chicago: the lazy wrap-up blog post

Yeah, I never got around to telling the rest of my Chicago stories, then this weekend I went to Oregon and now I'm just totally behind. So here, I'm finishing off Chicago with one big post.


On Saturday we went to the Field Museum. They've got a real big dinosaur there.


A highlight of the visit: Chicago's Fluevog store isn't far from Grrrbear's house. It's in an old movie theater. I bought boots. They needed stretching (the guy almost pulled me off the chair getting the left boot off my foot) so I'm actually receiving them tomorrow - Grrrbear picked them up last week and shipped them to my office.


Clockwise from top left: Grrbear's girlfriend, Grrrbear, me.

Saturday night I went to former colleague S.Ball's wedding, the reason for my trip to Chicago. It was in a former billboard factory that now houses some guy's collection of sports cars. The guy also rents it out for events. The ceremony was on the top level, where they painted the billboards (so it had really high ceilings and natural light). Like how I cleverly made this photograph anonymous by shaking the camera? Totally on purpose. Nothing at all to do with the low light.


I wore my awesomest pair of shoes. In fact, I planned everything else I wore around the shoes. The other shoes in this picture belong to two very excellent people from my former employer.

I maxed out on wedding partying at about 11:30 and caught a cab back to Grrrbear's. I got in a little before midnight and was like, hey, sweet, I'm in time for Weekend Update! Stupid central time. Saturday Night Live was just ending.

And that is all. It was a quick trip but good fun.

today in feet

Grrrbear's in town! Woo! So it's time for blogcon '08 feet pictures! Today he and I met Spice at the train station and set off to see the sights. We were blessed? anointed? with the tail end of tropical storm Hanna, which was frankly pretty anemic. Well, I mean, I got wet, but I've been wetter.

Because there was a ton of rain, nobody was crazy enough to stand in line outside the Archives, so we pretty much marched right in and looked at the Constitution and whatnot. If you follow Spice's blog, you know she's got a foot injury and a boot. Here's how she protects it (she'd just re-wrapped it before venturing out of the Archives into a pretty major downpour):


That's Spice on the left, me at the bottom, and Grrrbear at right. He's wearing a pair of my flip-flops because of the rain. (And because I have huge feet.) I went for tevas and a skirt, which turned out to be a good combination. I don't think jeans would have dried out all day.

After the Archives we went to the Natural History Museum, the Jim Henson exhibit which is AWESOME but doesn't allow photographs - sad - and then the Air and Space Museum. Here's some kind of seal at the Air & Space:


While Grrrbear read the displays that go with the Wright Brothers' plane, Spice and I sat and compared feet (by now she was just leaving the plastic bag on the boot inside the museums, too):


And then we took perhaps the best foot picture of them all, in a metro station! Check out those snazzy red tiles!


It had stopped raining, so Spice didn't need her plastic bag anymore. Ah, what a fine day of sightseeing. With our feet!

christmas blogcon

Tall L posted the blogcon picture of Tall L, me, Alsho, and Spice from Friday night's show! Yay blogcon photo!

blogcon on the way

Very exciting: Friday night's performance is going to be a blogcon '07 show! Spice and Tall L, who have never met, are both going to be in the audience! Woo!! Also there: Alsho, J.Chu (not a blogger, but frequently mentioned in this space, although I don't think she even reads it), and assorted other good people. Expect a foot picture, if not in this space (I don't carry a camera - not very Elizabethan), then in this space.

Also exciting for me: All these people are sitting in the orchestra section, so I even have a fighting chance of being able to find them from the stage! If I memorize their seat locations and look really, really hard during the audience sings!

blogcon (with baby)

Clockwise from the red crocs: Me, Sophist, HT (only contributing one foot), Spice, Baby Miss, Miss Shirley, Alsho. Featuring my shiny bamboo floors. Everyone contributed delicious food and tales of academia, and a good time was had by all. Well, I had fun, anyway. I suppose everyone else could've been faking. It was superawesome to meet Sophist in person, and to convene all these cool people under one roof.

blogger

If it weren't for the fact that our blogcon pictures are of feet, and also do not include faces, I would request that we all buy this t-shirt and wear it when we meet up. I kind of want one anyway.

I'm dumb

The scene: Dearborn, Michigan. After lunch. I'm walking off with my dad, having just been dropped off by J.Vo and A.Vo. Suddenly, I remember something.
Me: [running back] Wait! Wait! We have to take a feet picture!
J.Vo: Even though there's just two of us?
Me: Yeah, even though you're not a blogger and it's just two of us.
J.Vo: I'm a blogger.
Me: What? Where? [panicked - does J.Vo have a blog and I don't read it?]
J.Vo: You read it and leave comments all the time!!
Me: Oh! I- wait. Oh!

