Highlights from the past weekend

FRIDAY: Went to the folks' for dinner - mmm, teriyaki salmon- and picked up a huge bag of half-used shampoos and beauty products, stuff I left behind and forgot about. Tossed the really old stuff, brought the rest back to my place. Yay. And I was running out of shampoo too.

Since I've been simplifying my life and reducing the stuff I have-- I finished up all my shampoos, notice the plural, about 3 months ago. Now, I only have one regular shampoo I'm using and I note that it takes me about 1.5 months to get through a large bottle of garnier fructis colored hair shampoo. Not the regular large bottle, the BIG bottle w/ 33% more free. The price of long hair... so I was wondering what to do about buying more shampoo when my mom handed me this big bag of stuff. Problem solved and one less trip to the store.


SATURDAY: Went to John's place early and we took a bit of a jaunt via eL and strolling through Lincoln Park area to have breakfast at this cute joint called (ironically) John's Place. It was a very pleasant morning as the weather was just gorgeous, low 70's, sunny, and relatively clear. Had fun just observing the real estate, and pointing out the cute houses we liked. Now to my rant about my love of breakfast...

Breakfast is such a happy meal. I LOVE breakfast! Breakfast for dinner? Breakfast for lunch? Breakfast for breakfast? Pancakes are so happy. Cute little sausage links? Also happy. Fruit loops, Cap'n Crunch (Peanut Butter or w/ Crunchberries-- mm), Corn Puffs, Cocoa Puffs, Apple Jacks, Lucky Charms,.... all happy. Omelettes... happy. They're even happier w/ cheese, diced ham, spinach and mushrooms. Eggs... sunny side up, that just screams "happy!" Little fruit salad? Colorful,... and happy! English muffins... so happy with orange marmalade and a spot of butter. And coffee or earl grey tea. HAPPY.

...now back to the regularly scheduled program...

What was particularly great about John's Place is the interesting selections they have-- John ordered the eggs w/ smoked salmon, cream cheese and green onions and I ordered the Pumpkin Pie Pancakes w/ brown sugar butter and syrup. Is your mouth salivating now? It should be. It was even tastier since we were able to enjoy it outside in a lovely little neighborhood. I reallllly enjoy being adventurous and discovering new things and places... and it's even cooler that John is right there with me on that.

Hopefully, we will return to that place again. And if you have a chance to stop in, do it! Thumbs up!

SUNDAY: Went to church w/ John and sometime before service started, he asked me what I thought about changing our plans so we could do a spontaneous road trip in the afternoon. Me? Road Trip? Oh yeah! This boy knows my mind, or at least has a reallllly good idea of what I like. The idea of just driving with no real destination or plan in mind is something I love to do, in addition to the planned trips. It's my kind of happy,... a "let's blow this joint" voice in my head that must be heeded every once in a while. I really appreciate John for understanding that and feeling the same way.

So church goes well, got an opportunity to share communion w/ John and worship together. I enjoy listening to the pastor, who seems like a really neat guy-- for some reason, he reminds me a lot of one of my uncles I'm closer to. I'm looking forward to getting to know him and other people, which is a comforting feeling. And since it's a smaller church (most churches are probably smaller than Harvest) there's a sense of family that I'm curious to observe further. One thing that I think is cool is that there doesn't seem to be an aversion to the idea of brokenness, it seems embraced. That's encouraging since I don't know of too many churches that do that well.

After, we grab some caffeine and start driving up north to John's family's area and decide to pop in and say hi (and take a pit stop... too much caffeine). Notice the beautiful clouds and the gorgeous weather.



Then we make it out to the Jelly Belly Warehouse where we sample their wares and take an amusing ride around the warehouse in one of those tour carts (think Austin Powers), wearing Jelly Belly hats. At the end of the tour, they gave us small sample packs of Jelly Bellies and JBz (their gourmet flavored m&m-like chocolates).










Then we drive upwards to Kenosha and see a huge sign for "CHEESE".
The Brat Stop: Amused by the sign, we stop in for lunch/dinner, which consists of fried cheese curds (mmm. they're really good!) and an authentic wisconsin bratwurst. Oh yeah. And we called my bro with the news of tubed meat and fried cow squeezings, in hopes of making him insanely jealous of our good fortune. heh.

We capped off the trip with some time spent in Lake Geneva, where the sun was just getting ready to set on the calm waters.

It was an awesome weekend. Sigh. I'm still smiling.

And Monday..... I went home again because my mom made Hainanese Chicken Rice:

Just had to mention that. It's such a healthy, awesome steamed chicken dish from Singapore (where my mom is from). The only place in Chicago that serves it is Penang, in downtown Chinatown,... so it's not everyday we get to have it.... in this case, my mom made it, and nothing beats homemade.

With all this food, this means more workouts and no misbehaving during the week. So far, I've had all light stuff, several health food bars, low fat protein stuff... sigh. The price I pay to play...