a new wedding planner in the neighborhood!

that's right, now i have a friend nearby with whom to bounce back and forth wedding details and ideas. and next weekend, we plan to hit up some bridal shops AND a bridal expo. are you ready to throw up yet? if not, then you should have seen us last weekend, when we met up at common grounds coffee shop in wrigleyville with mounds and mounds of wedding magazines, bridal books, invitation samples, and wedding binders and spread ourselves out all over the breakfast bar, with iced tea and iced coffee to keep us brides-to-be perky, perky. it was a scene.


and as far as wedding planning goes, xtine has been engaged for less than a month (estimate), and has about twice as much more of her wedding planned as do i. she's got a three-hole puncher AND a paper cutter (what a teacher) and is a mega-wedding-planner!

the bancoviches!

CONGRATULATIONS

christine and nikolai!!

bozich + jancovich sitting in a tree ... planning a w-e-d-d-i-n-g!

first came spain, then came engagement,

next comes a wedding and a real estate agent!

wooohoooo the big day is june 21, 2008!

christine and nikolai are one of my all-time favorite, favorite couples. i am so excited for them. they are so excited, too! it's so much fun! nikolai is leaving seattle for an awesome new position with his company, oce, here in chicago. it's even better than the one he was originally transferring into!! how fantastic is he?! and his company approached him for the even newer position. they love him! chicago will have him around october i think!

kat kat visited ... continued!

ok, katherine is correct, my blog owes her a bigger, better shout out. i have to say, that although kat kat and i haven't seen each other since her going away party (when she left for nyc) back in may or june of 2006, when we were both back in CALIFORNIA, we were able to pick up like it was yesterday.

and we did have a fun and delicious time at dinner with her friend matt, his darling gf elizabeth, and the unmentionable jerk whose name i have forgotten. we went to aria at the fairmont hotel and snagged ourselves our own little nook, with a perfect table for six. didn't you think the service was good, katie kats? after dinner, we stunned bucktown with our stamina by staying out until 3am. pretty good for us old folks!

sea bass on a polenta cake.

our waiter brought two trios of potatoes,

compliments of the kitchen.

it wasn't until i saw the photo that i realized i never tried any. i can't even recall what the three varieties were, but from what i hear they were good!

and i absolutely loved our time meeting up with her sweet friend from culver, alice. we went to one of my fave local brunch spots, bin cafe, and i am glad to read on katherine's blog that she did indeed love the huckleberry pancakes. i had a mimosa flight which was very pretty.

alice and katherine above,
mimosa flight below.

and now the exciting news is that katherine plans to move to the windy city by the end of the year. i am sure that she will move into an awesome home, and make her big debut in an absolutely wonderful city. we can't wait to see what adventures katherine brings to chicago!

ok, and last i would like to talk about how mad i am at the unmentionable jerk whose name i forgot. on saturday, he convinced katherine to stay an extra day so that we could all go to a cubs game on sunday night. now, don't get me wrong, i am all for cubs games. but truth be told, i am not usually up for cubs games on sunday nights. yet, given the circumstances and the occasion of kat kat being in town, i was willing to suck it up and spit out the $75 per ticket to have yet another great night with katherine and the as-of-yet-unbeknownst-to-us-a**hole. so while they took off for their drive through the cornfields of indiana, patrick and i picked up the tickets for the sunday night game. after what's his face left early with katherine's heart, we were left with bleacher tickets that we otherwise would never have purchased. those, and a very rainy, summer stormy day. the first three innings were dry, but then it started POURING. good lord. POURING, for two hours we waited it out with the rest of the devoted cubs fans to find out if the game would be called, or if the rain would let up. well, soaked to the bone, outside the area of our trash bag shields, we fought for a cab home after the game was called. the only words out of my mouth were "f***ing scott!" apparently, i knew what his name was at that time.

ok, muffins (...and kat kat visited!)

i picked blueberry mint, all you sillies. i know lo got it right. looks like someone else did too, but i don't see it in the comments. it was delicious. the blueberries were really plump (i keep buying michigan blueberries at whole foods, which are scrumptious. i've had the best raspberries around here this summer too, by the way. it makes it just feeeel like summertime!). and the addition of mint leaves to the muffin was so fun. very gentle hint of mint with the berries, oh so good!

also, katherine visited us! we loved having her, even though the weekend ended up being sucky for her due to some other circumstances. wish i had a picture of us ... maybe she does!

in other news, i had a scrippsie sighting in chicago. anyone remember christiana henry (c/o '99)?

hey muffin!

a teeny tiny new coffee shop. front to back: blackberry orange, lemon lavender poppyseed, blueberry mint. which did i choose? take poll on sidebar and see how well you know my tastes in baked goods.

arlington park horse races

we tried carrying over "our" luck at the card tables to the race tracks by taking the train (the metra, not the el) out to the 'burbs for the arlington million race. brad and angie, in chicago with all the kids while ange films, were supposed to be there. somewhere. obviously not sitting where we were. do you see them:

a leslie-style "candid" shot:

welcome to the race tracks

happy birthday to patrick! (updated)

patricks's 30th birthday was on saturday, august 4th. i gave him his present(s) through a series of envelopes, starting on friday night:

envelope #1

inside envelope #1 was a map to joliet, illinois.

