Taste the Rainbow

This week is the Taste of Chicago, so depending on how you feel about that, you are either hiding in your office or home, or you're out paying a boat load of money to eat out with a boat load of people.

Dave and I are in the latter category.

Actually, we didn't spend all that much this year. We got three sets of tickets for the two of us, which is only $24 total.

On Dave's menu (all tasting portions): Polish sausage from Bobak Sausage Company, Cajun meat balls (he can't remember where), pierogi from Kasia's Deli, Rainbow Cone, and a chocolate chip cookie from Harry Caray's Restaurant. (That last one was to use up two of our last three tickets.)

On my menu was a chipotle chicken sausage from Bobak Sausage Company, falafel and hummus from Taste newcomer Alhambra Palace, and a full-size original Rainbow Cone. Unbelievably, I've lived in Chicago my whole life and never had one, so I went to this Taste specifically looking forward to it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Rainbow Cone is layers of ice cream (chocolate, strawberry, Palmer House, pistachio, and orange sherbet) in a waffle cone. It was delicious. The Palmer House ice cream was a little weird; vanilla with walnuts and cherries. Hey, can't be bad.

We got the heck out of there and took the express train home, in time for me to finish grading the practice bar exam essays I've got waiting for me at home tonight. Speaking of those...

Boss Bass, a.k.a. Big Bertha

Get ready for this one, folks.

When I was a kid playing Mario Bros. 3 on original NES, we were introduced to an enemy that looked like a Cheep-Cheep, but could (and did, repeatedly) swallow us whole. This beastie is called Boss Bass, or alternately, Big Bertha.


Now he is here in dish cloth form, ready to eat the scraps of food left on your plates and dishes.

This is another tapestry crochet pattern I designed based on the pixels from the game. Here is the crochet chart below:


The cloth is 32 wide, so you begin by chaining 33 (or casting on 32, if you are knitting). You need red, white, and black, but you could also do the border in black or the background in blue.

Just a warning, despite the fact that the design is only three colors, you are carrying a lot of threads at any given time, sometimes as many as 11 or 12. (Maybe I was doing something wrong, but that's how many I had at some points.) In case you were wondering what that looks like:


Like I said, it isn't pretty, but I managed. It's an intense relief every time you are able to cut one loose.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Fest

Well, it's summer, which means I'm going to be posting a lot more about events I do. It's time for the annual Long Grove Strawberry Fest, which means I'm going to tell you about all the delicious things I ate. Get ready.

This year, we attended with my old coworker Rosa and her husband Franco and little girl, Lina.


Yes, you're not seeing that wrong, she's actually wearing strawberry gear, at the Strawberry Fest.


She got TONS of comments. Very, very cute indeed.

So now for the eating list. We ate the fondue kabobs, of course, and Rosa got some strawberry lemonades. We also bought some small pies. Rosa got an apple pie, I got a strawberry apple pie. I also bought some chocolate-covered strawberries and a carton of small Michigan strawberries.

I think we showed some restraint by not buying the large pies. Can't wait for Apple Fest: keep it classy, Long Grove!

Mario Bros. question box

I've been on a bit of a crochet kick lately, learning how to do tapestry crochet where you change colors and carry the same color to the next row. I actually had started with this, the question box from Mario Bros. 3, but I didn't go back to it until after the Pac-Man and friends.

I liked that it had so few colors, but actually sometimes (especially in the upper part of the question mark) there were quite a few strands going at once. This is mostly cotton and is likely going to my friend Katie as a housewarming present.

I'll keep working on new designs and I'll be posting them soon!

Pac-Man dish cloths

I haven't posted any crochet patterns for a while, but all that is about to change. Why? Because I learned how to change colors within a row, i.e. tapestry or chart crochet, to make designs. And oh am I making designs.

Lots of people have posted charts online for Mario Bros. games and other early era Nintendo and arcade games, so I figured I'd add some to the group. Here's my first: Pac-Man and friends!

These are simple enough to do and create nice-looking dish cloths when you use cotton yarn. For each of these patterns, chain 29 and work in single crochet for each row according to the colors on the chart. You carry the colors over as you work rather than cutting them, so at any given point, you have 5-7 yarns attached to the piece.

I have Pac-Man and the four ghosts from the game. Pac-Man is yellow, the border is aqua, pink, orange, and red to represent his ghosts, and the background is black (made gray in the pixel chart below so you can still see the grid).


Each ghost has a yellow border with a black background (again, made gray so you can see the grid), and eyes are white and black. For this design, I left the ghost light gray because it is meant to work for every ghost color - aqua, pink, orange, and red.


