Anniversary weekend in Chicago

September 16, 2007 by alex

Karen and I had our first anniversary last weekend (I know you’ve all got 9/9 all up in your file-o-faxes) and we decided for no particular reason that it would be fun to head out to Chicago for the weekend. She’d been there before but it was my first time, which is interesting as I have, in the past, said that apart from Brooklyn, its on the list of cities in which I’d like to live. Now I’d get to see if I guessed right (Seattle was on that list too, btw).

Our flight was supposed to leave at 4:30 and we didn’t end up leaving until about 8. Ugh.

While we were waiting, Karen and I grabbed some Sopressata and Provolone and some pretzel chips and made this delicious concoction.

Check out how awesome, and well-packaged, these little snacks for kids are. The first of many examples of good design we saw throughout the course of the weekend. (I briefly considered making a meal out of 4 of them.)

TOAD: Sept. 7, 2007: Even though we got our food on, look at how sad JetBlue is making Karen.

Every hotel should have a stereo with an iPod cable/in.While we’re on the topic, the same rule applies to cars.

Having a river that runs through your city as well as a beach is awesome.

I highly recommend grabbing a meal at a farmer’s market when you’re in an unfamiliar city. We grabbed sandwiches, smoothies, peaches and pasta salad and briefly plopped ourselves near a pond but were assaulted by the most gregarious bunch of mosquitoes I’ve ever been around so we moved.

A great example of urban usability. Makes a whole lot of sense, no?

Asked a woman in a shop about where to go and she drew this for us. The suggestion ended up being great, though I don’t remember even seeing the Hos she promised on Lincoln.

We ended up at the Nau store which is an interesting mix of sustainable apparel, kiosk design and interactive work. Check out a few more photos here. Quick writeup on the experience to come tomorrow.

I just really like this photo.

More usability! I’ll admit it, I’ve spent some time in J. Crews in my day and this is the first time I saw this sort of thing. Neat.

Who goes to Chicago and buys sneakers? Me. And I love them.

TOAD: Sept 8th, 2007: After a day where we must have walked 10 miles, we were treated with a really great Dusk, a consistently great time of day for photos.

For the gangster in your life with a sweet tooth.

We managed to get tickets to a show at Second City (SNL farm system) that was two sets of sketch comedy and 1 encore set of straight up improv. I’ve always been a bit wary of improv as its something that’s really hard to do well but I was definitely impressed. We were in the front row and almost made it all the way through without getting picked on but naturally our luck would eventually run out…

They asked us our names and how we met - “at grad school”, what we studied - “computers”. They also asked me what Karen likes to do - “run” and her what I like to do - “play video games” (Thanks, Karen!), amongst a few other things. Anyway, using those pieces of information as their ammo, they went through a whole skit about us. By the time they were done it was 1:30 am (officially our anniversary) and the mocking felt more appropriate.

In case you were wondering, world renound funny man, Ice Cube has been through Second City long enough to do this. Weird.

For the uninitiated, this is a scotch egg. Its a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in sausage, deep fried (briefly) and then finished up in the oven. Oh, its also phenomenal.

The rest of our breakfast can be summed up in two words: too much.

TOAD: Sept. 9, 2007: On Sunday we went for an architecture tour on a boat in the river and got a lesson on some of the history and architecture of Chicago. The corn cob/Wilco buildings are a big hit with the kids.

After the tour we walked over to Millennium Park and checked out this and the Bean. While we liked this one, Karen and I couldn’t help but feel that they could do something more - maybe have the videos “react” to the behavior going on around them rather than just be canned video?

We got home without any delays and were met at the airport by my mom and sash.

Now that I go through all these photos and see how much we were able to pack into less than 48 hours, I think that was without a doubt the most I’ve ever made of a short time in a new place. It was a great weekend capping of a great first year of being married.

PS: As for whether Chicago lived up to expectations, it totally did. It had many of the things that I love about NYC - very walkable, good public transport, lots going on, good sports town - along with some things we don’t have - a river and a beach.

Tags: alex, humor, karen, take one a day

Posted in Events, Projects, Travel