight in our north-facing windows (which far out number our other-ways-facing windows). Once it stops being so cloudy, the cats are going to love it. Cloudy and cold. And rainy. Once it starts actually feeling like Spring…
Here in the Midwest we know to be patient, and we know not to let little set-backs take our eyes off the prize of a yard full of daisies and falling asleep on a picnic blanket while reading a book out by the lake… technically, snowstorms are totally fair game through about the end of April, and technically, we’re not supposed to complain, because that’s what we signed up for when we move to the Midwest (or never moved away).
So I guess if I’m actually endorsing anything endorsable today, it would be hanging in there, though it’s 48 and raining right now, though even next week’s weather forecast – next week where we finally get to see April – only has highs in the low 40’s. Soon enough, soon enough, we’ll be dancing our way through our first farmer’s markets of the season, right here in Chicago, drinking our first iced lattes – outside with no gloves on – and popping our first allergy pills, but not minding one bit. Hang in there, everyone. The flowers are peeking up out of the ground already – grab your umbrella, your parka, and maybe your snow shovel, and see if I’m not right. Soon enough.
For the record, I am secondarily, but still very enthusiastically, endorsing “Frager’s Hardware,” “planting a flowering tree,” and “taking a vacation to a place you love to visit people you love where you’ve all got enough fun, free time to wander around together through a gardening store, reminiscing about all your favorite flowers-coming-up memories.” And allergy pills, I’m also endorsing allergy pills.
More news of our DC trip will be sprinkled throughout this week’s posts, I’m sure… we took a boatload of pictures, as would be expected. For the record, “Spring” and all things associated just barely won out today over the very strong candidate, “having your good friend Megan Woods bake your wedding cake.” Intrigued? That just might pop up on Wednesday… stay tuned.
A day late, perhaps, but not short on anything, and it almost makes having to go into work at 6:30 AM seem ok.
Mac’s out of town, in DC on business, and I’m going to be joining him on Friday for some weekend fun with family and friends, but until then, in order to fill the gaping hole in my life, I’m posting not one but TWO Wednesday Bites. ;)
Also, our lives are really saturated with good food… and really, one food focused post a week is just not enough.
So here we go:
Yesterday was St. Patty’s day, which means green beer, a green river, and that tastiest of Irish delicacies, corned beef. Once again this year, Mac has undertaken the feat of cooking a giant, fatty slab of meat, and for some reason, we decided to photo document it. Yep, that’s right… twenty full color pictures of a big slab of raw meat… in a poorly lit kitchen to boot. Perhaps we let our anticipation and general excitement about the day get in the way of our judgement about foods that do and do not make for good photo documentary subjects… but in the spirit of the day, and of food that tastes better than it looks, we’re posting it anyway. Vegetarians and vegans, beware…
Yep, that’s a big hunk o’ meat. It was, of course, totally delicious. Totally. Can’t wait til next year.
Also, as a complete aside, the boys are intensely weirded out by Mac being gone. Rohn hasn’t been more than an inch and a half from my side all day, and Amarok has been lying alone in the dark in the bedroom for hours now, like there’s nothing worth living for anymore, except fish flakes, he did come out for fish flakes… sheesh, good thing we don’t let the boys write for Wednesday Bites…
I don’t know if we’ve mentioned this before, but Rohn (né Julius) was a rescued cat.
We got him through Feline Friends, a really great cat rescue organization in Chicago with volunteer foster families that take care of the rescued cats until they get adopted. I dare, dare dare you to click on that link and then not get a kitty. They are so cute, so completely, captivatingly, heart-breakingly cute.
We spent a lot of time looking at this website, and Mac spent a lot of time on the phone with Toni from Feline Friends (they’re pretty much bffs now), to find not only the perfect cat, but the perfect match for our little family.
And we found him:
Those eyes, that face… and when we met him in person, we knew, because wow, what a personality. And over the last two months he has proven to be exactly everything we ever hoped for. Even Amarok would have to agree…
buddies
We’ve often wondered, though, about Rohn’s past. Amarok is also from the streets, and was rescued as a very tiny kitty at a very very young age – we’ve often thought of this as a good bonding point for the two boys. Unfortunately though, we don’t get in on these conversations, and we’re left to wonder, Where did our little Rohny come from? How did he come to be abandoned? How was he rescued? What was he like, in those early days?
So imagine our surprise and our delight when we awoke this morning to an e-mail from Catherine, our new friend and Rohn’s Choice for this week’s Gold Star… because Catherine was Rohn’s rescuer.
In a brief e-mail, she told us how, with a just-rescued dog already in the car one day on the West Side, she first spotted Rohn:
Yep. That’s sounds just exactly like our little guy.
In fact, it sounds so much like him, that we’ve already adopted that phrase for every day use. For example, “What? I jumped in the sink!” Or, “What? I’m playing with pink feathers!”
Yes, the Gold Star this Friday goes overwhelmingly to Catherine, both for rescuing Rohn so that he could eventually come to be part of our family, and for sending us this e-mail so that we can know a little more about our little guy.
This post is a glut of pictures of Rohn in honor of her receiving this prestigious award. Congratulations! 
I’m so excited to endorse things today! But first off, I want to follow up on last week’s endorsement, for the pure and simple reason that this morning I saw a picture that’s tangentially related to it and I really want to share that picture with you all because it’s hilarious.
Here’s the picture:
somebody's excited
And the tangentially related follow-up is that the real Iditarod started this weekend, which is to say, the dog-powered Iditarod, not the human-powered one. Apparently it’s going well so far, at least for this guy. The human powered Iditarod, the Alaska Ultra Sport, which I endorsed last week, faced some of the worst weather it’s ever seen – while Chicago has been flirting with the idea of Spring, Ultra Sporters had fresh snow up to their waists at points! Whoa baby! Sometimes stranded, frequently pushing/carrying their bikes, it’s taken them a lot longer than previous years to reach the finish line, but they started rolling in on Saturday and are continuing to roll, ski, and walk themselves into the finish line even as this guy is just getting going…
As far as the dog Iditarod goes, I’m of course rooting for Martin Buser, who named his son after a checkpoint (and we named our cat after his son). But your actual Monday endorsement is still to come. I just wanted to post this picture.
They also say, “oh my god, can you give us a break with that camera???”
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