i told patrick we needed to pack an overnight bag, because we were heading to joliet for the night. and i made sure to pack patrick's closed-toed sneakers. and then i asked patrick if he knew anything about what's in joliet. he said there's a prison.

i explained that joliet and our overnight stay were not his actual birthday present, but that we needed to get his present really early, and staying overnight would be better than getting up at 5:00 am on saturday. he agreed.

as we got closer, i confessed that i would have preferred that we stay at a different hotel in the area, but the hotel i tried to reserve was booked (somewhat true). and so we rolled up to the holiday inn, joliet.

envelope #2

once we checked in, patrick opened the second envelope -

inside which was a map to harrah's casino on the river!

i snapped this with my camera phone. umm, illegal?

patrick loves a good game of cards, especially if there's gambling involved. the truth is that rooms at harrah's were $400! what?!? for joliet, illinois? that's where i wanted us to stay, but that is seriously too much for a few hours' stay in joliet, illinois. i asked if there was a big event in town for the weekend, because other weekends at harrah's were listed as half the price. the lady told me she didn't know of anything special in town, so who knows, maybe most rooms were reserved and only the expensive rooms were left. or maybe the cover band playing that night is really, really, popular. whatevs.

we drove over to harrah's about two miles away. we went to the bar and started with a scotch followed by two beers for the gentleman, two white chocolate martinis for the lady, and boneless buffalo chicken bites (i don't do well with bones). that's 5 drinks and an appetizer, and it came only to $30. i don't know how that is mathematically possible. it's either:

a) birthday boy fortune

b) joliet, illinois

c) the casino factor

any which way, it was fun, fun, fun and the bartender LOVED us.

patrick cleaned up pretty well at the tables. although a nice lady next to us came in and started with $500 and left the table with $2,800. she was a crack up, and did much better than did we. though we're surely not complaining!! it was a really fun birthday eve.

envelope #3

the last envelope contained the paperwork signing his life over to chicagoland speedway...
the chicagoland speedway

that's right, chicagoland speedway. for a morning of driving real racecars around the track. the next morning we woke up, rise and shine early, and i took the birthday boy over to the race track. he signed in for his class, and happened to run into someone he knows from valspar, jim. jim had a buddy with him, jason, and they were hilarious. their wives had givem them the race laps as presents. jim stayed at his grandparents house, and jason felt like a sucker for leaving so early in the morning to get to the race track by 8:00am.

while the boys were in the classroom portion of the the morning, i went back to the hotel and took a shower. when i came back, the first drivers were getting in their cars. it was quite a production!!! there were so many people making this all happen. a whole batch of instructors. an entire maintenance crew. and also a crew to get the drivers in their cars, even a guy waving the flags on the track. this was such the 'real deal.'

patrick, jim, and jason all raced at different times, and were buzzing afterwards with the details of driving laps at 140 mph. apparently, boys love this.

bad ass.

patrick, pre-driving on the right and

that's jim post-driving on the left.

jim and jason talking to patick (patrick in helmet) about their laps.

staff giving patrick a run down on the other drivers.

patrick's car arrives.

blue with 'miller lite' on the side.

patrick in helmet walking past a crew to his 'miller lite' car.
note that headlights are not real, but rather 'painted on.'

"driver's only"

at the end, each driver 'graduates' and gets a printout of each lap they drove (eight) and their times per lap. yah, so patrick won:

this is patrick in the blue miller car at the back. i was just going to film the drive by, but then i caught him passing other cars up.

look at all those adoring fans!

plaque. i suggest zooming.

envelope #4

take me out to the ball game!

along with some tees and new flippies (flip flops), patrick's birthday card (the 4th envelope) held tickets to the cubs v. mets game starting at 2:55 pm.

so we made the drive back to chicago, during which patrick incessantly talked about his driving 'experience' (we laugh about how it is called "the Experience," capitalized, in all of the richard petty driving school paperwork) the entire way home, grabbed brunch at one of our local spots, and caught the bus to wrigleyville.

we got to the stadium with time to buy patrick a wrigley field t-shirt and watched the cubs slam the mets. patrick is a mets fan, growing up in new york, but loves both teams. it's easy to love the cubs.

these are the people in front of us during the

seventh inning stretch.

again, the people in front of us as the game is declared a win!!

game over! cubs win!

no more envelopes

after the game we went bar hopping, day turned to night, and we were silly people by the end.

through wrigleyville...

then through boystown...

and through lakeview, which was a good area for free birthday shots (oh boy!). and of course we had a great time picking out socks...

for random bowling!

we made bets at the lanes with each other (are you sensing a gambling theme). the first set of bets was fairly inconsequential. the drinks were delicious, i won the game, and times were good. we upped the ante for the next round of betting, and it apparently motivated the birthday boy to totally kick my a**!! he was happy to beat me, to win the bets and just happy in general! old, but happy.

gambling, fast cars, and baseball. worked like a charm.

the year in review - it's working now

if you can't view the slideshow, you probably need a flash viewer. they are free to download. also, you can page through photos with right arrow key.

one year in chicago!