Quadruple-Booked

Had a pretty busy night last night...

• In-home blinds/window treatment consultation.
• Kirby vacuum cleaner demonstration (which Eric booked, not realizing we had other things on, and which we tried to cancel, to no avail.)
• Northwestern journalism student interviewing Eric for a project. Subject - Living Water.
• Living Water Ladies Dance Party.

I was quite pooped. After an hour with the blinds guy (hmm, we're actually leaning towards doing nothing - we kinda like the openness of our lovely wide window with the view of the leafy trees), the journalism student came over, and while she interviewed Eric I put the final touches to our delicious salmon dinner. Once we'd eaten, I headed over to the church for the dance party when the Kirby guy arrived, so sent him in to meet with Eric alone. Stayed only for a short while - my tiredness was accompanied by a low-grade headache, so I decided to head home. Yay for living across the street. But the Kirby guy was still there, and he only left at 10:30pm! We were way impressed by the deep-down stuff he managed to suck out of our sofas and (ugh) mattress, but weren't ready to drop a grand on a vacuum cleaner, even though I think at some point it would be a really worthwhile buy.

You would think at that point we'd drop into bed exhausted. Well, we did. But we still watched an episode of Veronic Mars on the laptop, and woke up still tired this morning.

After taking Eric to work, going to the gym, and doing some PR work at home, I headed out to BeByBaby (cutest store ever!) to pick up a shower gift for some friends who are expecting, and then had an organizing appointment this afternoon. Yes, tonight will be a lay low night. We have to pick Eric's brother up (he's travelling in from Detroit by bus today) but after that we'll cozy up to the Lost season finale (which we missed last night but can catch online) and hopefully get a good 8 or 9 hours sleep after that.

Still looking forward to Harry's coming in on Monday!!

O Brother, Where Art Thou

I'm working from home today, but taking a little break for some Minneolas and a blog post.

Eric and I are really looking forward to my brother's visit from South Africa next week. Harry arrives in Chicago on Monday afternoon, and will be with us for about a week. Then he's off to Hawaii for 10 days (seeing as how he's "in the area" - it's only about 8 hours worth of flights away!), and then back with us for 3 or 4 days.

He wants to play it by ear while in our beautiful city, but there will be some must-stops on the agenda: namely Coldstone Creamery (hey, I don't mind!) and Starbucks. Hehe. There's a Starbucks a 5 minute walk away from our place, not to mention it's on every 2nd street corner in the city, so I'm sure he'll get his fill.

We'll try and do some fun stuff in the city, and might take a day trip to Amish country. I've never seen Amish people outside of the movie Witness so that should be interesting. And now that we're part of a Mennonite church, with the Amish and the Mennonites both coming from the Anabaptist tradition, it's even more intriguing to me.

We can't wait to show him around some of our favorite neighborhoods in Chicago, check out some of our fave eating spots, and of course have him meet our friends and church family here.
Oh, and there will be multiple games of Settlers of Catan played. Yes indeed. Harry is a fan after we introduced him to the standard version during our trip to Port Elizabeth this past February. When he's here we'll introduce him to Cities & Knights, the expanded version. It will blow his mind.

While the main and best thing is obviously the family/human element :), I also have asked for some re-ups on South African goodies - namely, Rooibos Tea, Cadbury's Milk Chocolate and Biscuit Chocolate, Mrs Balls Chutney, and Tennis Biscuits. Ah, the taste of home...

Memorial Weekend in D-Town

It's Memorial Day weekend, and we are in Detroit with the fam for a couple of days. The last time we were here was Christmas? Or perhaps January. Either way, it has been a while since we made the trip down I-94 so it's nice to be back. Detroit is all abuzz since three of the home teams are playing big games today on their home turf - the Detroit Red Wings (Hockey); Detroit Tigers (Baseball); and the Detroit Pistons (Basketball). I'm not much of a sports fan, but if there is one sport I CAN enjoy watching it's basketball, and I'm proud to say I can even name the Pistons' line-up. Eric's first words to me this morning were something along the lines of "I'm so excited about the sports tonight!" How impossibly sweet and romantic he is.

