Vince Vaughn's "Cheaters" filming on my street!

Our neighborhood blog, aka the "Busybody Blog," tipped us off that Vince Vaughn would be filming a movie on our street today. Sure enough, on our way to work, we saw some traffic cones, yellow tape, and a security guard in front of a restaurant that has been closed since we got here. We peeked inside, and saw the whole place done up all tacky 70s style. I took this picture from the El station when I got home. Sadly, the action had long ended -- I hear they've moved down a couple of miles to the infamous Wiener's Circle hot dog joint for filming overnight. All this picture really shows is the yellow and green "Chi Thao Massage" sign they put up in front of the filming location. Get it? "Chi-town?" I thought it was pretty clever. We'll probably have to see the movie just to see how seedy they make our hood look.

Anyway, movie stars aren't that impressive -- especially not Vince Vaughn, who is a card-carrying walrus now -- but what is awesome is stuff happening in my neighborhood.

I'm a-runnin'.

Remember when I said I had started training for a 5k? Of course you do, because you're one of my two readers. Congratulations on having excellent taste and good short-term memory!

It's two months later, and my "race" is tomorrow. It's a 3.5 mile charity run benefiting a food drive, and I put race in quotes to indicate that the likelihood of me being able to gear up to cruising speed in a crowd of a brazillion people is, well, unlikely. The important part is that I get a t-shirt, and an official number with a little timing chip in it, and Chris' company (with whom I am participating) is feeding and beering me afterwards. Yay!

Even if I don't get to run the whole way due to other meatbags being in the way, I am happy knowing that I can actually run 3.5 miles and have been doing so for a couple of weeks now. The awesome podcasts I've been using to train also has programs for 8k and 10k, which is kind of tempting. Kind of. Running sounded a lot more fun when temperatures were in the 60s, which was right up until three days ago. So I don't think it will become a new hobby, but we'll see.

Photos of me with my official timing chip number thing will be uploaded as soon as possible.

Attention parents: click on the map and it will open bigger, allowing you to better see my race route.

Update: I ran! I managed to keep up a jog the entire time, though the massive crowd of 20,000 people did slow me down a little. It was really cool running through Grant Park, past Buckingham Fountain and the Art Institute. The President even flew by in his helicopter and backup auxiliary helicopter! He was coming home for the weekend. How is this not the greatest city ever?

Ephemera

We made these awesome bowls out of some old "learn Spanish" records that belonged to my Grandpa Gil. My dog destroyed them less than two days later. I'm starting to think that carpe diem is Latin for "this is why we can't have nice things."

Ms. Payton's Lion

Months and months ago, our good friends Andy and Jennie "Carpet Angels" Paulsen decided they were going to have a baby. I, being a good friend and a good knitter, naturally wanted to make a Birth Day gift for the little one. I heard that Jennie wanted a lion. Cool, right? But of course! One lion, coming up! I bet I'd even have my choice of a very natural, lifelike pose, or more of a fun cartoony option, right? Patterns galore for something as awesome as a lion!

Aw, hells no. There are no lion patterns on all of the intarwebs. Okay, there was one vintage one, but it had the all-too-common disease of Ugly Vintage Knitting Pattern. I don't know what they were thinking back then, other than that knitted clothes may have been more of a necessity than now, so toys were low on the priority list.

At any rate, I found an adorable pattern for a kitty, and decided it couldn't be all that hard to make a kitty into a lion. It even came with a dress pattern! Which in the interest of Gender Equality and Better Gift Giving, I decided to do regardless of the eventual boy/girl situation.

The Paulsen's baby girl, Payton, was born while we were in Ecuador, and when we got back, I finished up the lion and his dress (yeah, a boy lion, and his dress -- grow up and let him be) and sent him off to the verdant fields of Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Jennie reports that Payton loves little Lionel (named by Andy) and his beautiful blue tunic (also named by Andy). Huzzah for every baby getting one toy that's life-size at birth!

Easter chicks

I made these for my niece and nephew for Easter, and am mighty pleased with how the showcase photos came out. I wonder how long these tiny eggs lasted before being lost forever under my sister-in-law's refrigerator.

Happy 5th Birthday, Funundrum!

Five years ago today, I was wedged into a tiny couch in TinyHouse(tm) by the beach in San Diego. I thought it would be fun to have a blog to write all the ridiculous things that popped into my head during my day job, which was to write ridiculous websites for plastic surgeons and lawyers. It was fun. It was fun all the way through:

5 adventures in Latin America

2 interstate moves

2 new jobs

1 engagement

1 wedding

some guy's entire MBA program

2 wedding anniversaries

at least 4 new hobbies, 2 of which have stuck

1 crazy HypnoDog

1 evil squirrel

more bad copy than you can shake a stick at

And it's still fun. I may go through periods where it feels like a chore, but all I really want is to write something that makes me giggle when I read it back. I hope I've made you giggle a couple times too, because I'm going to keep doing it the best I can. Five years is a long time in Internet Years. I'm kind of proud of that.