These are really fun to make and have impressed everyone I've shown them to. Post a comment if you have any questions, and if you would like to learn more about how to change colors on tapestry crochet projects, click this link.

Wisonsin, Day 4

We weren't in Wisconsin much today, so I will keep this relatively short. The morning walk was foggy and beautiful at the Cameo Rose B&B:


Breakfast was delicious: fruit compote, a scone, eggs benedict, and a citrus sorbet. Mmm again!

Before we left, we got to see some of the local wildlife - a turkey! Awesome. We heard them gobbling and fighting in the forest, so that was pretty funny.


On our way out of town, we stopped at Candinas so Mom and I could buy a box of truffles each while the guys waited in the car. I love those truffles.

Then, after some debate as to the directions, we got to the Swiss Colony Outlet Store, where we picked up some cheese, sausages, and candies. Mom picked up a few bags of petits fours, and I was sorely tempted by some Yule logs. But then I realized that they must have been sitting there since Christmas, and I thought better of it.

Another great trip to Wisconsin, and this time we got to show around my parents, who I hope had a great time. It may have been a bit overwhelming at times, but weekends away in Wisconsin are all about weird crap, great food, and even greater beer. Until we meet again, my wonderful neighbor to the north!

Wisconsin, Day 3

Well, this was an interesting day to say the least. Our day included a stop at the artist colony at Paoli, New Glarus the town, New Glarus the brewery (of course), and the House on the Rock. Anyone who has been to any of these places knows what's coming next.

Of course, we had our first full breakfast at the B&B, which we didn't get yesterday because we left so early. She did make up small plates of fruit and muffins, but it wasn't as full as her usual four-course bonanza. Today we got a poached pear, a homemade cinnamon bun, an asparagus and bacon quiche, and a fruit and champagne frappe. Mmm.

Paoli was really cool. We didn't get to go last year, so I was really glad we got to see it this year. I got some cool glass earrings and bought my dad a photo of a dilapidated farm. (He's into that stuff.) One of the galleries had some awesome pottery, and I could have bought about half the stuff in the place, and that says a lot because I am not that into pottery.

New Glarus has some cute shops, too, and we went into a Swiss kitsch shop, an antique shop, a gift shop, and the town bakery (Dad got a rye). I was really happy we went to the antique shop because I got some emerald green cut-glass tumblers that are exactly like the kind my Grandma B had.

Of course, being in New Glarus, we stopped next at the brewery for some tastings and some beer to go. The beers I tried I've had before, including the Two Women lager, the special Golden Ale, and the Wisconsin Belgian Red, a cherry beer. Apparently they brewed the Golden Ale two years ago and they'll only do another special-to-the-brewery beer when they run out of this.

We bought a case of the Imperial Weizen, a case of the IIPA, and a mixed case of various favorites. Oh, and two bottles of Golden Ale, which apparently will be good for another three or four years and will mellow with time. It's still pretty hoppy, but it's really good. Dad picked up some beers, too: Spotted Cow and the Totally Naked lager.

All in all, an excellent visit!

Next, Dad wanted to visit the House on the Rock, which he'd heard about his whole life. We knew we were in for an interesting experience, given that the sculptures out front looked like this, at left. Also, when we went to the restroom, there were a mix of Japanese dolls, model air planes, and a Santa Claus scene.

Time to take the red pill.

The first part of the tour was a weird, shagged up 1960s house that had lots of Japanese sculptures, strange library books, wooden screens, and stained glass windows. Every now and then we'd see something that made us think, "WTF?" But that would all soon end.

This is the Infinity Room, an optical illusion in a jutting-out indoor deck thing.


Pretty cool! This was clearly the high point of the tour. Even after we left this part - again, just the "regular" house part - Dad joked with a staff member that the eccentric millionaire builder of The House on the Rock museums "had some problems." Oh, how little we knew.

The rest of the tour is a bit of a blur, to be honest. It was a sensory overload of ecclectic, unlabeled collections that kind of smelled like rat droppings. Here are some of the things we saw:

• 20-barreled hand guns
• Marionette troll puppets
• Colored glass vases
• Full-sized steam engines
• Kites
• Life-size replica of blue whale in battle with kraken
• Ben Franklin
• World's largest carousel
• At least three calliope rooms
• Model ships
• Murano paperweights in a fireplace bellows
  
• Burma Shave signs
• Car covered in ceramic tile
• Diorama of white guy choking black guy in barber chair
  
• Working dioramas of cemeteries
  

If you want to see some of this stuff, I uploaded more photos to my Shutterfly site. Otherwise, just look at this thing at right and that pretty much gives you an idea.

