Parading Around Chicago

Last Friday the Pandemonium Fam piled into the truck and drove up to Chicago to meet our friends Gene and Terry (in town for a conference) and to see the Holiday Parade. Our hotel was right downtown, so we went for a little stroll down Michigan Avenue before supper. The holiday decorations are in full bloom, lots of people hustling to and fro, street musicians, mounted police, and lots and lots of shopping!

Andrea claimed that it's no fun to shop when nothing fits, so the only place we stopped was the Lego Store. Then to supper. Terry's favorite place to eat, a little hole in the wall called the Redfish Lounge, was just around the corner so we agreed to try it out. Fantastic! If you like Cajun, mosey over to the corner of State and Kinzie and check it out. Andrea had the Shrimp Brochette, I had Jambalaya, Terry had the Blackened Redfish, I don't remember what Gene had. Shrimp for Kenrick and Fish and Chips for Anthony. All excellent. (And it's really not a hole in the wall, Terry just made it sound that way.)

Saturday morning we got up (relatively) early and made our way down to State Street, but alas, no parade! After standing on the street corner scratching our heads for a while we found out that the parade had actually taken place on Thursday morning. Gene and Terry had seen it in years past on Saturday, and I guess nobody bothered to check the actual date of this year's parade. How embarrassing.

Well, since we're out and about, we might as well see what there is to see. Here's the famous clock on the Marshall Field & Company Building, which is now Macy's, and the street where the parade would have come down if we had the right day.

Then we made our way to Millennium Park, site of the very attractive and possibly thought provoking "Bean". More correctly called Cloud Gate, this huge stainless steel bean-shaped sculpture reflects its surroundings in strange and fascinating ways. A perfect spot for a group photo.

And a highly distorted self-portrait.

And a vertigo-inducing shot from underneath.

Then over the Great Lawn, across the "wiggly bridge," and through the skyscraper canyons to the corner diner by the hotel to have breakfast. Whew!

Turkey Day

Turkey Day at the house of Pandemonium brought visitors from Ohio and Michigan - the family of our good buds the Stick People. They are in the middle of getting ready to move to their new pad and didn't have the space for the family. We had the space and no family (waiting until the baby is born to make the long and dangerous journey) so we invited them over. As long as they promised to bring pecan pie.



Andrea laid out another fabulous centerpiece while the bird simmered.
Kenrick made the turkey name tags
The artist.
Rob hacks away at the finished bird while a couple of vultures (Don and Don) hang around and offer lots of constructive advise.
Finally, soup's on! The crew, sans Don and Leann (you can see her cheek) and the kids (destroying their own table in the kitchen).
First course, pumpkin soup. Second, salad and rolls and pickles. Then the bird, dressing, potatoes and gravy and Andrea's special experimental cranberry sauce. Yum! Then a break to let our stomachs deflate before apple and pecan pie. What a feast.

Hello Jarris

Last weekend the newest little man from Iowa City came for a visit. Oh, and Luke and Tammia and Kenna came too. It was nice to see them all and the boys very much enjoyed getting some baby brother practice.

The girls went shopping and Andrea found these...

Cool huh? When she showed me her new boots, the first thing I did was flip them over and take a look at the tread. I realized that I do that with almost every new pair of shoes that I look at. Is this normal? Does the top even matter?

Adventures in Shopping

Last Friday Andrea and Leann left the kids, (with a babysitter) took my truck up to Chicago, hooked a big strap around IKEA and hauled the whole mess back home. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. They were only able to get half the store onto the truck. Leann was shopping for stuff for their new house and Andrea had a long list of items to re-arrange the boy's room in preparation for little boy three. And also for our room in preparation for new built-in cabinets which her husband hasn't started yet. And something for the entry downstairs. And an office chair for the desk ... You get the picture.



Anyway, here's the result, proudly packed and piled into every available space and on top of a barely visible Yakima rack. And in spite of a crowd of highly skeptical IKEA loading dock 'experts' whose very imagnative solution to fitting six carts of boxes into a pickup was to "rent a bigger truck."

Say, doesn't that pile look like it's sagging a bit in the middle?

Yep.

I later figured that the girls had well over 500 lbs of shelves and beds and dressers on top of my bike rack bars. The bars fought bravely, but couldn't hold up to the strain. Oh well, I'm pretty pleased that everything else seems to be intact. I think I can bend the bars back, and now I know how much weight I can put up there. Five hundred pounds is a lot of bikes.

One of those boxes was a new bunk bed for the boys. Kenrick was a big help putting that together. And the boys have much enjoyed their cozy new setup.
I'll keep you posted as we get more of the stack unpacked and assembled.

Another One Bites the (Peanut) Dust

Last Sunday we bravely ventured forth in search of the elusive perfect steak and happened upon the newest joint in town, Logan's Roadhouse on Conference Center by the new hotel in East Peoria. We're still looking for the perfect steak. On a scale from Lone Star to Alexander's, Logan's rates somewhere below the other Roadhouse across the street. It's decor and atmosphere are typical peanut-shell-on-the-floor, country music, yee-haw style, but set in kind of a warehouse-looking interior. The music isn't as loud as Texas Roadhouse, but the food isn't as loud either. The meals we got were kind of tasteless. Bread was good, peanuts okay, salad so-so, veggies were good but few, ribs and steaks ... nothing to write home about. I think the smoke outside had more flavor than my sirloin.

Moving Day for D & K

This weekend we helped Doug and Karena move into their new pad. This has been a long time coming and is was fun to help them make the short hop from old to new. I'm sure Karena will post pictures of the move itself, but I got a few of the end result before we left on Saturday.

One big U-Haul, a couple of pickups, and a trailer or two, lots of strong backs, willing hands, and quick wits (one dim-wit), and by noon the moving was done. Now where do we put all this stuff?

The boys quickly claimed the downstairs for their own.
Congratulations Doug and Karena, welcome home.

Bedroom Remodel Update

Well it wasn't really a remodel, more like a repair/reorganize/repaint, but it looks better up there anyway. Here's the before.

Here's the after.


Notice the subtle new paint scheme, the new fixtures and the new sitting area. Nice, huh?

What you don't see is the old dressers that will be replaced by a new set of built-in dressers along the left side of the above photo and the piles of books and other items that we pulled out of the bedroom in the first place that also don't yet have a home. I've still got some work to do.