Showers and Sunshine

It was a weekend of showers (and a five min hail) and sunshine.

I kicked off Saturday with Lida’s bridal shower out in Naperville. It was hosted by S and the other bridesmaids at Red Mango, a frozen yogurt store owned by the husband of one of the bridesmaids. Heh, it was the first bridal shower I attended… I guess typically we’re supposed to play games so the guests can mingle, but the normally loud and raunchy Lida seemed unusually shy that day – perhaps it was the baby pink dress she wore that helped create the effect. So no games, but we just nommed on really good Thai take-out. For dessert, we had the run of the yogurt bar. 🙂 The highlight of the day was watching Lida squirm when she had to pull out sheer pink lingerie (one of her shower gifts) while her mom excitedly took pictures.

As soon as that ended, I was rushing back to Lakeview, for the second shower of the day, this time Sandy’s baby shower. We did play some baby-related games, including trying to diaper a teddy bear while blindfolded, and guessing the flavors of bottled baby food (peas and brown rice was disgusting as hell, but mango and chicken was quite tasty).

I stayed at the shower for a couple hours, before rushing downtown to meet Kayla for the opera of Three Decembers at the Harris Theater.

Matthew Worth, the baritone lead, is the son of Kayla’s family friend, and so she got two orchestra tickets. 😀 We had a grand time (pity we did not get to go backstage for pictures with the hunk hehe). I’ve previously watched another modern English opera (Midsummer’s Marriage, or something along those lines), but that was so terrible that I walked out halfway. But this was a short and fun one – like Goodman Theater meets Opera.

We ended the evening at La Madia, and upscale Italian pizza place with Jeff. Great wine and pizza, for an awesome deal, thanks to Groupon. 🙂

This morning, the three of us met back up again, this time at Pane’s, our favorite sandwich place down the street, for sandwiches and their wickedly delicious lemon pudding with blueberries.

From 2010-05-09 Botanical Gardens Chicago

The weather was gorgeous – one of those days where you realize once again how lucky you are to live in Chicago – bright blue skies, brilliant and warm sunshine but with a cool breeze… We just had to be outdoors. Unfortunately, Jeff had to go back into work to figure out how to deal with the volatile markets… but Kayla and I headed up to the Botanical Gardens. There were quite a number of families there, it being mother’s day and all, but we had a lovely time wandering about the flowers, and laying back on the grass to soak in the sun.