april showers bring may flowers

so in spite of myself, i'll continue to discuss the weather since it has such ridiculous control over my mental well-being. 70s in late march/april is fucking incredible. even broke the record high on wednesday, 83 degrees at o'hare. oh global warming, YOU'RE. ALRIGHT!
despite trying to eat healthier in general, i was tastee freeze frequenter last week--3 days in a row to be exact. it's just so easy when the whole neighborhood wants to hang out all the time. bbqs and porch time is already in full swing. AND THEN the weekend of birthdays begins. thursday video nasties was an early meet up at TF followed by stone beer drinking at kyle/ali's. and they live is a great movie, or what i was able to follow over the yelling. AND our seedlings are sprouting at ali's!


after work on friday, we bbq'ed and bocci'ed, then headed up to cole's to celebrate claire and chris' birthdays. luckily cole seemed genuinely stoked to have us there--which kind of makes me wonder exactly HOW terrible one would have to be...much mellower than the sheer rowdiness of aug/phil's bdays to be sure though.
despite ample complaining of a potential "colder" weekend, saturday cleared by 1pm. ali, kyle and i rode up to evanston, and caught a late lunch at heartland cafe. i didn't know such a stereotypically hippy cafe could exist in chicago, but it does and reminds me a great deal of dharma's in santa cruz. black bean burgers, yum. after birthday cake with chris' parents, we headed up to the two-way for sean's birthday. bizarre crowd to begin (you can only take so much kenny loggins) but we slowly took it over, with a continual flow of old style pitchers and new faces. we discussed boiler makers at midnight, but once the crowd swelled to 30, we figured it was a lost cause. instead, we put rick astley on the jukebox 3 times in a row. alas, e farrar came to the rescue, and returned to the table with two trays of the worst whisky you've ever tasted. with a countdown to midnight, the music was turned down and the whole bar joined in singing sean happy birthday while we haphazardly assembled our drinks, splashing whisky all over. all our songs started turning up on the juke box, and kim brought out the dance party in all of us with a whole lot of mariah carey. dance parties, whisky, and good friends make any saturday a win.
sunday brunch was a late affair, but filled with vegan cupcakes and lots of potato products, patio hang outs and plenty of sunshine. sundays are always best, always.