This was a very educational weekend! I learned a lot of things, including:

After work on Friday, we met up with roho and genet for dinner at Lovely Thai in Grayslake. takaza was a little uncertain, but because I wanted to go and he’s such a wonderful husband, he agreed to give it a shot. He had the garlic chicken and noodles, and I had the jungle curry, a noodle soup with eggplant, bamboo shoots, bell pepper, peapods, mushrooms, carrots, basil, and red curry paste. Dan liked his, though it had an odd sweetness to it. Mine was spicy, which was good – I don’t indulge in hot stuff too often, and it tasted good. Next time, I’ll probably go for a more substantial noodle dish, though. We enjoyed the meal, and we all agreed that we need to go back.

After the meal we went next door to Wine Knows, which was hosting a tasting of wines from the Steele Winery. Our friend Thomas first introduced me to their pinot noir back in North Carolina, and I’ve been a fan ever since. It was an expensive evening, because I couldn’t turn down their pinot noir, their syrah, and the shocker of the evening, a white wine that I really liked, a viognier. Naturally, since it’s the first time we’ve seen it available, we also had to pick up a bottle of the Marquis-Phillips 2005 Shiraz. We capped off the evening with coffee from Something’s Brewing, right next door.

Saturday morning found me awake unconscionably early, though I took heart in chatting with Rasslor, who was up even more insanely early than I, being in California at the time. At 7:30 I woke up Dan, but he wasn’t feeling 100%, so we agreed that we would meet up downtown later in the day. I drove down to the Cumberland El stop and took the Blue Line in and met up with linnaeus, perro, darkwolph, mirkowuff, invncble and woodychitwn on the banks of the Chicago River with several thousand other people in anticipation of seeing the annual dyeing of the river green (or as Perro put it, “the annual polluting of the river”). We waited for about 45 minutes in the cold and occasional snow flurry and the already dark-green river never really changed color. As the time ticked towards noon and people started heading over to the parade in Grant Park, we gave up and walked upstream a bit. Apparently, they had dumped the dye in right by Michigan Avenue (we had been a block and a half downstream) and it just…sat there. As near as I could tell, a police boat was attempting to use its propeller to mix the dye in a bit and get it flowing downstream, but it wasn’t having much effect. Fortunately, the conversation while we were waiting was fun, and we learned a bit more from Woody about the Trump Tower (which was right across the river from us).

We headed down towards Grant Park, taking some time to stop in at Intelligentsia to warm up and get some coffee. By the time we made it over to the parade route (after a few wrong turns), the parade was in full swing and we couldn’t get closer than about a hundred feet. I took a few pictures over the heads of the crowds, but after walking along a bit and determining that there was no way to get any closer, we gave up in disgust. Granted, the fact that Woody, Mirko, and I mentioned a few times that Russian Tea Time had vodka flights might have had something to do with that.

A side note: as we were leaving the parade, we passed a Tony the Tiger mascot walking briskly down Michigan Avenue. We followed him for about two blocks but he was moving too fast. quasiskunk, was that you? Mirko thought he was too tall to be you.

Following the craziness of the river and the parade crowds, it was a pleasure to sit down and relax at Russian Tea Time. I had first heard of the place when I took over the Restaurant Guide for Midwest FurFest; the previous authors raved about how great the place was, and how it was worth the trip downtown. The recommendation for it by the previous author stayed in for a few years before it got cut due to a refocusing on places more local to the hotel. There was a bit of sticker shock when we realized that they don’t serve their lunch menu on weekends, but there was enough good stuff on the menu to stick it out. I had the Dumpling Combination Platter, five Vareniky (Ukrainian potato dumplings) and five Pelmeni (Russian beef and onion dumplings), served with a very tasty yogurt sauce.

The most important reason we were there, though, was to finally get some alcohol into Woody’s system, as he had been complaining all morning about the state of wretched sobriety he was suffering from. We accomplished this by some of trying their vodka flights, a sampler of flavored vodkas made on the premises. I had the coriander (tasty), lime (okay), and black current tea (divine!). A couple of our group substituted out the lime for mint, which turned out to be not such a great idea (mint + alcohol = Scope). Mirko’s ginger vodka was apparently a bit underwhelming as well. Next time, I’ll try some of the other flavors as well as the black current tea vodka. Yum!

Dan joined us as we were leaving the restaurant. After determining that the Western Suburbanites had missed their train, they joined us partway back to Cumberland, getting off near Invincible’s place so he could give them a ride home. Dan and I picked up the car and headed westward…

…all the way to Hoffman Estates. After checking into a very familiar La Quinta (yay for free nights for frequent guests!) and relaxing for a bit, we got some dinner at The Assembly, a pub/restaurant across the street. The $10 burgers were…not quite up to snuff. I imagine it would be better on a night when there isn’t March Madness going on and it isn’t St. Patrick’s Day! From there, we headed over to the Sears Centre to see a Chicago Shamrox game. Now, I didn’t know beans about lacrosse going in, let along that a National Lacrosse League even existed. But the game was a real blast! Imagine a cross between soccer, hockey, and football, and you’ll be close. It’s a brutal game, and pretty darned exciting to watch. It didn’t hurt that we had fantastic seats, center field three rows behind the penalty box. We liked it so much that we’re going to look into possibly getting tickets to a game or two in April.

And as for the rest of the weekend? A little less exciting. Sunday we made our way home, and I made some chocolate chip cookies while Dan made a tasty chicken and rice soup. Roho and Genet joined us for dinner before we all sat down to watch The Amazing Race. It was a nice, low-key day and a perfect end to the weekend.

As for the coming week…not much planned, though we might look into some bowling at some point, if we can find a night when the leagues aren’t completely occupying the alley near our place.