Day 32: Moocowgo, Mariano's and vegan breakfast cookies

Day 32 was a Monday so that meant I was scheduled for a weight-training session with Damian in the morning. At that point, my back felt a lot better after resting it for over a week so I figured it would be safe to do some non-back-intensive lifting and I was correct! This time I arrived in Hyde Park a little early to have breakfast at Valois. I ordered a broccoli and feta omelet with hash browns and a hot tea. I can't really explain why I like Valois so much because I know that it's not objectively amazing food. I think it just makes me feel safe since I ate there for three years when I used to live at 53rd and Harper.

When I met up with Damian I found that he had had a party at his house the night before for new econ PhD students. I think he was still a little drunk because halfway through our session he ran upstairs and said, "Do you want some applesauce? I'm craving it right now." I didn't but he came downstairs 10 seconds later with a sizable bowl of applesauce and proceeded to eat it between sets. Ha! I can probably go back to more back-intensive stuff next week as long as I keep the weight very light.

That afternoon I met up with my friend Laura (she and I went to the Isla de Cafe food truck together) for lunch at Big Star and we sat outside in the shade. We had a very nice lunch of tacos, drinks and a huge salad. On my way home from lunch, I turned the corner and saw this on the sidewalk:

A moocowgo magnet.

I looked on the back and there was a twitter address, so I went to see what it was all about. All I could really glean is that someone brought it upon themselves to create 15 painted cow magnets and to scatter them all over Wicker Park and Bucktown to see if people would find them "grazing." Well, I mine was grazing on asphalt and was number 9 of 15. Here's the full set that was posted through their twitter account.

Days 29-31: Boston

Kevin and I spent last weekend in Boston. We had planned to go the following weekend but ticket prices surrounding September 11th were much cheaper. My sister, Sparky, and her husband, Phil, live in Somerville, so we ended up trying out an airbnb apartment in Cambridge, near Harvard Square. The price was great for the location, but I have to admit that it was awkward. They had a lot of clutter and it definitely had its own personality and aesthetic -- very different from my own as well as Kevin's -- so it was pretty obvious that we were staying in strangers' home. I think I'll stick to jetpads next time since their places aren't really lived in and we had a good experience using them in Vancouver.

Happy to be on the wharf.

My sister and Phil have lived in the Boston area for years and know all the good spots and we were happy to be taken around to places they've curated.

On Friday night we went to a small Italian tapas place in the South End called Coppa. Their pasta was some of the best I've ever had outside of Italy. We enjoyed the squid ink pasta with octopus, squid and olives and the special, which was orecchiette with a ragu of tripe and pork belly -- so effing good! The aracini, which are fried risotto balls stuffed with cheese, were the other highlight of the night.

Afterwards we did a walk-through of the Beehive, a live music venue not far away from Coppa, but left after a lap since their live musical act was on break. The interior of the place is very boudoir-cool but it was super crowded so I was happy to leave.

We called it a night after that and resisted the urge to snoop around the apartment. Although, when Sparky did sweep-through, she took a peek at their wedding album.

Days 27-28: Working on my perpetual calendar

One personal creative project that I wanted to tackle during this sabbatical was creating a perpetual calendar. What is a perpetual calendar you ask? It's a series of photos that you clip together that forms a calendar on your wall. Each photo can be one of three things: a letter that represents a day of the week, a number that represents the day of the month, or a "filler" photo. When the month ends, just rearrange the numbers and filler photos so that they line up on the correct days of the week. Sound confusing? Here's an example of my favorite one:

Photo taken from this Apartment Therapy post. Created by Little Brown Pen.

Cool, right? This one was made exclusively from photos taken in Paris. I saw this almost two years ago and have since then wanted to make my own with photos taken in Chicago. I took some photos downtown, in Wicker Park and around the Western stop off the blue line and stitched together this draft so far.

My mockup for the beginnings of my calendar.

I may end up changing many of these photos depending on how the colors relate to one another. I think what makes the Paris one so successful is the even color tone shared between all the photos. In case you were wondering what the source of each photo is:

Day 26: Ow my back

Did I mention that I moved around a lot of furniture last week? As part of Phase 2 for my home improvement, I put rugs in my living room. I didn't have to buy any since I took some from my parents home years ago when I moved into my first apartment in college. I put them in the basement for storage and decided it was high time they came back into my living space. Rugs are heavy and these rugs needed to go under my couch. My couch is a sectional so moving it is like moving two couches and each one is a fucking heavy couch. Newly empowered by my weight-lifting sessions with Damian, I thought that I could do all this moving on my own.

