Visit from the 'rents

Sorry it's been a few days since our last post. We have been busy with a visit from Brian's parents that was packed with all sorts of fun activities...

Friday night: Dinner at Mercat a la Planxa...tapas style, which if you know Brian and I you know is not our style. It was different than expected and a little pricey, but the food was excellent. We left there to walk over to Buckingham Fountain to see the nightly fountain and light show set to music. While the fountain is quite beautiful during the day, the show was a little disappointing. Attending "No Country for Old White Men" at Second City Comedy though more than made up for the fountain....we all would highly recommend 2nd City if you are ever in Chicago. The improve comedy was hysterical...I'm pretty sure Matt had tears in his eyes from laughing!

Saturday: We all went on the Chicago Architectural Tour via boat on the river...a very cool way to see downtown and learn some history about many of the buildings. Following that (and after seeing the Sears Tower from the water) we went up to the Sears Tower Skydeck. I was a little bummed that it wasn't outside...guess I was expecting it to be more like the Empire State Bldg. The views were amazing...and we could see our apartment bldg! After a brief rest, we headed to the Chicago Chophouse for dinner. This is supposedly one of the oldest steakhouses in Chicago. The food was great and the pictures of Chicago back-when (with several of Al Capone, etc) made for some fun viewing. Drinks after dinner were had at Celtic Crossings...a very low-key and probably as authentic as you can get in the US Irish Pub.

Sunday: Brian and I had a blast running errands while Sharon and Matt took in Jersey Boys (does anyone else find it comical that they came from Jersey to Chicago to see Jersey Boys?) After the show we met up for pizza at Giordano's...okay, but I'm thinking I'm more of a Lou Malnati's fan. There's just something about the sauce!

Monday: Ugh..back to work. But yet another fab dinner at the Berghoff...another old Chicago restaurant with phenomenal German food. (I'm really thinking of changing my profession to that of a food critic). And then...we all had to say good-bye:( That is never fun, but we really had a great weekend and some good quality time...thanks for being our first Chicago visitors!

We are now having a boring week...no sightseeing during the week, just work and rest. Please tune in at the end of the long weekend for what I'm sure will be a fantastic post on our adventure at the Phillies/Cubs game this Saturday...Brian may even write that one! Please keep me in your prayers that he does not get me beat up by Cubs fans with all his rooting for the Phillies!

Our First Dog's!

Air and Water Show

We went to the Air and Water show on Saturday...it was insanely crowded. We got there at 9:00am and thought it was tough to find a spot. The water show was lame...nothing more than a few skiers and jet skis not even doing cool tricks. The air show was awesome...very cool (and loud) jets, some bi-planes doing lots of aerial stunts, and of course the finale of the Blue Angels. They were impressive.

Today we went out for our first Chicago dogs at Superdawgs. The dog itself was incredible...great quality dog, but the total package had nothing on Ann's Footlongs in Glen Burnie. My palate was still craving the chili and cheese!

This afternoon we went on the Untouchables bus tour of Chicago. We saw a lot of the neighborhoods while being told some good mob stories and shown places/areas where Al Capone, Bugs Moron, etc lived, did business, killed, died...it was pretty entertaining.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Mid-week Eats

Ate at a restaurant called Opera Tuesday night...it was fantastic! Prix fixe menu including appetizer, entree, and dessert for $29. Can't beat that here. Plus, they have tables in little cubbie-holes that are totally private and candlelit...ooh-la-la!

Lucky Brian...the owners of the place we are staying in left a grill on our balcony. He used it for the first time tonight. Here is a pic of him grilling with Lake Michigan in the background!

Oh, and went to see The Dark Knight last night. It was amazing. We can definitely see why there is Oscar buzz surrounding Heath Ledger's performance...one of the best "psycho" performances we have ever seen. He really made the movie.

Our Crazy Weekend!

Wow! So, this one was a doozy! Friday night was relatively uneventful...happy hour, dinner, watched the opening ceremonies...nothing too exciting. Saturday morning we looked online for events and found Market Days...sounded like a pretty good street festival with a lot of vendors and a new area to check out. It wasn't until we paid and walked through the gate that we realized it was primarily a gay and lesbian street festival (Brian really didn't want me sharing this with everyone!) You'd think there would have been a warning somewhere, but nope. We have certainly never seen so many men in speedos walking around and playing Twister at that! It was certainly an experience!

We spent the afternoon playing mini-golf in Grant Park. I won! We also walked around Millineum Park...checked out the gardens and sculptures. Our evening was full of more surprises as we ventured out to Wicker Park to go to a Morroccan restaurant...that ended up being closed, as they were on their annual vacation. How could they be on vacation? Didn't anyone let them know we were coming? So, we made the best of it and walked around to find another restaurant and actually ended up at a pretty cool bar, The Boundary, that I had found online. They at least had a lot of TV's to watch some of the Olympics together.

Today was spent at North Ave. Beach. It was incredibly windy and pretty chilly in the morning, but warmed up by the afternoon. And got more crowded than any beach I have ever been to. Brian enjoyed the water, but given the wind and prospect of freezing my tail end off after getting out of the water, I chose to stay on dry land!

1st Chicago Pics

Here are a few pics from our first days here. As I said, the deep dish was yum-o, as Brian can attest to here!

Getting to Chicago

Well, we left Baltimore at 5:45am last Wed morning to head to southern IN. The trip was uneventful, though Brian's Monte Carlo pulling our trailer full of stuff (yes, I got to bring ALL my shoes!) made it very difficult to get through the mountains of WV. Uphill we were maxing out at 45mph! Downhill was quite fun though!
We got to IN that night to spend a little time hanging out with the Trockmans. For those of you who don't know, Ben is a previous patient of mine...and of course the best patient ever (even when he doesn't listen to my nagging about doing his home program!) :) We got the grand tour of Evansville, IN Thurs after accompanying Ben to therapy. Oh, and did I mention that Jill made us help out in the pool and talk to TV reporters?? She never said we were going to have to earn our keep to stay with them!
We made it safely to Chicago on Friday evening and quickly unloaded...not much space for a trailer in the middle of downtown. So far we have been to the Lincoln Park Zoo and to see an outdoor movie in Grant Park (which was way more crowded than we expected). Our first real meal out was for deep dish pizza...Gino's East...yum-o! We have also experience our first tornado storm where the city warning sirens were going off. We had no clue what they were at first, but from the looks of things I was ready to take cover. Brian was standing at the door to our balcony and said, "I want to go out there," opened the door and crack and said, "I don't want to go out there!" The wind made it seem like it was going to suck you right out the door.
The place we are working is so far, so good. The people are really nice, though it's a little dreary...like KKI, but with even fewer windows! Sorry this has been so long, but it's taken a couple of days to get set up on here. Future posts should be shorter!