Seriously. The best I can come up with is that, in my brain, the actual person of J.Vo and the blog of J.Vo are somehow separate entities. And while part of my brain realized that a foot picture was required, the other part had no idea what we were doing. Maybe it's early dementia. Sigh. Also, see that stain? I need new sneakers in a big way.

oh, crap!

Spice and I hung out today and I totally forgot to take a shoe picture! Dangit! Oh well, next time.

Now that we're practically neighbors, this hanging out thing is likely to happen more often. Anyway, she came up, she hung out with...uh...dra-sh?, then they came over and had ice cream with me. It was good times. Except for the unforgivable omission of the foot picture. SIGH.

ali t and the po

The Po is in town, the Po is in town! Or she was. Now she's gone. But I managed to have both breakfast and dinner yesterday with her and Ali T at Ali T's excessively cute and relaxing house, which is about a mile and a half from my excessively cute and bright apartment. The original plan was to have breakfast, then I'd go throw Miss Shirley a baby shower and they'd go to the zoo, then we'd see about maybe doing some Norwegian folk dance in the evening.

Instead, the evening felt more like this:

(J.Po, inert on the floor; me, taking the picture. I bet this picture would be a huge crowd-pleaser at flickr.) After dinner, we watched excerpts of the Christmas show (the Scandinavian year), then ate blueberry sorbet and played with the stuffed animals J.Po and Ali T had just bought. It was very relaxing. Anyone looking for a relaxing place to hang out, I highly recommend Chez Ali T.

Second topic of discussion: A.Tho needs a nickname, and we all think A.Tho is boring. So, how about Ali T? It's like Ali G, only with a T and not an idiot. Post other suggestions in the comments.

loon shoes

Since Grrrbear's loon shoes didn't make it into the blogcon '07 picture, here they are! He helpfully took out the Minnesota-shaped insole to show us all. They're really pretty cute, if "cute" is a word I'm allowed to use for man shoes.

blogcon '07

Unfortunately, Grrrbear could not be pictured in his loon shoes, because he didn't break them out until after the parents of small children retired for the evening. But here we all are:


From bottom, clockwise: me (Brazilian flip-flops), Glacierdad (sensible tennies), Spice (supercute...are those Chacos?), J.Po (our class gift, with the name of OAM on the straps), J.Vo (nekkidfeet), Grrrbear (man sandals).

See all the other blogcon photos here.

bloggy

Yes, that's right: it's a picture from the blogcon '06 series. From top left, clockwise: no-longer-blogger H.Bro, a-post-a-day IBYB, dormant blogger Miss Shirley, me, and claims-she-has-nothing-to-blog-about G-Dog.

We all had dinner tonight before our respective rehearsals. And yes, we do all live in the same general area, but Miss Shirley and G-Dog had never met H.Bro.

I wonder what the people in the restaurant thought of us all standing in a circle taking pictures of our feet?

coast

From top left, clockwise: J.Po, who is going through a non-blogging patch, Jiggity, and moi. I have work here Monday and Tuesday, so I flew out Friday and am spending the weekend chilling with the Po and the Jig. [See past blogger feet pictures here and here.]

Today, after a french-toast-n-bacon brunch that couldn't be beat, we hopped in the rental car and headed over the hills to Santa Cruz - first a wine tasting here, at which we were videorecorded for a show on Discovery about organic and "biodynamic" wines, whatever that is. Much more excitingly, we tasted their raspberry dessert wine, "Framboise," which is served in dark chocolate cups. Mmmmmm.

We packed in a lot of action after the winery - a visit to a eucalyptus grove where monarch butterflies have just started arriving to spend the winter, a wander along the boardwalk, a stop to say hello to the sea lions, a seafood dinner, some cookies, and a new pair of shoes for me (dangerous shoe impulse buy! but they were so cute! and on sale! and sooo cuuuute!).

It made me feel like a good guest, because I was actually able to plan a day o' fun instead of just being like, hi, I'm here, entertain me! Also, I don't think I've gotten anybody sick this time. All this perhaps makes up for the fact that I underestimated the time it would take to get home and almost made Jiggity late for his hockey game. Oops.

obligatory feet picture

Continuing the tradition of blog feet pictures, check out Grrrbear and me at a subway station. (Yeah, I know, they don't call it the subway there. Whatever.)


As you know, I take a lot of pictures of my feet. Because they're there, and they're often in totally cute brazilian flipflops, and because electrons are (unlike film) free. Well, of the top 10 most viewed pictures in my flickr account, eight are pictures of my feet. Yeah. One of them passed the 200-view mark today. The people on flickr? A bunch of pervs. Pictures 8 and 9 in my top 10 are pictures of the baby panda, but they'll probably be knocked off by feet pictures eventually.

To see more pictures of my incredibly hot feet, surf on over to: www.flickr.com/photos/hey-myfirstname/

blogcon 06

Clockwise, from left: Miss Shirley, J.Bro, Spice, OleNelson, and me after a bloggy brunch. We had trouble remembering to call each other by our real names.