OFT No. 6 - The Museum of Contemporary Art

Sorry, yes, have been neglectful in the past couple of weeks. I like how the absence of OFT posts makes people contact me and ask "oh no! Does this mean you're not having any fun?"** It's just been kind of busy recently, and last weekend one of us was not feeling well so we took it easy. All is well now, not to worry.

Last weekend (ok, two weekends ago), we felt like getting a little cultured up, so we headed to the Chicago MCA. Smartie Brian noticed that it is free for forty days to celebrate 40 years of being open. Score!

The MCA is actually pretty small. The building itself is not really impressive, unlike other museums where the edifice is a work of art in its own right. The main temporary exhibition was called "Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967" which sounded so promising! But it wasn't really that great. We joined a tour, and while the docent obviously knew her stuff about the pieces and the artists, she didn't really have that rock 'n roll kinda feeling, you know? Also, it seemed like they mostly were showcasing music and art from the 60s and 70s. I think the 80s and 00s could have used a lot more press (I am kind of willing to skip much of the 90s...shhhh...not all of it). One cool thing was that they set up a recording booth that anyone could book, so it was like a performance and a demo session all in one.

The rest of the museum was just kind of eh, although they had a nice exhibit of Calder mobiles (Brian: "I wouldn't want that in my house"). I would!

Polychrome and Horizontal Bluebird

The lowlight of the museum was a performance art piece that just involved a male/female couple making out in various positions. I'm sure it was supposed to make us aware of our discomfort (or arousal?) at such a public display of affection, or our immaturity. Yeah, I'll admit it, I giggled. It was just odd though, and I kept wondering a) if they had a whole lot of chapstick stashed somewhere; and b) what would happen if someone plunked down beside them and starting making out too.

Anyway, that was about it. Then I dragged Brian to an art supply store for some more canvas. We met Donald for dinner at a Mexican/Cuban resto, where I had some decidedly awesome pork chops (size of my head! perfectly cooked! on top of sweet potatoes!) Portions are definitely not lacking in this corner of the world.

**Since starting work at the U of Chicago, I have since learned that it is often referred to as the place "where fun goes to die"... sigh.

OFT No.5 - Music To Our Ears

This week we actually did TFTs - three fun things!

First, was the Bright Eyes concert on Friday night, at the Chicago theater. This was a highly anticipated show for me, because I just love Bright Eyes. The frontman, Conor Oberst, is one of the best lyricists around these days, and I was excited to see if he put on a good show, too. The theater was beautiful, an old baroque movie palace. Our seats were awesome, we paid just a little extra and got box seats rather than balcony and it was so worth it. Soloist Andrew Bird opened the show, and reminded us a lot of Final Fantasy, who opened for Bloc Party when we saw them last year. His stuff was very inventive - any given song included several layers of looping, whistling, singing, guitar, glockenspeil, and two very interesting looking, er... instruments:



He had a nice voice and obviously was multi-talented, but after about 3 songs it got a little repetitive.

Bright Eyes on the other hand was really good, though Conor seemed sick, drinking lots of water and telling us about how he was cold all day. Listening to a BE album, you might think it's just him, but there were two other guitars, a drummer and a keyboardist. It was good fun, they sounded good and played no less than 3 of their war-protest songs. It struck me during the concert, as it has a couple of times before while listening to one of their albums, that they sometimes have more of a folky/country sound than I would ever usually go for. But that's only on a few songs, and regardless, the lyrics are too good to pass up. They didn't play my favorite song, unfortunately, but Brian sweetly put it on our mm50 iPod player when we got home.

The second OFT of the weekend was Donald's first orchestra concert at Northwestern on Saturday night. They played 3 pieces - a Brahms overture, a Brahms concerto for violin and cello and a Dvorák symphony. It was a good, free evening of culture (thanks Donald!)

Finally, the third OFT was going out for dinner with Brian's lab (including his boss) to celebrate some good news about a grant application. We went to Opera, a restaurant housed in an old film storage warehouse in the south loop. On Sundays and Tuesdays they have a prix fixe, which is a pretty great deal relative to the prices of each of their dishes. We had a fun night chatting with Weiss labbers and stuffing ourselves silly!

A pretty busy weekend, as you can see. Not sure what's up for next week, but my Chicago Architecture Foundation membership finally showed up, so perhaps we'll try to go on the architecture river cruise...

Home Sweet Home

Well, the time has come, we can finally post pictures of our house!