We were terrified that the place would close and we'd be stuck inside overnight. We also joked that they shouldn't charge admission to get in - they should let you in for free, and charge to show you where the exit is.

On the way out, we walked by the world's largest carousel, which has hundreds of chandeliers and many mythical animals. I didn't feel like a photo would do justice, so here's the video:

I panned around a bit to show off the various wall decorations, but it's kind of dark in there. There is a creepy exit to the next part of the tour, which we didn't do, and there are angels all over the wall and ceiling. Weird.

We finally escaped, and I kind of wanted to see what the gift shop was like, but I kind of didn't. Actually it was nothing weird, so I was mildly disappointed. But they had already taken enough of our money for admission, so I wasn't really concerned with giving them more.

But we weren't done with creepy shit for the day: on our way to dinner, we stopped in Mt. Horeb, apparently the "troll" capital of the world, which has many decorative troll figurines displayed in the downtown "Trollway."


Bleargh. Why didn't I take the blue pill today?

We had dinner at Deininger's in New Glarus, a place we've been meaning to visit for some time. We got Dad a steak for Father's Day, and we all had more New Glarus beer. We had a lot of laughs, mostly at the expense of The House on the Rock, and we cross our fingers not to have nightmares tonight.

Wisconsin, Day 2

Today was our Taliesin tour, the comprehensive tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's estate in Spring Green, Wisconsin. There is his school, the windmill he built for his sisters, his house, and his family church. Pretty cool stuff.

We got up early for the tour and headed over to the visitor's center. Dad was giggling with excitement even over the metal sculptures leading into the visitor's center!

The school was the tour we did last fall, so I will spare the details here - here's what I said last year. You can't take pictures inside, either, but it was a neat school and I always enjoy seeing the north light "forest" drafting studio.

On our way over to Taliesin, we saw the Romeo & Juliet wind mill that Wright built for his sisters, who ran the school before he turned it into an architecture school. It's a very cool structure that stayed up for about 100 years before they had to take it down and re-build it according to his original plans. The shorter part is Juliet, an octagonal shape that holds up Romeo. Romeo is a diamond-shaped prow that diverts the wind around Juliet. Kind of yin and yang, except each half supports the other.

Next up was the barn structure, where Wright and his students would milk cows and store produce. It is kind of falling apart and I didn't take many photos. But the real gem of the tour was after that: Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's personal home.


As you can predict, this place was pretty cool. Of course, no indoor pictures, but the walk up to the estate (house and landscape) was awesome.


I can definitely see why he chose to build his house here, in the Uplands of Wisconsin.

We got some refreshment and got to visit some of the guest rooms and lounges of the main floor. The main floor also had car ports and an amazing courtyard.


We learned that the structure burned twice, so this is actually the third structure (although it was basically the same as the other). What's funny is that the school also burned at least once. Were there a lot of oil fires before electricity, or what?

It was really cool to see the home, even though it does seem to be having trouble staying up these days (although not as much trouble as Fallingwater, which my dad calls "Falling Down."

We left after four hours of the walking tour. I was proud of all of our stamina on this hot day!


But it was time for some nice rewards: a wedge of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, which is located only a few miles south of Taliesin, and beers at Capital Brewing.

We had a tour there last year, which was so awesome we signed up for another one. The same tour guide was there again, actually: Marshall. We got to taste a few beers in the garden beforehand. I had the Kloster Weisen, Fest (a Helles beer) and the Door County Lager. The Fest and Weisen were awesome, but I don't think they were selling them in the gift shop.

Dave tried the Dark Lager, Unpredictable Pale Ale, and the Door County Lager. My dad really enjoyed the Supper Club, and he tried the Helles but it might have been a bit much for him. But we got an extra taste on the tour, when he poured a bit of the mostly fermented Fest beer straight from the fermenter.


My mom and I got to pick up some wonderful mustards at the National Mustard Museum while Dad and Dave finished up Mom's beer tokens. I got a Habanero pepper mustard, a beer mustard, and some spicy cashews.

And that was about it for the day - we did stop in Madison on the way home for dinner, ordering some delicious fare from The Old Fashioned again. This time I got a grilled cheese, but I think maybe I should have taken my law friend Mr. Glaser's advice and gotten the mac & cheese. Oh well, next time, I guess. And one of these years we'll get to the Dane County Farmers' Market, too.

Tomorrow's day is a lot less structured, because we don't have any advance tickets for anything, but New Glarus is on the agenda for sure. Better make room in the van...

Wisonsin, Day 1

We arrived safe in Wisconsin, and just in time for dinner at the Schoolhouse Cafe in Paoli.

