my puppeteer is making me furious.

last thursday, despite the torrential downpour, allison and i headed up north to meet up with other chifg'ers at the green eye for ira's pub crawl. surprisingly, about 8 others also showed up. from there, we went north to the two way for boiler makers, relax for $1 schlitz, and wrapped it up at the metal shaker, an awesome bar that hosts all sorts of metal shows. deciding i couldn't let the rain thwart my plans proved best as i still had a great time.

allison traveled down to the north american handmade bike show in indianapolis on friday night with ben, chris and dana. since i had work until 6pm, i stuck around in chicago on friday to meet up with caitlin at the bikeart party at the flat iron, saw al's band play and then went with jake and claire up north for (another) allison's birthday. snacks and some silly charades-ish game kept the night awesome.

augie picked jake and me up saturday morning to drive to indianapolis. we arrived at the show in this huge convention center and overwhelmingly wandered around for the next few hours, staring at beautiful bikes and seeing far more people that i ever imagined would be there. the broakland kids had a booth, so we hung out there a lot with teddy ruckspin, chilling in the lounge chairs. allison, augie, jake, augie's LA friend ryan, and i went to pizza before heading over to this cool art-loft space (really similar to flat iron) to FINALLY see macaframa. i was super excited and despite most other people being pretty mellow, couldn't help myself from excessive hollering and cheering. i was really impressed with the final product and excited to yell for nate's fall, steveb, phil, and everyone else. the rowdiness all went downhill from there with a dance party with the montano kids boom box, drunken beer can (and bottle...) throwing, and an unfortunate move to a nearby bar where we were kicked out after a few hours. ha. luckily, we were able to stay at kyle and tj's hotel room and slowly recover the next morning while watching vegas vacation before heading out for brunch.


linked to andrew yoman's flickr set, with some of the least flattering pictures, ever.

eli, jason grove +montano, and stevie all came to stay in chicago that night before flying out on monday. it was awesome to just hang out, catch up, and half watch rad before deciding in finally needed to turn in for work.

this week we also went up to chris' house in roscoe village for vegan desert night. ate cupcakes, pretzels, home roasted coffee and other select beverages, best idea ever!
on wednesday, we held out monthly chi-mix-gear night at ruby's house. theme: ultimate break up mix, this time in mp3 form. good turn out and i came home with lots of new music already on my ipod. i've spent the past couple days making my way through playlists, awesome. theme for next month is body parts i believe. suggestions? this could be a good one.

book club was postponed to next week, though i made it halfway through the kundera book. i'm also mostly finished with xenocide, drawing the ender triology to a close for me. dorky or not, those books rule. i've been trying to catch up on netflix rather than holding onto them for weeks. o lucky man (5 hours, but surprisingly smooth) rosemary's baby (good, but totally weird), road to welville (funny, great cast) and i'm en route to ingmar berman's cries and whispers.

friday was free absinthe hour at the dark room followed by a couple hours at the cobra. imagine how that went...i spent a rainy saturday with jake, drinking coffee, cleaning, eating beets, more naps, watching 12monkeys and (always) more seinfeld. finally ventured out in the rain to see gino, who was in town for his birthday. bizarre party, but good to visit.
i'm hoping the torrential downpour is finally gone for a bit so getting to soccer isn't a drenching experience...