Everybody’s doing their annual April Fool jokes, but we are in Chicago enjoying ourselves, no foolin’, and my over-earnest style doesn’t really lend itself too handily to April Fool pranks. Google’s got Nascar, the first time I went there this a.m. it even said “I’m steering Lucky“; I expect TidBits will do something tomorrow when my newsletter from them arrives in my email, and even the library catalogers division of the ALA sent around an April Fool “spring update”. Of course being catalogers, their April Fool came out on March 30th. 327Words of course did its annual April Fool. And I just found the Timbuk 2 Clifford Canine Carrier.
We arrived in Chi-town Saturday and checked in at the Hotel Burnham. Dinner at XOCO, and then off to see Dan Hicks at Old Town School of Folk.
Sunday – April Fool – was brunch at Nightwood – I had poached eggs and rye toast that came with blueberry jam and bacon, and Nightwood’s tots – deep fried balls of shredded potato. The potato was good and the outsides were properly crunchy, but I’m not sure I quite agree with Nightwood’s vision of the breakfast potato – I prefer something more like the American fries I had next day at 11 City Diner. Maybe I just don’t feel right about eating deep fried food for breakfast. Later we went to the flower show at Macy’s, and wandered Michigan Ave. Macy’s was depressing – the flower show was up in the deserted 9th floor – I told Joëlle it looked like where they used to have the employee lunchroom – and when we went down the escalator, where you stepped off, the floor was being held together with duct tape. Store seemed understocked, too. How the mighty have fallen.
We went to an early show Second City show – Sex, Love and Second City, and stopped for six tapas at Cafe Iberico: the potatoes in spicy tomato sauce; grilled prawns; a really good soup of pureed garbanzos & chorizo – I don’t usually like chorizo, but chopped up in this soup was perfect. Like my childhood favorite, Campbell’s beans with bacon – but way better; a braised beef; tortilla; and jambon on tomato bread. I have been crap at getting pictures – only iPhoneoids on Tumbler. Came back to the hotel and no Game of Thrones – so I went to the bar and had a gin martini mixed by a bartender who’d been on his feet waaay too long, who told me the story of the the rise of vodka’s popularity, and chatted with a young guy about friends and relations dying of cancer and health insurance – I left just before it got too political. And I was down at the bar for just long enough for Game of Thrones to get over its cable TV debut, and appear on HBOgo, so I set it up on my laptop and Mark & I watched in bed, like the kids.
