{"id":4986,"date":"2012-04-01T21:22:42","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T02:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/?p=4986"},"modified":"2012-04-05T10:18:24","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T15:18:24","slug":"not-april-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/not-april-fools\/","title":{"rendered":"Not April Fool’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, the first time I went there this a.m. it even said “I’m steering Lucky<\/a>“; I expect TidBits<\/a> will do something tomorrow when my newsletter from them arrives in my email, and even the library catalogers division of the ALA<\/a> 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<\/a>. And I just found the Timbuk 2 Clifford Canine Carrier<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We arrived in Chi-town Saturday and checked in at the Hotel Burnham<\/a>. Dinner at XOCO<\/a>, and then off to see Dan Hicks<\/a> at Old Town School of Folk.<\/p>\n

Sunday – April Fool – was brunch at Nightwood<\/a> – 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<\/a> 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<\/a>, and wandered Michigan Ave. Macy’s was depressing – the flower show was up in the deserted 9th floor – I told Jo\u00eblle 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.<\/p>\n

We went to an early show Second City show – Sex, Love and Second City<\/a>, and stopped for six tapas at Cafe Iberico:<\/a> 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.\u00a0 I have been crap at getting pictures – only iPhoneoids<\/a> on Tumbler<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[136,33],"class_list":["post-4986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chicago","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4986"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5016,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4986\/revisions\/5016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}