It was a reunion of sorts this evening as well as fun sports. Evan, my BIL, is working in Detroit over the summer, so he's here. Reese, old buddy, old pal, came over to watch the game/s. As did our old friend Jeff - who now lives in California but happens to be in town as well - and it's been lovely to see them all. Although I must admit that I left the guys to their hooting and hollering downstairs a while back, because I can't follow the game when we keep switching channels, and I kinda had a hankering to play Spider Solitaire. I know, I'm really really sad.

Following that (i.e. when I start getting carpel tunnel from moving my wrist too much over the cards) I decided to start googling people. You do it too. Don't pretend like you don't. And if you don't it's because you didn't yet think of it, and you're going to get right on it in a minute.

Don't forget the quotation marks = more effective searches.

So I guess that makes me not only really really sad, but also a stalker of sorts. Oi.

Looking forward to a lie-in tomorrow morning, followed by a good ol' Memorial weekend bbq (vege-kebabs coming right up!), and hopefully a visit to my good friend and brand new mom, Candice. She gave birth to her little girl a mere week ago, and I can't wait to see her and the baby!

Hopefully I'll get a chance to do some reading as well. I've got a couple of books on organizing that I'm working through, as well as the new Br-ian Mc-Lar-en one on ancient spiritual disciplines, which I'm quite enjoying. (That's not a typo - I have my reasons.)

Well, I think that's it for tonight. Hopefully the sports will be over soon, and Eric will come upstairs - now that I've played Solitaire, looked up old friends and random acquaintances on the web, and fascinated you all with this blog post, I've got a new hankering to watch more Veronica Mars/super-teen-sleuth on dvd.

Ah, Spring is here!!

Eric and I went for a walk down to the lakefront this morning - it's practically a sin NOT to do that on a gorgeous Spring day. Finally the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining and birds are singing - just perfect.

Weekend in St Paul

On the weekend of May 4th, we drove through to St Paul, MN to visit our good friends, the McCoys. We hadn't seen Seth and Jen and the kids since they'd moved there from Chicago, over a year ago, so we were really excited to spend time with them. Seth is the Emerging Generation Director (high school and college age kids) at Woodland Hills Church, and he invited Eric to speak at their service on Sunday evening. So not only was this an opportunity to hang out with friends, but it was like old times when Eric and Seth worked together in student ministry out in the Chicago 'burbs. In some ways, I think Eric felt he'd come full circle - to be able to work with Seth in this capacity, but this time around to have the freedom to really share from his heart and convictions. As we all know, the last time he did that we ended up moving to the city! He spoke on church history from a Mennonite perspective, and then spoke about our experiences of community and the church at Living Water and in our neighborhood. There was time for Q&A and it was a very interactive evening, with many of the students coming up to Eric afterwards feeling quite impacted. We'd prepared a little slideshow and one image showed a Google map with our city block - there was quite a bit of surprise when they were told that as many as 35-40 people from church were pretty much our immediate neighbors! And many more people live within a 3-4 block radius. I guess it's not something you come across every day.

What else did we do that weekend? Well, we drove around St Paul and Minneapolis, to get a feel for the Twin Cities; had lunch in a cool Global Market spot; almost test drove a Toyota Prius; grocery shopped for ingredients for a delicious bean soup, which we ate while watching Lost, attended Woodland Hills morning service (Greg Boyd's message was hard-hitting and awesome); and hung out with some of the students and leaders after the evening service, around a bonfire.

Alas, Monday morning it was time to leave, so after a delicious brunch in the charming French Meadow Bakery & Cafe, we hopped in our rental car and sped off home to Chicago. Sped being the operative word.... :( Unfortunately, I was happily driving along (Eric was taking a nap) when a cop pulled me over. He told us he'd been trailing me for 4 miles (yep, that's me, can't tell the difference between a BMW and a Toyota Camry, so how am I supposed to recognize an unmarked patrol car?) and that I had been driving an average of 87 miles per hour (22 miles over the posted 65). Ouch. He hit me for the full amount, and gave me a hefty fine. Where's a trunk monkey when you need one?

