Monumental project

With the wedding coming up in (fingers crossed) October, and being smack dab in the middle of a class in ethics and ethical leadership, I've given myself a project:

Make our wedding as ethically responsible as possible.

What does this include? Using locally-produced products to enrich and sustain the community. Being as green as possible to limit our effect on the planet. Donating percentages of our registries to charity. Trying to find as many ways to have the money we spend on the wedding go towards helping others.

I've gotten a ton of really helpful ideas from folks, and am always looking for more. I'll update my blog with the various ideas I'm working with and let you know the progress.

If you're reading this blog...do you have any ideas?

The Life You Can Save

I'm reading this book as part of my Ethical Leadership class in my graduate program.
It's is inspiring, motivating, and chilling.

From the author's website:

The Idea

If we could easily save the life of a child, we would. For example, if we saw a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond, and all we had to do to save the child was wade into the pond, and pull him out, we would do so. The fact that we would get wet, or ruin a good pair of shoes, doesn’t really count when it comes to saving a child’s life.

UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 27,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes. Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary.  (You are not sure if you are in that category? When did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available for nothing? If the answer is “within the past week” then you are spending money on luxuries while children die from malnutrition or diseases that we know how to prevent or cure.)

The Life You Can Save – both the book and this website – seek to change this. If everyone who can afford to contribute to reducing extreme poverty were to give a modest proportion of their income to effective organizations fighting extreme poverty, the problem could be solved. It wouldn’t take a huge sacrifice.

But first we need to change the culture of giving.

Research has shown that people are more likely to give if they know that others are giving.  So we need to be upfront about our giving.  The Life You Can Save - the book – asks readers to come to this website to pledge that they will meet a standard set out in the last chapter – the standard you can find on the pledge page on this website. Will you take the pledge, and thereby encourage others to do the same?

For more details, and sources for the claims made here, please see The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty.

Merry Christmas, happy (belated) Chanukah, and happy New Year

Have a wonderful holiday, everyone. Here are a few photos from our home this season:

We tried our best to incorporate Chanukah into our home

Our friend the dinosaur who lives in the kitchen

The next best thing to a real fireplace

Someone took a ride on the Santa Express last night!

Planning and Henry

It's holiday season, so this weekend we welcomed our newest member of the family. Meet Henry:

He's a great tree and adds so much to our home. We try to return the favor by keeping him hydrated and well-lit (with LED lights, of course!). :)

In the midst of the holidays (how is it two weeks away???) we're also welcoming some guests from Peoria this weekend: Mike's friends Jeff, Monica, Jim, Michelle, Tim, and Stephanie. We have a hot date under the guise of an engagement celebration, although it's really just an excuse to eat at The Publican again (omg).

We've started taking baby steps towards planning the wedding. Our first task was to create a budget - and then throw it away. How can something that seems so simple and non-extravagant COST SO MUCH??? We haven't completely discarded our budget, and we padded it quite a bit as a best-case-scenario wouldn't-it-be-great-if budget to start from, but we will obviously need to pare it down quite a bit.

Much of where we hope to save is on trying to DIY as much as possible. We're still not sure what that means, but we've got time to research. I'm starting to check some books out of the library for help (which also helps keep our costs down) and, so far, this one is chock full of information:

I'm still on the lookout for more environmentally-conscious resources, as I feel we should minimize our impact from this event as much as possible. Stay tuned!

Another excuse

OK, ok...I know I said I'd post more, and god knows I don't think anyone still reads this thing since I've been so lame about posting, but I really do have a good excuse this time:


I've also been requested by my fiance (hee) to get back to blogging. So be prepared for annoying wedding-planning posts for the next year!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sick autumn movie weekend

This weekend I was fighting the beginning of a cold (or was it fatigue from the stresses of the week?) so we stayed in Friday and Saturday nights. We turned them into movie nights since we hadn't had time to see much lately.

Friday we watched "Let the Right One In".


Holy smokes. So good. Need to read the book as it explains so much more that they weren't able to work into the film.

Saturday night VH1 showed "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" completely commercial-free, so we took it off our Netflix queue and tuned in.

