I’ve written about the Chicago food-trucks before. The naan-wiches, the empanadas. And I’ve heard rumors about a mac ‘n’ cheese truck.
But, today, a pink truck showed up bursting with sweetness. Sweet Ride paid a visit to our building and a line formed quickly. And unsurprisingly, every person in that line was female.
It’s easy to think that dudes just don’t want to be seen queuing for cupcakes in front of a pink truck. But I’ve also heard that guys just don’t care about sweets in the same way that many women care about sweets.
Which is to say: Guys don’t obsess about sweets the way they obsess about sports or history or sex.
On the other hand, women can think about cake and pudding and chocolates all day long: we plan for Sweet Ride’s arrival; we may actually deprive ourselves of other nutrients all day long if we think there’s even a possibility we’ll have a box of tiny cupcakes for lunch.
You may have assumed I ate a box of tiny cupcakes for lunch. And you’d be wrong. I ate a cup of organic banana pudding with vanilla wafers in the middle (no word on the origins of the ‘nilla wafers).
It was the best $4 I spent all day. It was so delectable that I tried to linger over it, but I looked down and it was gone in a flash. And now, I’m about to do some investigating to find out when Sweet Ride will be back again for my next pudding fix.
I love a weekend of “firsts.” Meaning a weekend filled with things I’ve never done or seen before. This past weekend contained several firsts:
The Ceili
On Friday, Patrick, Ruairi, Liam and I went to the Irish American Heritage Center for the Midwest Fleadh Cheoil and Ceili Mor. It was a lot of fun, watching the oldsters and youngsters enjoy the music and also watching everyone dance. Totally worth letting the kids stay up late.
The Swimming
Saturday morning, Ruairi dived into the swimming pool for the first time. A real dive, not just a flailing, whining, coerced face-flop. And Liam actually kicked his way across the pool, unaided by the coach. After nearly a year of weekly swim lessons, the boys finally may be understanding that we’re going to keep doing this until they actually learn to swim. :-)
The Reptiles
Saturday afternoon, we went to the UIC P.E. building for ReptileFest, billed as “the nation’s largest educational reptile and amphibian show.” It was pretty cool, and as with every activity we do that involves something semi-geeky, I actually enjoyed it as much or more than my sons. And I may have been convinced that our new family pet should be a Crested Gecko.
Chicago Fire Academy
After ReptileFest, we drove around downtown for a bit. A traffic jam conspired with my desire to grab a geocache, and we ended up at the site of Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary’s former property and the alleged starting point of the Chicago fire in 1871. The Robert J. Quinn Fire Academy is where trainees become Chicago firefighters. In front of the building is the “Pillar of Fire,” a bronze sculpture by Egon Weiner commemorating the great Chicago fire.
I’ve lived here since July of 1999, and I’d never visited this spot until Saturday. If it weren’t for my husband and my geocaching hobby, I’d never see most of the cool things in this city.
Butera
Sunday morning, I attempted to buy groceries at Butera. Mainly because my mother-in-law (whom I love a LOT) guilted me into going there by making Grampa dig the weekly circular out of a giant stack of newspapers and telling me that it really is cheaper than Jewel. So, I gave it a whirl. I’m down with cheap groceries, but I also crave predictability.
I love to shop at Aldi because I know exactly what it’s all about: the cheapest possible food. Everything from the quarter-operated grocery carts to pay-for-your-own bags means cheap food. And on the other end of the spectrum, I also love to shop at Whole Foods: high-end food in a blazingly gorgeous store with a sushi counter and wine bar. Jewel is a step or two down from Whole Foods, but still pretty predictable.
But Butera? I still have NO IDEA what that place is supposed to be. It looks super cheap from the outside, but you don’t have to pay for your cart; it has some recognizable brand-name stuff inside, but nothing cutting edge. Bad lighting, a horrible, confusing layout, and people wandering aimlessly blocking aisles and generally clogging things up. I was in there for 30 minutes and had exactly two things in the cart (feta cheese and a box of generic cereal) when I decided to bolt and hit the Jewel. $140 later I had a car full of groceries and had rehearsed a whole story in my head about why I went to Jewel instead of Butera. Then I came to my senses and realized that Grandma would not be inspecting the grocery sacks and sighed in relief. :-)
Gasoline
Oh yeah. I also paid $60 for 14 gallons of gasoline. I’d like to think this “first” would also be a “last.” But I’m pretty sure it’ll only get worse.