Ah well - despite the unfortunate incident on the way home, all in all we had a great weekend!

And the photo of the week is...

Probably my favorite photo from the retreat: Charletta with Uppendo and Frank - two of the children from the Feliki family (refugees from Burundi).

Eating while retreating.

These pics speak for themselves.

What language barrier?

A couple of pics from the retreat's Sunday morning worship service. In the one photo, Uziye (from DR Congo) is sharing in her own language. Her son, Thierry, translates it into French, as he speaks both languages. Then Katherine translates into English!!

Retreat Nature Walk

A number of us went on a nature walk, during Saturday's "Free Time".

Retreat Fun Night

A funny skit was performed during Saturday night's activities at the church retreat - unsuspecting volunteers from the audience were given roles on the spot - and Eric was a table. I think he may have a shot at the Oscars.

Two Erics

My Eric, and Eric Dahlaw, chatting outside some of the cabins.

All Church Retreat!!

A few weekends ago MANY of the people in our church rolled up their sleeping bags, gathered their toiletries, bible and journal, and of course the obligatory flashlight, and drove en masse out to Camp Friedenswald for our much anticipated all-church retreat.

Time was spent relaxing, having good conversations, going on nature walks, eating particularly good camp food (kudos to the kitchen staff there), reflecting on our church community and the role it has in what God is doing in the Rogers Park neighborhood, and what gifts and passions we all have to bring to Living Water. In particular, we reflected on the number of refugees that have recently been coming to LWCC, from Burundi, DR Congo, and even Burma, and what a joy this has been for our church family. There are already a large number of Cambodians in the church who came over long ago as refugees, and so this is not something particularly new to the church - but it certainly is for those of us who are newer to the LWCC family ourselves.

We are changed and are changing because of these new faces and stories among us. Sometimes it is hard - mostly because LIFE is hard for them as they struggle to adjust to their new life here, learn English, try to find work, etc. So we do what we can to walk alongside them, befriend them, care for them and welcome them into our midst. Some of these families came to the retreat - and it was great for them (as it was for all of us) to get out of the gritty city and enjoy nature and trees and space.

I feel like LWCC is a place where I see the Gospel being lived out - particularly when I think of Ephesians 2:16.

16-18Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us
to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached
peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so
made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access
to the Father.

Enjoy some photos from the weekend, which I've added to this post, and will include in some posts to follow.

We've been pegged...

Okay, it was kinda funny when I first came across the StuffWhitePeopleLike website (see sidebar) and laughed at how many things we could relate to...

but The Onion?! So not only are we very predictably white, we are also fodder for the satirical.

Veronica Mars AND The Wire? Seriously, just last night Eric and I finished watching our 2nd V-Mars episode of the evening on DVD, and remarked at how we needed to rent the 5th season of The Wire real soon.

Oi vey.

I can't keep up with my life

Blogging is serious business. And I can't blog as fast as I live.


Somehow that makes me sound far more interesting than I am. Maybe I should rephrase that to communicate the idea that while sometimes fun, interesting, or blogworthy events and conversations happen, then the mundane, the tyranny of the urgent, and the to-do list come straight after, and before I know it, I have two months worth of photos to download...

Food and Friends - Our Favorite Combo

A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with our friends, John and Lynnae (the girl with the magic shears). Ever since my gulet vacation in Turkey way back when I lived in London, Turkish food has been one of my favorite ethnic cuisines. So for the longest time I've wanted to eat at Turquoise, in Roscoe Village. Now that I've been there I can highly recommend it, and it has a number of vegetarian friendly options.

It had also been a while since John, Lynnae, Eric and I had all hung out together. We had a wonderful evening, followed by yummy dessert back at our place. Thanks Mr and Mrs Brewster!!