Spring is a coy thing in Chicago

Spring arrived in a brief glorious moment two weeks ago in Chicago. Bewitched by the 80+ degree weather, Dan and I joined our fellow Chicagoans in pretending like this wasn't Mother Nature's joke. Hey, here's awesome weather, oh wait. Just kidding. It's back to the 40's and 50's. Haha. Blame the lake effect, right? They blame every bizarre weather pattern on the so-called "lake effect."

Like other cheerful, winter-crazed Midwestern denizens, we engaged in summer-like activities for that one pseudo-summer week.

Dan cut low-hanging branches on the tree in front of our house to prevent me poking my eyes out.

 

We went to Opening Day of the Green City Farmer's Market to look for the first spring vegetables: asparagus!

We walked around the neighborhood admiring the newly installed public art pieces.

Of course, we went to Costco to see what other interesting products they added to their offerings. 53' plush bear, anyone?

Finally, we made delicious spring-based foods: caprese salad from Costco mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes, proscuitto-wrapped blanched asparagus with truffle salt and olive oil, spring mix with cinnamon sugar-toasted walnuts, fuji apples, and nice citrus dressing.

 

I even started putting away winter clothes. Silly me, it's cold again and I need to pull them back out. I don't know what I was thinking. It must be the lake effect.

"So-Called" Yuppie Life in Costco

When Dan and I were interviewing last weekend in Des Moines Iowa, our realtor and community tour host was an adorably racist Chinese-American mother. She complained loudly that her daughter's husband was white, while simultaneously praising her daughter as God's gift to mankind. We learned more about her daughter's educational accomplishments ("Youngest person ever to enter University of Iowa Medical School!") than about the history of Des Moines. Best yet, her favorite adjective was "so-called".

"This is where the so-called yuppies live. They've built so-called lofts there. There are also so-called Asian food available in that store for purchase." So on and so forth. I was trying so hard not to laugh from the back seat that I almost farted.

Dan and I are the very definition of yuppies. We live in Lincoln Park, neighborhood of the yuppie hyper-competitors. We drive a hybrid. We work in professional industries. We live as "greenly" as possible and recycle diligently. Best yet, we slavishly visit Costco.

In case you are aliens, we are huge fans of Costco foods. Their weekend samples (aka Costco "dim sum") are a mere challenge to us mortals to race around and stuff our faces with grape leaves, tortilla chips w/ salsa, cheese cubes, enchiladas, vegetarian burgers, cream puffs, yogurt samples, flavored vitamin water, chicken nuggets, mixed nuts, Fiber Ones, salted chocolate caramels, burritos, enchiladas, and more. In one visit. Dan and I have really perfected the art of taking as many samples as possible. Layer in "laps", and we've perfected the Costco sampling technique to a science.

We hadn't had our Costco fix for 2-3 weeks since we'd been traveling so much. The first thing we did after Daniel landed from Memphis on Saturday from another interview trip was go to Costco. After sampling, Dan promptly sprawled across the cool watermelons. Apparently, he used to do this as a kid as well.

I had a strange craving for Korean food on Sunday, so we hit up San Soo Gab San, a legendary Korean restaurant in the Chicagoland area. We must have come on a bad day, because the food was barely above mediocre. The ban-chan (Korean side dishes) were the highlight.

Here's Dan in resplendent Korean food glory. Bulgogi for him, Soon dooboo (tofu) for me.

Post-meal: Dan spanked that Korean food so hard it didn't know what to do with itself. ALL GONE.