We got some New Glarus beer and very fancy cuisine. My mom had fish, Dad had a steak, I don't remember what Dave got, and I got sausage ravioli that was green and white striped.

Must go to bed early, because we have a tour tomorrow at Frank Lloyd Wright's ancestral home at Taliesin!

Home repair Saturday

I know what you're thinking - that we were repairing our home - but no. We drove to Portage Park to help Andy and Jo prep their beautiful, quirky new bungalow for moving in this week!

Joanna had picked out a moss green for the big living room and a sea blue in the library. The house has a ton of rooms and actually three kitchens - multi-level residences for previous owners and tenants - so they're busy making the space into their own thing.

After a wonderful Mexican lunch, we walked to Portage Park proper to check out their new neighborhood.


While I was taking the photo of this squirrel, a guy walked by, stopped to look at me, and started making weird noises as if to scare the squirrel away during my photo. WTF?

After we got back to their house, we decided to do one more fix-it project before we left - taking down some of the god-awful awnings from the windows and doors.


We think these things have been there since the 1950s, which is approximately the last time they were cleaned. Removing them made the house look much nicer, but they didn't come off willingly.


That's Dave unscrewing the window awning while Jo holds it up on one side. Andy was climbing around on the windows like a wild thing, which was both amusing and terrifying to watch. Both large awnings came down, and we'll be back to remove more later. Home repair is what being an adult is all about.

Helping them with their home repair projects makes me want to finish up the ones we need to do for our place. I think we'll have tomorrow free, so maybe we can finish up our basement shelving project and put away some paperwork. But for tonight, I'm going to go crochet and watch "Lord of the Rings." Because that's also what being an adult is all about.

Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

This weekend was the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, which Dave and I have trained for (and fundraised for) for months. It was a very powerful experience and had mixed successes, so I'll share them all here, and you'll forgive me for being honest.

In the morning, we arrived just in time for the opening ceremonies next to Soldier Field, where we did some stretching and warming up. There we learned that the walkers had raise $6.1 million as of Friday night, which is awesome. My generous donors helped me reach my $1,800 goal, as did Dave's, and we felt honored to be a part of that large total.

There were pillars for all the walks that were happening around the country - pillars that travel to each city's walk - and I signed my name, along with the name of a very nice person that I knew who died of breast cancer. (All other people I know who've had breast cancer are survivors.)

The first few miles of the walk were easy, predictably - we walked up the lake shore from Soldier Field to Belmont. We were drinking plenty of water and skipped the first few rest stops, but definitely stopped at the Belmont one, where we had a few snacks and some Gatorade.


All the way up the lake shore, the line stretched as far as we could see in either direction. I still haven't gotten the final numbers on how many people participated, but it was in the thousands. It was really sad to see that people were walking in honor of someone they had lost - I saw quite a few that read, "For my beautiful sister." It was a great reminder of why we were doing the walk.

Along the way, there were hilarious breast puns ("The Breast Friends," "Tutus for Tatas," etc.) and really fun biker guys directing traffic for us at the intersections. The lake shore walk was easy, but the biker dudes really helped when we started to walk in more disjointed groups through the stop signs and lights of Chicago's neighborhoods.

From the beginning of the walk pretty much until the end of the walk, it felt like everybody was walking faster than us. I felt like we were doing a pretty good 3 mph clip for most of the walk, and I didn't see how others could keep up a quicker pace for the full marathon. But then again, I don't see how someone could run a marathon, either, but good for them.

From Belmont, we walked back down the west border of Lincoln Park, then through the Gold Coast for lunch at the same baseball field I played the Municipal vs. Law Division game at last summer. This was about mile 10. I wasn't able to eat much of lunch; I was starting to get a little nauseous from all the heat, and I've been having an aversion to meat lately, so Dave had to finish my turkey sandwich.

At lunch, we met a really nice girl, Maria, from Elgin, who was walking in place of her sister, who had the flu.

We walked with Maria down to the main Loop and over to the west Loop, where we had our halfway point break at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Here's a picture of us with Maria at Mile 13!

At this point, we could have caught a bus to the Wellness Village and finish line if we had wanted, but we decided to keep walking. Oh, my folly. But more on that later. Maria's shoes didn't fit right and given that she hadn't trained, she stopped at about mile 14 and I didn't see her again. I hope she went back for a bus.

It was still very hot at this point as we headed into UIC and Greek Town, and I heard it was 93 and that some walkers had already been hospitalized. In fact, I heard from my mom today that there was a half marathon run going on at the same time as our walk, and that a 30-something seasoned runner died in the heat. But we just kept hydrating and pouring on sun block, and kept walking.

