le cafe

I love coffee.  Pretty much everything about it really - the way it smells, tastes, even just having the warm mug in my hands makes me happy.  Considering this, I don't drink a whole lot of it - typically one mug in the morning when I get to work, and somedays a second in the later part of the morning or early afternoon if I'm cold.

I do however, typically feel terrible in the mornings.  This, I attribute to the very nature of mornings, not a lack of caffeine.  However, not having done proper research this may be a faulty conclusion.  So, I have decided not to drink coffee for the next week, possibly two, to see if it makes getting up any easier.  

I'm biased to hope it won't, cause I will miss my morning coffee, but willing to test it out just in case.  An no, just going to bed earlier is not being considered as a variable for this experiment.

it appears i never learn

Today we needed a few last minute groceries for supper so I grabbed my bags and headed out while H attended to the ribs.  And for the umpteenth time I went to Extra Foods.  I have no idea why I do this.  It's just so convenient - across the street and down a path, but it's just so terrible.

Today I had to circle the produce department several times.  They had no cored pineapple, the lemons were gross looking unless you bought a 3lb bag and the carrots were mutants.  When they didn't have any BBQ beans I put my basket down in frustration and abandoned shopping.

Of course I did what I should have done in the first place - walked the extra block and a half to the Co-op.  It's glorious there.  It took me all of 10 minutes to find everything on my list.  So convenient!  Not only do they carry such complicated grocery items like "lemons," "carrots," and "cream of tartar," everything is fresh AND easy to find.  It's clean and organized.  The check-out girl even asked me if I had remembered to check my eggs.  Do you know what the surly check-out girls at Extra Foods do?  They punch your eggs when you're not looking.

I don't know what it is about that extra block and a half walk that turns my brain into mush when deciding where to grocery shop.  Somehow, I always think "I only need a couple things, Extra Foods will have them, it's faster!"  I am always greeted with aisles full of abandoned stock, rotting produce, crazed shoppers with overflowing carts and 15 year old workers that aren't too sure what basil is, let alone where they'd find it in the store (assuming you could find it at all...).  And of course, I must have the craziest taste in food because it's a guarantee that they will not have something.  It baffles my mind that there are always so many shoppers there, do these people eat a solid diet of presidents choice hamburger helper with some frozen dinners thrown in for variety?  I can be 100% certain that if I had to drive for groceries Extra Foods wouldn't occur to me as a possibility.

I'd like to pretend like I've learnt my lesson.  But I know, sometime next month I'll need "just a couple things" and somehow I'll wind up back there.  Wandering dumbly around the aisles,  confused and/or frustrated,  not understanding how a grocery store doesn't carry bread, swearing from now on I'll just go to the Co-op in the first place.

some random observations about the windy city

H did such a bang up job blogging about the rest of our time downtown I'm going to save myself some time and suggest you go read it here. We totally didn't pay that much attention to detail when we were there - our handy dandy Go Chicago! books filled in some details I think. Instead of paraphrasing I'll take some time to share some of the quirky things we noticed while in Chicago.

The first thing I noticed were the French people everywhere! Les francais, les quebecois, they all seem to have been visiting at the same time as us. I'm not sure what exactly makes Chicago such a hot spot for the French inclined, but it was sort of fun hearing them everywhere we went.

Also, and I'm sure I was supposed to know this and not be surprised by it at all, was the number of black people in Chicago. Yes, this is probably like me being surprised by the number of Asians in Vancouver, or Ukrainians in Saskatchewan but sometimes I forget things while I'm busy living under my little rock.  Visually seen, about 50% of Chicago's population is black.  Nifty.  

People of all races are stupid over Apple stuff. I am a lover of almost everything Apple makes. I own a nano, a macbook, and if my budget allowed I would likely own many more toys from the Apple family. I however, cannot understand how every single time we walked past the Apple store there was a huge lineup just to get in the store. I understand why Apple would want to limit the number of people in their store (hello Vegas Apple Store, you could take a hint here) but I don't understand why you would stand in line to look at stuff you can buy at any larger chain store. Unless of course they give out cookies while you shop, then I would totally understand (and be a little sad I didn't stand in line.)

Marketing has really been taken to the next level in the States.  Wednesday morning before we got started we were too full for breakfast but were looking for a coffee before we headed to the museum.  There was an ING cafe right across the street from our hotel so it seemed easiest.  This cafe totally did its job of making me want to bank with ING.  The baristas and *insert name of male equivalent of barista here* were actually all bankers in disguise.  Friendly  - and one French - bankers.  They cut their schpeel on ING rather short when they realized we couldn't become customers, but they were still super nice and even offered to let us use the free internet.  As we were doctoring up our coffees a regular customer came in for coffee and they knew her name and what she wanted to order.  If my bank wanted to buy me coffee everyday I think I could get behind that!

So I think I should wrap this up here as it's taken me two weeks to finish this post...  I'm definitely looking forward to returning to Chicago and would highly recommend it as an American holiday.  Ok, done now.