Two Stories

I love my Kindle, but every time I read a regular book (Regular book?  What's the word I'm looking for?) I crush on this bookmark.

I bought this card-turned-bookmark at the Renegade street festival one summer and it makes me laugh how much the boy's profile looks like husband, especially the hair.

There's the story on the page with words, and there's a story on the bookmark with no words.

I usually end up liking both.

Green City Market Time

My work schedule doesn't allow me much Green City Market time since its open days- Wednesdays and Saturdays- are some of my longest hours.

Most Saturday mornings I'm up and gone for work before husband opens an eye, but this Saturday was different, since I was off work for our friends' wedding later that day (congrats, friends!)

Husband and I cruised over to the farmer's market first thing in the morning, feeling like free birds.

Didn't make the bed, didn't make preparations for the day, just hopped on the back of the vespa for Lincoln Park, squeezed tight, and let Saturday soak through my scarf and sweatshirt in the morning sun.

We rounded the corner Starbucks with the late end of the early crowd for an iced latte (her) and a hot coffee (him) and then wandered the market, set like a scene on the stage of Saturday.

The colors, the sun, the coffee, the vespa, the morning.

Yes, please, and thank you city summer.

You're all sorts of kind and lovely.

City Night Lights

As mentioned in yesterday's post, husband and I abandoned the piles of boxes in our apartment this weekend in favor of a couple basics, namely sanity and summer.

The Vespa got dusted off and we meandered through the streets to the Wicker Park neighborhood.

Vespa humming along through streets lined with restaurants and teems of people dining outdoors under the dimming sky, I was reminded how cool Wicker Park is.

I have no idea how I forget this.

It's so close to us and sure, maybe I feel like a dork there (because everyone in Wicker Park seems to rock the artist thing like it's their day job) but the spark has been re-kindled and I'm reminded that this summer would be a great time to get to spend more time there.

After dinner we exchanged the Vespa for our bikes for a twilight ride down Lakeshore Path to the Planetarium.

I pulled a blanket out of my backpack and we laid flat on our backs under the city night lights.

Everyone in Chicago knows the Planetarium is one of the best spots to see the city lights at night.

I don't have a tripod, so the last picture below was taken with the camera resting on my knees.

I really want to get this flexible tripod, perfect for being tossed into the Vespa seat or a bag for city adventures.

We shivered a little bit when we stood up into the chilly night air and realized we had to bike all the way back up the path towards home.
But pedaling our bikes created the right sensation of warm body, cool air and we sealed in summer with every spin of our tires under those city night lights.
Night lights are where it's at in summer the Chicago way.

We've Moved

We've moved!

A whole 2 blocks down the street.

We are in love with our new place and are feeling so grateful.

As much as I have been chafing against this, the moving process has defined our June.

Instead of hanging things on the walls I've been climbing the walls, just itching to get back out into the city.

There's so much pressure in Chicago to sap every second out of summer in the outdoors since the rest of the year we spend so much time slugging out the harsh winters.

Somewhere along the way I can see I've absorbed this Chicagoan mindset, presumably through the osmosis of melted snow and ice.

This weekend we left the new apartment to its own heaps of boxes and had a summery blast, attending a wedding of and with some of our dearest friends, taking the Vespa out, hitting the Green City Farmer's Market, sipping Saturday morning iced soy lattes from Starbucks, riding bikes on Lakeshore Path and laying out under the night lights at the Planetarium.

I can feel the creative juices starting to flow again, and it is good.

I hope you'll forgive me for my long absence, and I hope to write a post almost as often as I unpack a box.

That could potentially be a lot of posts.

In the photos above, you can see the bare bones of our new living room (the windows!) and the Chinese place down the street that was the first restaurant I ate at the day I moved to Chicago for college almost 10 years ago.

I've made it a point to eat there on move-in day of all the new places I've lived in the city, so if you were walking down Wells last weekend, you would've seen husband and I in the window.

What has defined June for you so far?

City Lights Recommendations

City Lights!

Still here.

Thanks to my friend Danielle for texting me this rad photo.

There's a reason I'm not a "real" blogger and it probably goes along the lines of the fact that two or three times a year I abandon City Lights for a couple weeks.

The way this separates me from real bloggers is that I don't decide to take an "inspirational break" and tell my readers.

I don't line up guest posts.

I don't write posts ahead of time and then schedule them to appear like I'm here.

I'm just not that put together enough to even know I'm not blogging.

Haha.

No, I do know, and I thought I'd drop by and say... I'll be back.

Last week I drove home to visit my family for a couple days and I didn't even bring my laptop.

I recommend this!

Then I worked kind of a lot.  

I also recommend this, though not as highly.

This week we are moving.  

I don't recommend this at all.

See you soon!