Chelsey in Chicago

I decided to visit Patrick July 31-Aug 6 because I can job search just as well from his couch as I can from my big red chair. I originally intended it to be a surprise, but I had to tell him so he could arrange some work things. However, I told him I was coming Aug 2, and not July 31 (his birthday). I arrived and took a Lyft to his apartment, let myself in the building (he thought I didn't know the code), and text him to check his mail for a surprise package. When he opened the door - SURPISE - I was standing there! That was a Tuesday so Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday while he was at work during the day, I job searched, napped (we had to wake up at 4:40AM to run together), read, did the dishes and watched Netflix. In the evening we went out to dinner or hung out eating ice cream on the couch. Saturday we went "over the water" to Norfolk. Patrick lives a few blocks from a ferry that will take you from Portsmouth to Norfolk where there is a park, restaurants, a mu...

One of my dearest friends, Courtney, came to visit Chicago pre-Fourth of July weekend. Unfortunately, poisoning delayed her trip by a day but we packed a lot into her four day stay.  For her first full day, we started the morning with some recovery yoga, inches from Maggie's bed (I had moved into the living room to be closer to our one window AC unit). We then walked around Millennium Park so Courtney could see the Parisian inspired Metra arch, the spiting fountain (aka Crown Fountain), the bean, the silver slithering bridge that goes over Columbus Dr., and Buckingham Fountain. We then walked our way over to the Art Institute a little after they opened. A new exhibit had just opened,  The John Singer Sargent exhibit , which was available (at an additional cost to the tickets), so we headed there first. After soaking in some captivating portraits, we quickly moved through the museum highlights (American Gothic, Van Gough, Picasso, etc.). Before heading to the Happy P...

Wow, and my birthday was already over a month ago! Here's how Maggie and I celebrated: We started the evening with a burger from the best burger spot in Chicago: Au Cheval . It was in the West Loop and we got there before the dinner rush, so no waiting (obviously the line to get in can be crazy). It's not a very large restaurant, a counter (where Maggie and I sat) and a row of booths on the other side of the walkway. The walkway opens to a small area with tables and chairs. They have a simple menu - a burger and what you would like on top. We got a burger topped with bacon and a side of fries to split, thank goodness, because it was filling. The bacon was a quarter inch thick! For dessert, a root beer float with delicious, locally made vanilla ice cream. This nearly caused us to bust a gut, so it was alarming to see the couple next to us devour a burger each, salad, fries, a side of bacon and some enormous layered dessert concoction. From the restaurant, we walked to a b...

Graduation seems so long ago, so allow me to recap briefly: My mom and Chris arrived just before a ceremony for the Humanities department was held in Rockefeller Chapel on the Friday of graduation. This ceremony was nice because it was so intimate. It consisted of the PhD candidates and the MAPHers, such as myself. There were a few speeches made by department heads and the like, a few awards granted to PhD candidates who had gone above and beyond and then the announcing of our names as we walked to receive our diploma holder. After the ceremony I was shocked to see Aunt Debbie had come! That was a  wonderful surprise and I am so grateful she was able to come. Maggie, mom, Chris, Aunt Debbie and I got our champaign toast and then headed to Chipotle for dinner. That night Maggie and I drove to the airport to pick up Patrick. Saturday I forwent the University-wide ceremony because it seemed more trouble than it was worth. In the afternoon there was a MAPH ceremony/luncheon, which w...

For my graduation/birthday present, my mom and Chris took me along for their road trip back to California. Our trip began with a drive a few hours north, to Door County, Wisconsin , to a 150 year old lighthouse. To visit the Cana Island Lighthouse, we had to ride in a wagon pulled by a tractor across a few feet of water, because the lighthouse is indeed on an island. We went to the top for a wonderful view of Lake Michigan and the shoreline. The Fresnel lens is being removed and put in the museum, so this was the last summer to see it in its proper home. Minneapolis was our next stop. In the morning my mom, Chris and I went to a park near our hotel so we could go for a run/walk. The park was really a series of lakes and supposedly part of the Twin Cities Marathon course. It was a really wonderful place to run and I liked how they had two parallel paths, one for biking and the other for running. Parts of Chicago's Lakeshore path seem to be attempting this, but f...

The weekend after I submitted my first draft of my thesis, Maggie and I went to Milwaukee (about a two hour drive). It was a pretty spur-of-the-moment trip so the morning of we quickly looked up a few things to do and mapped them out so we wouldn't be zig zagging all over the city. Our first stop was the Milwaukee Public Market . If it makes you think of the Seattle Public Market, you're not crazy, Milwaukee's is based on Seattle's. It was much smaller than Seattle's and completely enclosed/indoors (slightly different weather in Milwaukee, no?), so it took Maggie and I no time at all to walk from end to end.  We then walked to a burger place, yum! And continued walking around in the hopes of finding a hi storic district. No luck. So we carried on to the Milwaukee Museum of Art . The building was designed by a Spanish architect who designed a bridge in Buenos Aires (which I saw while living there) and there's another of his bridges randomly somewhere in...