Anne Is Surprised to Learn…

…that for the last six-months, Mark has not been going to work.

We survived Jupiter’s first onslaught, with no downed limbs and no power loss and we are now girding our loins for its next wave that is expected to hit in the morning. It thawed-out enough today that we were able to get out and about. It seems that someone had come down with a touch of cabin fever. I didn’t do it! It was on accident. So, we headed over to U-City for the Loop Ice Carnival.

I couldn’t talk Anne into sliding down the Frozen ice slide. I didn’t really think that she was too old for it. And I could not convince her to ride the rather rickety looking Ferris wheel that was setup in the old Church’s Chicken parking lot. This is probably just as well, because she would have then expected me to ride with her and it really didn’t look safe. She wouldn’t even pose for a picture in the giant snow globe, even after I promised her that I wouldn’t roll her down Delmar in it. So, our little outing basically devolved into window shopping. 

“Time to dial back on the Lemony Snicket binging.” – Count Olaf

Art-o-mat

There are a lot of cute and interesting shops in the Loop. So, window shopping there is not a bad thing. Though, I am still trying to get my head wrapped around a t-shirt that I saw emblazoned with, “Clayton – The Manhattan of Suburbia”. I mean, is it supposed to be a complement or a diss? Who would wear this shirt?

More interestingly down the street at the Serendipity Gallery was the Art-o-mat, a vending machine that dispenses art. I liked the concept, but Anne thought that they should have gone full Monty and introduced a claw. This would make art acquisition a game of skill and not simply money. Imagine a machine filled with mountains of reductive crap and one Monet in an impossible to reach spot. You could make millions and still keep the painting.

Afterwards, we went to Blueberry Hill for lunch, where coincidentally they had both Cold as Ice by Foreigner and Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice in the rotation. Blueberry Hill is not just another cowboy bar. I don’t care how many bright and intelligent four-year-olds say it is, even as they tell their visiting grandparents this. It is a bar, but is more of a rock-and-roll bar and it is full of memorabilia.

Anne noticed an old Chuck Berry poster on the wall. It was so old that he hadn’t even changed his name yet. Berry still had an “n” at the end of it. The poster was for a juke joint down on Vanderventer called the Crank Club. It is now just a vacant lot. Most amazingly, Chuck Berry was playing there all week for free.

Since, we’re going all stream of consciousness today, when Johnny Burnette’s You’re Sixteen – You’re Beautiful came on, Anne started singing along to the music. Only, she changed the words a little: “You’re sixty-two. You’re beautiful and you’re mine. ” Now that’s a song of fire and ice that I’m certainly game for.