I tasted

The image above is actually from last year's Taste of Chicago, but it's a booth we hit again this year. Taste of Chicago, like many food festivals, isn't really the greatest place for vegetarians and vegans, but last year they added Soul Veg to the line up. It was a relief to find them there again. While the pic above shows 2 items we didn't get this year (the veggie gyros which they did have again, and the cauliflower, which was not on the menu) we did have the BBQ twist again. It's obviously quite messy, but good. Also featured both this year and last was a nice sweet potato pie, and new to the menu were some yummy spicy tamales. We tagged along with my parents last weekend, and since they are not vegetarians they got a little more of the experience of all the options there. I did get to snack on some taro root fries from Tamarind, a restaurant in our neighborhood, and they were very good. The festival is going on through the weekend, though based on our experience around this time last year and even though we are walking distance, the crowds are prohibitive around the fourth. So I think we had our fill.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe fourth. Not sure what we'll be doing yet, plans as, usual are kind of loose. There's talk of getting up to Evanston with my parents. Last year we attempted to get close to the main Chicago fireworks, got caught in the largest mess of people I've ever been in and decided just to go home and check out what the view from our new apartment would be. It turned out it was only slivers of fireworks, but it made for a pleasant evening anyway. This year I'm just pleased that for the first time in 5 years the 4th can be a family affair again!

Progression of a Knitting Project

1. Taupe Maizy, 2. Maizy Stockings, 3. Maizy Stocking, coming along, 4. Maizy Stockings, 5. Maizy Longstockings, 6. Rapunzel Stockings , 7. Almost done, 8. Rapunzel Stockings

Top of the Morning...

It's been over a week since I've posted anything, so I thought maybe this morning I would throw a little blogging into my morning routine. Coffee, surf the internet, is typically what I do, but I tend not to blog for fear of lack-of-coffee-induced-typos, and general non-sensicalness. But it's been a while, and before I go off and study all day long (or find ways to procrastinate from studying) I thought I'd stop by.

Most of the last week or so hasn't been all that interesting, just studying. I've got a 300 page study guide that I'm working my way through, a box of flashcards, a CD and a sample test booklet...all of which I need to go through before the test on Tuesday. We've been trying to make that a little more interesting by going out to coffee shops, but mostly it is what it is, not too exciting.

I still found some time to finish off my knee-high socks, but they're still waiting on the weaving in of the ends, and I need to take some nice pictures as well. I've got plenty of shots of the progress, so once I take the last set of pictures I might post a collection of those images, just for fun.

Oh, and I meant to find a moment last week to post about something we ate, just to say we used a recipe for tempeh meatballs from the blog vegandad, which turned out great. We also picked up a smoothie mix by Naysoya that they've started carrying at our local grocery store, which was also very tasty.

Lastly, we did get in some movie watching this week, and have sorta made the theme for the weekend "movies directed by Sam Mendes." I was pretty interested in seeing Away We Go since we saw the trailer attached to Limits of Control, because of the concept of a couple trying to find the right place to live and the fact that David Eggers wrote the screenplay. I was not disappointed, it wasn't quite what I expected and instead was sweeter and more intelligent. Then last night my parents had rented Revolutionary Road, which I was interested in seeing, so we stuck around to watch that with them. I was less excited about that movie, it just wasn't terribly interesting. But I do enjoy a somewhat themed weekend of movies nonetheless.

As a side note, I think we were at the theater that recently hosted the premier of that new Johnny Depp movie. The evidence of that was the fact that they had removed all of the movie posters in the mega-plex AMC and replaced them with posters of Johnny Depp. I believe the premier was the night before, although there seemed to be something going on as we were leaving. Anyway, not terribly exciting since we didn't see anyone famous, just thought it was interesting!

We're walking....

I got the results back from one of my exams and within a few days signed up for another, so I've been trying to study. The test date is coming up quickly, at the end of the month, since I had to get it in before they make me transition to a new version. (I will have to transition, and there's a fancy chart explaining which old tests are equal to which new tests...basically I wanted to keep going with the tests, so it was either take one before the end of the month, or wait until the transition happens, and I already have materials for the old version anyway.)

Of course, since I've only been studying sporadically, I think the real reason I haven't blogged this week has more to do with the fact that we've been taking lots of walks. Somehow they have taken the place of blog entries. We went up north on Sunday, made a short visit to the Field Museum, wandered our neighborhood eventually stopping to eat some Indian food and wandered around Chinatown last night. I guess this is mostly because it's finally been pretty nice weather-wise.

So, anyway, it's not really much to blog about, more time out/less time in. This weekend is the big Chicago Blues festival featuring Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and Betty LaVette. Both of whom we have seen before, but certainly won't miss the chance to see them again for free! And I'm finally close to finishing off the knee-high sock project, so you might see some pictures of that soon!