Funundrum -- the circus gets on the crazy train.

Wow, so five years (!) down the line, the world is finally starting to sit up and take notice of the finest non-word ever created. I was googling "funundrum" one day (who doesn't?), and...

...this came up. What. The hell. Here's what I get for not copyrighting the Finest Non-Word Ever Created (tm). <-- Maybe it's not too late to start. So, yeah. The biggest circus in America, not counting Congress, has up and usurped my blog name for the purposes of shilling their little dog-and-pony-and-sweaty-clown show*. My favorite part is how my browser shows two tabs, both alike in dignity, with the same name but incredibly different outcomes.

I'm putting this out there, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Wait, no. First of all, you win today's Bad Copy of the Day award. Who gets off using "and" and "&" in the same name? Shame on you. Okay, so now I'm putting this out there. I loved the circus as a kid. I loved just about all of it, including the motorcycle guy inside the big steel cage, which doesn't make much sense, looking back on it. I'd still like to love the circus. I'm just finding it a little hard, on account of y'all taking off with the Funundrum thing without so much as a howd'yedo. So maybe someone in marketing is reading this, as they undoubtedly first did when they did the initial search on Funundrum. If you are, marketing people, the circus is coming to Chicago in November. I'd love to be there if you could arrange it. I'd review it for the blog and everything. I bet, if you've got a decent PR guy, you could even get some sort of media exposure out of it. Just putting it out there, with this link: Funundrum does Funundrum.

Update upon re-reading this post: Holy crap, that tiger is actually riding the crazy train.

*Let me tell you my Sweaty Clown story. When I was about four, my parents took me to the circus, which I always loved, so thanks mom and dad. But that time, they decided it would be fun and cool and a great childhood memory if they volunteered me to go out there and sit on the clown fire truck as it drove around under those hot lights in the third ring. I was pretty excited until I actually got up there. Once I was squinting up into the face of the clown sitting next to me, I realized he was sweaty from jumping over barrels in the cowboy clown skit, further overheated inside his polyester costume due to the clown car incident, and probably already well looking forward to his first post-show beer of the evening. I'm not saying that I wasn't treated with kindness and respect, because I was, but I just want to go on record that Sweaty Clown Fire Truck is by far the best method for terrifying an otherwise laid-back four-year-old.

Mystery Envelope Thrilling Conclusion! AAAAHHH REALLY THIS TIME

But first, the thrilling conclusion of my butter-intensive German chocolate cake.

Now, on to the letter:

Hello Elizabeth! Thank you so much for returning the notecard you found in Knitting without Tears. I checked the book out a few months ago (January maybe?). The card was a thank you note to my aunt for the Christmas gift she sent to my young son. And you're right...at the time I was racking my brain trying to remember where I put that card. After about a week of searching high and low, I just wrote another one. Still don't remember, but I think I must have put it in the book intending to look up my aunt's address while I was at work.

Mystery solved! And what a great story to tell.

BTW - I am a knitter, still consider myself a beginner. I love Elizabeth Zimmerman's writing. I think she is so funny and has been so helpful with little tips here and there. I'm on Ravelry (do you know about this website?) and have a couple of finished projects posted if you are interested in looking. [username]. If you don't know about Ravelry.com, you should check it out. It's an online knitting community, very addictive and so inspiring to see others' work.

Thank you again.

Best,
[awesome mystery knitter's name that starts with G]

So, yeah! Very, very cool. And oh my god! I just looked her up on Ravelry (of which I am, of course, already a devoted member), and her favorite color is green and she seems cool. But then again, all knitters are cool. Have you ever met a mean knitter? I mean, aside from people who are mean because they're old which really means that they've been mean all their lives but feel like they can show it more now that they're old. They probably didn't knit when they were younger anyway, they probably learned just to spite someone.

What do I do? I haven't written her back or anything, because it seems weird. Yay for the city!

Seen in the city

We were downtown yesterday, outside the historical and ridiculously sumptuous Palmer House hotel, when we stumbled upon a group of musicians setting the scene for this resplendent groom, waiting to ride up to the front on his horse. In my mind, he took that thing right into the main lobby. Not sure how a horse gets through revolving doors, but they can train them pretty well these days.