Here's the view from the bedroom door. It's hard to tell but there's quite a bit of room between the bed and the window, so we'll be putting a small loveseat or chair-and-a-half there in the (hopefully) near future:


The bed - those are the paintings I did on the weekend. I think they work pretty nicely in the space.


Obligatory bathroom photo - note the cool inside of the medicine cabinet - one of my favorite ideas put into action!


The entranceway - it was too narrow for a console table, so we installed a small wall shelf - it's perfect!


The view of the main area from the entranceway. Hm, who's that on the TV?


The living room area. Note our awesome new rug, and the chaise part of the sofa under the stripey throw - very decadent! Also, my "photoscape" makes its appearance on the wall that we painted ourselves. The color looks a little light in the picture, but it's a lovely shade of minty green. And zeroing in on the TV, why, it's Rose and Dorothy, a couple of Golden Girls!


The view out of the living room; in the foreground is our "window bench" made from Brian's old coffee table and some of the cushions I have:


My desk/office area. As you can see, we still need to buy a new office chair. The lone kitchen table chair that Brian brought with him suffices in the meantime:


The breakfast bar. Brian's favorite place to sit in the morning with the paper:


The inside view of the kitchen:


And one last shot, of my very fun sock monkey slippers:


That's it! I hope it was worth the wait. We love it.

News From My Desk

Apparently there are bats around campus, as I was greeted by this email in my inbox this morning:

"I have urged everyone to close their windows and all windows of conference rooms when leaving a space because of pigeons taking up residence in vacant rooms…and that still applies. But Dr. Larson found another type of critter that might make its way through an open window….BATS. Fortunately “his” bat was dead upon his arrival, but even a dead bat is scary. This is nesting season for bats and I am sure that no one wants to share space with a bat family. So please….please….please do not leave windows open. I know that it is unseasonably warm; I know your air conditioners have been removed; and I know some silly person in the Plant Department turned on the heat. So feel free to open a window, but don’t open it too wide and be sure to close it when you leave…even for a short period unless of course you are fond of pigeons and bats."

Nice.

One of the Research Assistants in our lab found out that she is free and clear of cancer! She struggled with lymphoma in the past year and heard this amazing news at her scan today. Woohoo!

Ok, back to work.

Mental Note

On Tuesday, I left my car headlights on all day. Of course I hadn't realized it, so I was confused when I couldn't open my car door with my remote. A few things were conspiring against me: 1) about a year ago, my battery died and when they replaced it, for some reason the electrical system got a little screwed up, and so the warning sound doesn't go off when the car is off but the headlights are still on; 2) in all the moving craziness, I've let my AAA membership lapse, and 3) I don't have any jumper cables. Luckily, my boss lives right off campus and we were all going out for dinner in a couple of hours with our out-of-towners. So all is good, the car seems fine, don't worry.

I've had to jump cars a few times in the past couple of years, so I'm getting pretty good at it. But someone else always provided the cables. So, I made a mental note: buy jumper cables!

Oh, stay tuned - I just took pics of the apartment in the morning light - I'll post them when I get home from work tonight!

Teaser pic

Pics of the apartment will go up asap, I swear. It's pretty much ready, I just have been really busy since a couple of people from a lab that my lab collaborates with have come into town to do some work with us. It's keeping me busy, but hey, who am I to complain about free meals?

So when they leave tomorrow, I will have a little more time to tidy up and show off the apartment! But, just to whet your appetite, here is a pic of the three panels that I painted over the weekend, which now reside above our bed. The orange matches our walls...

Oct 2007 - North Country Cob Smoked Bacon

Tonight, we fired up some bacon on the cast iron grill pan. We each ate a slice straight off the grill, then made some BLTs. As a side dish, we also made a macaroni and cheese with broccoli. We realized that the bread we bought had relatively small slices, and we thought 3 slices of bacon in the BLT might be overdoing it a bit, so we crumbled a slice over the mac and cheese.

Before:


After:


And plated:


Comments:
1. The slices were relatively thick, so the final product had a good combination of crispiness and chewiness.
2. Even on its own, we weren't able to taste much maple flavor (despite the purported maple-curing), but there was a nice smokiness.
3. BLTs were great.
4. The addition of bacon to the mac and cheese proves what we all already knew: everything is better with bacon.
5. The bacon was noticeably less salty than regular store-bought bacon, so I think it's much better-suited to be eaten in this format (rather than cooking it into another dish).
6. I recommend Trader Joe's "Real Mayonnaise".
7. Yes, we each ate 4 slices of bacon.

We still have bread, cheese, and bacon. Whatever shall we do?
Tomorrow night: grilled cheese and bacon.