Horrible idea. I got the job done but my back was really sore afterwards. This was on a Thursday so by the time I got back from Vail and lifted with Damian on Tuesday I thought I would be fine. We started doing squats and by the ninth one I felt a strain in my lower legs and back. I had to stop and couldn't actually bend over afterwards. Later on, after talking with some friends who work out on a more regular basis, I found out that this was probably the worst thing I could have done to my back. I could barely move and we had to stop lifting.

We went to Valois for breakfast so that made things a little bit better. I found out that they now have validated parking with a $5 purchase at the Hyde Park Bank parking lot at 54th and Lake Park. Score! The also have President Obama's favorites posted at the entrance. He likes the steak and eggs.

I couldn't do anything active when I got home so I watched The Dilemma, starring Vince Vaughn, while icing my back with frozen peas. The movie wasn't a great one but I do like how they featured Chicago so prominently. They mention real streets, neighborhoods and restaurants and show how great life in Chicago can be. It's worth watching if you're already in love with this city.

My freezer has played a huge role in my sabbatical, nourishing and now healing me. Since I couldn't move, I ate some more freezer food at home.

Curried chicken with brown rice.

Have you ever hurt your back? Should I even try lifting next week?

Days 22-25: Vail or Altitude Sickness

I'm never going above 6,000 feet again in my life.

Kevin was invited to a wedding in Vail over Labor Day weekend so we packed up our things and left on Friday afternoon for what I thought would be a weekend of fun, food and outdoor activities. Wrong! I somehow failed to make the connection between Vail, skiing, high altitude and the fact that I do horribly in the upper parts of our atmosphere. It's my own fault, really. I should've known. I spent a summer doing astrophysics research in Flagstaff, Arizona (about 7,000 feet above sea level) and even after 10 weeks I still hadn't acclimated to the lower partial pressure of oxygen. I got winded walking up the stairs and could only survive the tamest of hikes after a few weeks of exposure.

Clouds from the plane. I should've seen this as the ominous premonition it was.

When we landed in Denver, the "mile high" city (a mile is 5,280 feet), I was perfectly fine. Vail, however, is about three hours west and three thousand feet higher. During the drive from Denver to Vail, you experience even higher altitudes -- at one point I saw a sign indicating that we were a little over 10,000 feet. On the way there, we stopped in Dillion for dinner at the Dillon Dam Brewery. We each had a beer and buffalo burger with grilled onions. We should've split one. I felt guilty for only eating half of it so I forced myself to eat another quarter, you know, so I wouldn't waste as much food. This was a horrible idea. On the last leg of the trip to Vail, the food expanded like a salty bomb in my stomach and I nearly puked when I spilled out of the car upon arriving at the hotel. The bellhop probably thought I was drunk.

Day 21: Phase 2 - Kitchen Seating

Last week I finally installed a seating area in my kitchen. It's been a long time coming and involved a lot of shopping, planning, budgeting and reshuffling.

Before

See my kitchen before? My mobile cart was a stationary open-storage for unsightly items and there were bags all over the floor -- dry food storage overflow. Solving my dry food storage problem during Phase 1 opened up a lot more space in my kitchen and made it possible for me to install a seating area. Now I can have breakfast, meals for two and a comfortable place for people to hang out while I'm cooking.

Days 18-21: Vintage Furniture Shopping for Phase 2 of Home Improvement

I love vintage furniture. I spent a good portion of Week 3 rooting around vintage and vintage-industrial furniture stores in Chicago. Number one on my list was Urban Remains. When you compare the inventory of the big industrial salvage stores in Chicago -- Urban Remains, Salvage One, Architectural Artifacts -- Urban Remains has the most pieces that appeal to me. I think they do a great job of finding interesting industrial pieces that are practical for modern homes. Unfortunately, they're also very expensive.

Urban Remains

Urban Remains used to have a warehouse and a separate showroom but recently moved to a new location where they consolidated the contents of their previous two locations. It's definitely filled to the brim. Walking around this store by myself, undisturbed, for nearly an hour was probably one of the happiest moments of my sabbatical. Stores like this one are usually full of annoying customers and snooty salespeople on the weekends so looking around during the week is a real luxury.