It was very different from what I imagined. For the longest time I thought it was a mockumentary in the vein of "This is Spinal Tap", particularly when I read that someone named Robb Reiner was involved. Robb Reiner is not "Meathead" but the drummer for the band that did actually exist and had minor success in the 80s. It's a heartbreaking and lovely story about perseverance and unfulfilled dreams.

No matter how much you piss me off, New York, I will always, always love you.

Sorry

I've been a little lax. A couple of months ago I discovered there was a connection between Blogger and Picasa...solely due to having deleted all photos from my Picasa account to clear up some space and having them disappear from my blog. At what point did they tell us that when you link to photos on Blogger they are hosted on Picasa? Needless to say, upon discovering that all of my blogged photos were now no longer appearing, I hid for a while. I'll try to get back into blogging, however I've found it much easier to just upload photos to Facebook. If you're a friend, check out my recent adventures there. Otherwise, I'll try to get this going again sometime soon...

Starved Rock

Yesterday we went to Starved Rock State Park in Utica, Illinois. It's located along the Illinois River and legend has it that the rock derives its name from when a band of Illini was trapped in the 1760s on the rock by a band of Potawatomi trying to avenge the death of the Ottawa Chief Pontiac. The Illini then scrambled to the top of the rock, where the Ottawa and allied Potawatomi laid siege until the Illiniwek starved to death.

Anyhoo - it was HOT yesterday, there were tons of people, and the area doesn't seem to have recovered from recent flooding so it was ridiculously muddy (we should've taken photos of our muddy feet just from trying to get in and out of the parking lot).

It was good fun, complete with a couple of beers at the Starved Rock Lodge (think the Overlook from the Shining). We followed it up with a jaunt into town where we found ourselves amongst - in this order - hordes of bikers, a couple of wineries, and finally the most amazing Cajun restaurant either of us have ever been to. It's called the Cajun Connection, and it's run by Cajun Ron McFarlain who's a displaced Louisianan and travels regularly back down to Cajun Country to get all sorts of goods like gator, catfish, "bubba" shrimp, crawfish, etc. Ron's an awesome host and chef, and when I asked if he'd ever been contacted by Diner's, Drive-in's and Dives he said, "I don't need the extra business!". That's how good this place is. Oh, and don't even get me started on the pecan pie - best I've ever had. And you don't even notice the tabasco sauce in it.

My boyfriend

Feeds me well.

Ducks

We had some visitors to the neighborhood today. We hope they find their way back to the river unscathed.

Summer?

Today it's supposed to hit 80 degrees and I'm not sure what to do with that information. We've been bludgeoned by winter for so long (5 months?) that the thought of not wearing a jacket, at the very least, makes me feel naked.
Whatever, I'm sure I'll get over it, and I'm certainly not complaining! I just wish there had been a spring to help us get here. Ah well, better than more winter!
Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy Earth Day!

Sometimes it's hard to choose greening over convenience - we're all a little guilty of that - but just for one day, TRY to do one green thing. A couple (of many) ideas:

• Do not take any cabs…only walk or take public transportation.
• Make sure that the lights are out in any room you're not in.
• Choose things that have little or no packaging.
• Take a shorter shower.

It only takes one of these efforts to make a difference. And if you try it for one day, you may just see how easy it is to do and continue the process.

Happy Earth Day!

Another great day

esterday was divine. It hit 73 degrees and was even muggy at times ( I know, I won't be celebrating that fact in another month or so). We took full advantage of the weather and the city and went exploring.
We started out downtown (my office building, actually) and walked from there up Michigan, across the Chicago River and wound up at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, where I will be taking Italian classes starting on Monday.
From there we walked across Grand, stopped in the Bloomingdale's Home store, and bought a Cuisinart blender/food processor (spurned by a hummus fiasco earlier in the week).
Magic Mike then proceeded to carry said blender/food processor as we walked up Wells, through Old Town to Lincoln, and up Lincoln to Roscoe where Mike took a rest in a Starbucks while I got a much-needed haircut at Sine Qua Non Salon.
45 minutes later I picked up Mike (and blender) and we walked further up Lincoln, past Grace, to Deadwax Records. Yesterday was national 'Record Store Day', so we thought it our duty to pay our local one a visit. It's been ages since I've been in an independent record store, and I forgot how addictive it is once you start searching for records and CDs.
While we don't have a record player (although we entered Deadwax's raffle for one!) we still wound up taking home two records:

