I slept in yesterday before taking the subway (I'm getting very good with the subway here) to meet Mandy for lunch. We went to The Corner Bakery which was a Panera/Cosi type place. After lunch, we went next door to Do-rite Donuts so Mandy could buy a half dozen for her co-workers, and since we were already there, I decided to treat myself.
Oh, donuts. Donuts, donuts, donuts. Chicago has a lot of them and this was a pretty good one. I count myself lucky that I've only gained five pounds this week, because it easily could have been 10*.
*I haven't actually weighed myself in like three years so any weight gain cannot be confirmed nor denied.
After that, I walked to the Harold Washington Library on Mandy's suggestion -- she knew that nine floors of books might be enough to entertain me for a little while. Yes, nine stories of books. I was so overwhelmed by it all that I just walked around wide-eyed for a while, riding the escalator up and down! Eventually, I found the travel section on the sixth floor and read up on Central America for a while (Central America is next on my to do list, dates/time TBD).
After the library, I wandered for a bit. This included a trip to heaven on Earth -- Target. I did some other shopping and putzed around Chicago until it was dinner time. I went to Portillo's for dinner because it was on The List. It's a hot dog place but they had lots of options and I was there for two reasons: cheese fries and milkshakes. Those two things may or may not be the meaning of life... They're probably the meaning of my life at the very least.
Portillo's was an experience. The inside was colorful (as you can see to the right) and the portions were big. I got a small fries and shake! Small! Does anything in those pictures look small?! I don't think so. They asked me if I wanted to go with a large and I almost said yes until they showed me just how big the small actually was and I realized how swift death would be if I upgraded. I really liked that the fries didn't come covered in cheese like one might expect, they came with a tub of cheese for dipping. And there was a lot of cheese... I love cheese. It was a success for sure.
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| Rainbow Bard wall art! |
After recovering from my cheese coma, I walked to the Navy Pier for the main event of the day. I bought myself a ticket to see Measure for Measure at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Except that it wasn't just Measure for Measure. It was Measure for Measure in Russian. Before you ask, no, I do not speak Russian. There were subtitles.
I had no clue what to expect but I was excited! Now, I have been super interested in the Chicago Shakespeare Theater since I heard about Othello: The Remix while working at the Shakespeare Theatre Association conference in 2013. Oh, for those of you who don't know, I worked at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival for two years... This, however, doesn't mean that I know my Shakespeare. In fact, it probably makes me dumber than your average Shakespeare fan because I pretend that I understand stuff when I don't. Back to Othello: The Remix, now I thought that it was just a cool concept (click the hyperlink -- they translated Othello into American hip hop) and then in 2014, I spent five weeks teaching regular non-rap Shakespearean Othello to a bunch of high school sophomores. Now, teaching Othello led to a lifetime of stories (the most notable being the "Yo Ms. Jaffe... Who wrote this?!" story where a student asked me who wrote the play on the day of their final exam) but it has continued to draw me towards Othello: The Remix/Chicago Shakes. And this is why I was willing to shell out some dough to go see Measure for Measure.
Like I said in the last paragraph, I am your dumber than average Shakespeare viewer. PSF did Measure for Measure while I was working there so I had done some research on it but never actually saw it. I knew the general concept is "man is condemned to die, is ok to let nun sister sleep with a corrupt politician to save himself" and I was right. But, when you consider the fact that Shakespearean English is nearly as foreign to the modern world as Russian is the the English speaking world, combined with the cultural difference between America and Russia made it a memorable night. There were parts I got, parts I didn't get, parts that I understood and thought were weird and parts where it look liked people were just walking around the stage for no reason and when I left, my mind had been blown.
I do think it was weird that no one after the show (both this one along with the one I saw on Monday) asked me to help take apart the set afterwards, but oh well, their loss. (That's a joke cuz after our shows every week, we offer "a TOTALLY FREE workshop entitled HOW TO TAKE ALL OF THIS APART AND FIT IT INTO THE BACK OF A FORD F-150!!!". I don't actually want to take apart a professional production's set, but after 35 weeks of touring, a person can forget the rules of grown up theatre).
Onto today! Apart from the Shakespeare, the greatest moment of my Chicago adventure occurred today. Today, I took the train to Myopic Books, which is a used bookstore from The List that asked for its visitors to not take any photos. It was your typical used bookstore, although there weren't any cats hanging around. After that, I had my greatest moment. I went to Mindy's Hot Chocolate. Despite its name, Mindy's Hot Chocolate serves more than hot chocolate. In fact, hot chocolate is a very small part of their menu. They do brunch and dinner, they have insane desserts and are also on the expensive side of things. No regrets! I got their old-fashioned hot chocolate, which came topped with homemade marshmallows and chocolate ganache. It. Was. A. Masterpiece. I got my mom a bag of their mix and am definitely going to be the favorite child once she gets it. This is the place that will bankrupt me if/when I live here. Their special of the day was also a chocolate cake, which I considered getting with my hot chocolate just because, but when I saw it, I knew I'd made the right choice to just stick my hot cocoa -- not because it looked bad, but because I would have died. My blood would have just turned into chocolate and I would have melted into nothing... I need to put the mix in the mail before I end up drinking it myself.
After that, I went to the grocery store. I'm like Mandy's fairy godmother, except instead of Prince Charming, I make her dinner. I'm determined to stock her fridge with a few meals before I go because she's a busy lady and this way, she won't need to worry about food!! I made some lentil/bean vegetarian chili and am going to make some mac and cheese in a bit.
And that's it for now. Tomorrow Mandy and I are going to actually get to spend the day together and then it will be time to go to Indianapolis on Sunday!
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