From Greek Town we walked up through the Gold Coast again and up into Old Town, and somewhere around Mile 18 or so, it started to pour and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. We had umbrellas, but our feet were still getting soaked. I started to think that trouble was a-brewing.

Here's the photo of Mile 20, deep in the crappy weather section of the walk:


Just nasty. At this point, the wet socks and shoes started creating blisters in my feet, and my arms were hurting from straining against the umbrella and holding the huge tub of Gatorade. And miles 20 through the end (26.2) were the longest of the walk, predictably.

As I have posted about, Dave and I have been training for months, two days at around 20 miles. But we had never trained in heat this severe, and when it was raining this badly, we usually went indoors. So I guess we weren't fully prepared.

Here's where my brutal honesty comes in. I was in the most pain I've ever felt in my life. My knees were creaking, feet and hands were swollen, thighs ached, arms hurt, back hurt, and the bottoms of my feet were burning with blisters. Oh, and I had heat rash. I am a wimp. Dave is better with working through long-lasting workout pain than I am, being a distance runner, but man oh man.

These are all problems that most of the other walkers were experiencing, too (including Dave), but I say all this with the qualification that I am a wimp. As I get older, I am simply unwilling to put myself through much physical discomfort whatsoever.

The weather was clearing up as we made it back into Lincoln Park again, walked through DePaul, then up into Wrigleyville and past the stadium, then up into the Southport corridor and north toward Horner Park, the finish line in the Irving Park area.

So, from all the heat earlier, and also probably a lack of eating enough, I was starting to feel a little loopy. To be honest, I don't remember some of it. I know I was saying over and over, "No, no, no..." and "Stop, we have to stop" and "This was the worst idea I've ever had." I was pretty much crying from mile 23 until the end of the walk. I think this was when Dave and I began to have some doubts about whether I'd be able to stay overnight and do today's half-marathon.

We made it to the finish line, I'm proud to say. We were behind this really annoying group of yellow shirted people, who were shouting insults at each other. I might have thought it was funny earlier in the race, but at this point I was barely keeping it together.

Here we are at the finish line!


I had collected quite a few pink Mardi Gras beads along the way, and still no sun burn, but I was pretty messed up. In the end, we did 12 hours of walking - from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. - with some breaks along the way. Wow.

When I limped over to the assembly tent, Dave got our stuff and I scoped out my feet. I was covered in blisters, some skin had already come off, and my calves and feet were covered in heat rash. I was walking like an old lady and I knew that my body was telling me to stop - sleeping in a tent and walking a half marathon the following day would be a very bad idea for my physical and mental health. I knew that none of my sponsors would want me to endanger my health, and that I had already completed a full marathon in the first day, so I decided to quit.

Faron was our savior, coming down and taking us to Soldier Field, where our car was parked for an allegedly overnight stay. We chatted on the way, where she called our walk "The Bataan Death March for Cancer," which I thought was hilarious, because along the last five miles of the walk, Dave and I had compared the walk to "The Long Walk," by Stephen King, the Trail of Tears, and others.

So, we went home. I did the first full day, a marathon, but went home in quasi-defeat. But I don't really think it can be called a defeat if we both raised $1,800 for breast cancer research and patient support! Many women, most of which do not have health insurance, will receive mammograms as a result of this weekend's walk, and we all know that early detection greatly helps the patient's prognosis.

In the end, I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I had such a great walking buddy. Dave was there for me in all ways, and I was happy to be raising money and awareness for such a good cause. On the flip side, walking that many miles was a heavy challenge for me, and I don't think I'll ever try to do that again. I want to support people who do, because I see how nice it was to have cheering stations along the way. But honestly, walking a marathon is really hard, and I can't imagine how someone would run one. I have the utmost respect for anyone who is able to!

So that's about it; I'm recuperating today and I'll hobble into work tomorrow. My feet are all bandaged up and I'm walking less like an old lady now. Good job, Avon Walkers, and next year I will be out there with buckets of ice for you at mile 17!!

Event eve!

Time for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer - thanks to our generous donors (and some above-and-beyond fundraising by my mom and her coworkers), Dave and I are walking with thousands of other people to help end breast cancer and to support breast cancer patients!

As promised, I'll raffle off that Amazon Kindle on Sunday night - I need to get to bed early tonight, and it took us a while to get through final event registration tonight at the Rosemont Hyatt Regency - but I want to say thank you again to all my donors. It has been a really wonderful, feel-good experience, and I can't wait to participate tomorrow.