We bid Deadwax adieu and continued our walk up Lincoln to home. Dropped off our Cuisinart (please god let it work), changed our shoes, and then rode the bus up Damen to Foster. Walked Foster to Clark, noticed the crepe shop that Brindha and Gary had taken us to when we first came out to visit a couple years ago, and then hoofed it over to the Hopleaf Bar.
Now.
If you've never been to Hopleaf, it's pretty phenomenal. It's ALWAYS busy, even though the bar doesn't open until 3:00 and the restaurant doesn't open until 5:00. So the plan is to get there at 3-ish, have some cocktails, and then at 4:45 start elbowing your way to the front of the line to get seated at 5:00.
Instead we got there around 4:00, had a couple of cocktails, then decided not to buy into the "elbowing" aspect (that's so New York) and just have faith that there were plenty of tables to go around and we would get seated in fine time.
At the bar - Michael started with a Kwak, served in a nifty glass contraption:

Yum! I opted for a subdued glass of Steven Test Sauvignon Blanc (2006).
Next Michael tried a Tripel Karmeliet, which was good as well, but no Kwak.
I had another Sauvignon Blanc (not a good idea to be too adventurous with wine in one afternoon and on an empty stomach).
Still at the bar, Mike next tried a Verhaeghe. Antoher yummy one, but Kwak was the definite winner. I still worked on my second glass of vino.
We were seated!
Another glass of wine (ugh today) and we split an order of mussels in coconut-curry (w/ginger, sweet potatoes, jalapeno & Kafir lime leaves) with frites and aioli.
We also decided to order two sandwiches for our main dishes so we could split them. Michael got the Duck Reuben on marble rye (Pekin duck breast, slow-roasted, with cranberry cream cheese spread, house made sauerkraut, emmenthaler, and more pomme frites). I ordered the Toasted Nueske Ham on pumpernickel, gruyere cheese & apple-tarragon coleslaw, and - oh boy - more pomme frites.
Dude.
Good.
Stuffed, drunk, and frited out, we finally left and decided to walk it home. It was still light out and warm (but not so muggy!) and it was a lovely, meandering, giggly walk home.
Burped and sighed on the couch for a while, then decided to calculate exactly how much walking we did. Just under 10 miles.
Fast asleep at 9:30.
It was a good day. :)

Earth Hour

So it's been a while! Sorry, not much post-worthy going on, but I thought this was worth writing about:

Tonight, please turn your lights off from 8:30 - 9:30pm for Earth Hour:

"This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard."

Hanky

6 months

Tomorrow it will be 6 months since we loaded all of our stuff up into a trailer and drove from NYC to Chicago. It's been an amazing 6 months, and there's never been a minute where I've regretted our decision to come here. I look forward to many, many more months and years in this wonderful city with my wonderful partner in crime.

Above is a photo from last night in the Hancock Building's Signature Lounge. We met up with Mike's friend Kristen from college and her friends and had an awesome time. And FYI - the view from the ladies room is even better.

Long overdue post

I meant to post these weeks ago, but life is busy! In honor of the winter storm that's hit the East Coast (and which I narrowly avoided by flying out yesterday) here are photos from an abnormal 60-degree Chicago Saturday in February...

Our home

Our hood

Our buddy Riley who's been absent from his window during the freezing weather

For all the melting snow

In a storefront in Roscoe Village

the Chicago River

Downtown Chicago on the way to Kuma's Corner

Puddles, not poo

The line begins outside Kuma

We got there just in time - the line quickly grew.

Checking out the menu

Inside Kuma's

Mmmmm...

Yes indeed (in case you can't read it, the sign says "AXEHANDLE: 10 oz burger piled on top of waffle fries with housemade Sausage gravy, fried egg and housemade biscuits)

One of my favorite shirts

The Kuma Burger

Neurosis

The line outside Hot Doug's, on our way back to Lincoln Square

Lincoln Square

Outside the Chopping Block, before our "Knife Skills" class

The fruits of our labor