alison the wilca

Hello! I met my husband and many, many friends here so I'll always have a soft spot for it. I also found my cookbook this year (actually, my kitchen was being demo'd and a worker found/saved it from the back of a cabinet). Back in the day, the close community here was just the best. 

Wait, what's that I hear? "buzz! buzz! the spelling bee is here!"  IYKYK

Currently (loving it):

Finished earlier this year and still think about (so good!! please read if you care about the future, and past, of water policy in the US and/or if you just enjoy fascinating histories):

All this hoopla and no announcement of the beer they will be serving.

**The ticket is taken! Sorry, i can't for the life of me find the drop down to close the thread.**

I have 1 extra ticket for tonight's show- Sat 12/6.  Anyone interested?  I'll take less than face for it- $50?

Half Acre IS awesome.  They have a lovely tap room- you can bring food or have food delivered.  I believe the Saturday brewery tour is extremely popular, though, and hard to get in. 

There is another brewery close to Half Acte called Begyle.  It is a fairly new brewery with awesome beer.  They have Saturday tours but no tap room, only a store.  http://www.begylebrewing.com/home/

Revolution has a brewpub in Wicker Park/Bucktown/Logan Square (I can't decipher those neighborhoods anymore) - it is very popular .  Their beers are great.

Out in the west suburbs is Two Brothers brewing- they have a pretty good (free) tour and brewpub attached.

There are about a MILLION breweries popping up all the time here.  If you want to enjoy many kinds of local beers, there are so many eateries/bars to choose from.    If you also enjoy old arcade games, try Headquarters Beecade (http://hqbeercade.com/) or Emporium (http://emporiumchicago.com/), both of which have more than one location.

Also, just a warning for anyone unaware- Hot Doug's is permanently closed.  

So I got selected in the lottery and bought 2 tickets ($50 each, btw).  However, the tickets available were "Presale GA."  The lottery note said something about the presale tickets being the best seats so I don't know how GA achieves that unless there is a separate section of front rows taped off for Presale GA vs regular GA.  I'm not certain that anyone will know how this will really work until the day of but just putting it out there.

By the way, unless you are in the very front of the lawn, you can't see a thing.  It is fairly flat instead of slightly sloped like some venues.

I have never liked New Year's Eve/Day.  It's such a melancholy time and the countdown to midnight is always anti-climactic.  I adore Auld Lang Syne though, but that is not specifically a New Year's thing.  Eh.  Christmas, though?  LOVE.  For me, the depression sets in when it's over. 

i can't believe we're still famous.

I am loving this record (thank you, local library, for having awesome music).  It is really fun, sounds great, and the songs are catchy.  I like when I can remember a song later on and kind of keep enjoying it even when it isn't playing.  Celestial Shores and I Like the Things About Me are among my favorite tracks.  It does seem like a pretty short record though.  I was surprised when it ended.

Aside from social media, I'm certain some of it has to do with the proliferation of internet usage by people in general.  When I first came to the board in 2001/2002, dynamic message boards like this that were used by lots of people were fairly new (obviously there were boards and chat rooms during the 90s, but larger majorities started escaping to "online" in the late 90s/early 2000s).  That probably fueled a lot of interest... "Wow!  A place where people who love my favorite band talk and post pictures and do blanks and S&H trades (just threw you all back 10 years, didn't I?) and talk about funny things late night!  This is great!"

That newness and uniqueness is just diluted now.  There is too much out there, too many ways to communicate, and the people that formed friendships in the early days continued friendships in other ways.  It is what it is.... it is kinda like when you hear an album you love for the first time.  You can never re-feel that again.

I have to get in on the old-timer thread.  I CAN NOT believe that Rosie has that many posts from way back when!  That is wild.  Then again, we used to all stay up late into the night posting furiously to different threads.  It was the glory days to be sure.  I think maybe the RSBF thread fueled some of it, too.

VC is where I met my friends and husband and received help from kind strangers.  I think among my first posts (before the Board Crash of 2003) was asking for help in how to best get from Columbus to Ann Arbor during the first time I traveled to the see Wilco in the fall of 2002.  It was the same trip where I gave Glenn our Wilca tape.  ::wistful::

remember that there will likely be a ton of crazy old hippie women hoping to woo bob dylan from the front row.  jasmine and i once got stuck behind two hippie ladies that wildly threw their hair around in our faces through ALL of Bob's set.

oooh, summer.

• running and biking all over town
• a mini-redo of my kitchen (restaining my cabinets and painting plus a few other things)
• working on my blog
• running in Hood to Coast in August (!!!)
• hammock time
• library time
• gardening, although i highly prefer the outcome of the garden to the actual gardening work
• eating fresh veggies/fruit that is so sorely missed in the winter here

I remember seeing them in 2001 or 2002 at the Wiltern in LA.  I was in the second to last row reeeeeally high up which was already slightly dizzying.  Mixed with the incredible euphoria their music creates made for a really memorable night... I felt like I was levitating. 

If you haven't seen Heima, please do.  It is an intensely beautiful concert doc of a tour they did in small towns in Iceland.  The scene of their show in an old whaling warehouse is stunning and the cinematography is top notch.

How to choose?!

FNL

The Wire

MSCL

Sopranos

Arrested Dev

Freaks & Geeks

Pete & Pete

i had a (tiny) 2 bedroom in Bucktown for just under $1000. it can be done but is difficult.

You could do the Harry Carray's on Navy Pier. They have fireworks later at night if you are there later. They will at least have a bunch of other kid friendly activities nearby and I've seen quite a few kids at Harry Carray's before. A boat ride before could be fun!

Rosemont has a lot of hotels and is a short ride on the CTA blue line to the city. Oak Park is also lovely, home to lots of FL Wright's work (http://www.oprf.com/flw/index-walk.html), and a short-ish ride on the train. Not sure about the hotel situation there, though.

if you want a really awesome hot dog, Chicago style and otherwise, please do yourself a favor and go to Hot Dougs. You should really get one of their specials instead of the chicago dog, though. They are often on vacation so check their site before heading out: http://www.hotdougs.com/

Here is a thread in LTH Forum (an amazing chicago foodie board) all about different chicago dogs and which are the best. Pick one! http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=19223&hilit=chicago+hot+dog

My sister got me a copy of the BBC adaptation of MR James A Warning to the Curious for Christmas and it was quite good and moody. Just starting to read his collected written works. I like that he was an academic who write these stories to entertain his professor friends around the fireplace.

I'm a huge John Bellairs fan and somehow never read this one. I wish i had this edition; I'm reading it on my silly kindle. This one is staring out pretty creepy, although most of them are pretty good at being spooky.

Tess is the best! I need to re-read it one day.

Anyways, I'm now on a 19th century novel kick so I've just started:

 

I'm an avid reader of rookiemag.com and they will not shut up about this book so I caved and got it on my Kindle.

Everett Ruess was a poet of the West in the late '20s and early '30s who one day went out exploring into the wilds of Utah and disappeared. He was in his early twenties. His writings are beautiful- I adore the southwest and he lets me travel there.