In a previous post, I mentioned the Gaztro Wagon, a high-end food truck that infrequently visits the building in which I work. Today, I ran downstairs to get a couple of delicious empanadas from the 5411Empanadas truck that draws a crowd every time it shows up.
For just $1.99, they sell piping hot empanadas in the following varieties: beef, ham & cheese, spinach & cheese, sweet-corn, caramelized onion or BBQ chicken. Today, I ate a sweet-corn empanada and a caramelized onion empanada. I could have eaten three more. So good. Food trucks definitely are one of the nicer perks of working downtown.
It’s been a good week for geocaching: 15 GCs in the last eight days, and I found ten of those before noon today!
The kids and I found this nano in a city park yesterday. It is a magnetized cache hidden between two plates of a metal sign attached to a fence in a park. Inside this little thing is a tiny rolled-up log sheet that we signed!
Today I found one of these: a small geocache in Skokie hidden behind a fence. It’s a plastic container covered in camouflage tape.
I found this metal box under a lamp post skirt (LPS) in a parking lot.
I found five of these bison tubes in one shopping center in Skokie (all were LPS caches). That’s a tiny little log sheet sticking out of the lid, and a tube of lip balm behind it (to show relative size).
I found this ammo box in the forest preserve on the northwest side. This one contains a travel bug and a bunch of trinkets.
And this film canister is in a defunct pay phone box on Irving Park.
My Facebook friends know that geocaching is a new (to me) hobby with which I’m a little obsessed. On the weekends, the kids and I head out to one of Chicago’s 570 city parks or 200+ neighborhoods that might have remained unknown to us were it not for geocaching. We crunch through the woods, on a mission to find a peanut-butter jar camouflaged to look like a tree branch. There usually are a few interesting trinkets inside, as well as a log where we sign “Team O’Hagan”. Last weekend, collateral finds included a beautiful deer who wandered within 15 feet of us, a flock of geese, and a compost bin that fascinated Ruairi and Liam.
Often, I’ll go looking for a cache during the week at lunchtime. Most of the caches I find downtown are small, metal containers–such as key boxes or Altoids tins–that are magnetized and attached to guard rails and newspaper boxes, on fence posts, lamp posts, EL supports and electrical boxes. It’s usually a quick interaction: Use stealth to locate and grab the cache unnoticed by a few hundred of my fellow city-dwellers; take it somewhere so I can unroll and sign the log sheet; replace the cache in exactly the same location and position in which I found it. But there are not as many interesting collateral finds downtown.
But there was a downtown cache that really wowed me. A couple of weeks ago, I set out to find a cache located a few blocks from my office: south of Randolph Street, between Green and Peoria. I surveilled the location on Google Maps, read and re-read the description, hint, and previous log entries on Geocaching.com. I was apprehensive, because this particular cache is located in a small, out-of-the-way alley. Even in broad daylight, I avoid secluded downtown alleys. However, previous GCers indicated it was quite an interesting alley, and they weren’t kidding.
The alley is home to several loading docks and the fire escape of a residential building. The doors on the loading docks have been painted to look like European travel posters.
Loading Dock #1
Loading Dock #2
Loading Dock #3
Loading Dock #4
Even the cache itself was super interesting: not the usual tiny box, this was a larger container that contained a trackable geocoin.
The Cache: Grizzly Snuff Box
Wykenwizard: Trackable Geocoin
It is the first and only geocoin I’ve found, and I almost took it with me, determined to help it move along on its journey. Until I noticed it had a spooky guy in a pointy hat (it was a Wykenwizard coin from Coventry, England). Kinda creepy, so I put it back in the cache and went on my way.
An awesome lunch hour. Even if it is in a secluded downtown alley. :-)
