Monday, February 20, 2006

Friends, Food, Furniture and Ikea...

... and no, Ikea and furniture are not the same thing.

Friday after work i came home and starting packing my self and the boyfriend (whom i haven't come up with a nickname for yet) for our trip to Chi-town. WOOHOO! As i finished packing one of my aunt's accountants pulled up with a van full of furniture for me. They were gettting rid of it and planning to give it to Goodwill, but then found out that i needed furniture, so they gave it to me! YEA!!! I now have bedroom furniture! Of course, it's still sitting in the garage... but soon i'll have bedroom furniture in the bedroom! AMAZING!

So I go pick the boyfriend up from work and we head out on our journey to Chi-town. We get to Beana's (again not really her name, i just really like this nickname thing. Henceforth only Oscar shall be refered to by his real name...it's just more fun that way) new apartment (which is AWESOME) and her boyfriend, the Actor, (an old friend of mine, I introduced them... go me!) shows up and we all settle in for a nice evening. We order Gino's Pizza which is fabuloso and a tradition for us when visiting the windy city. It's Chicago style pizza, deep dish, tons of toppings! YUMMY!

The next morning Beana made pancakes and bacon for breakfast... I heart her! The Actor had to go to work and Beana had practice for a competition for school. So we didn't get to spend as much time with them as i would have liked, but it was still great to see them. The boyfriend and I took our time getting ready in the morning which was nice, and then ... off to IKEA!! En route we had to make a stop off at Jamba Juice, my own personal smoothie heaven. We don't have Jamba juice at home, so it's a special treat when i visit places that do have it. (Though, i've heard a rumor that we might be getting one. Though Jamba juice close to me = bancruptcy)

So... for those of you who have never experience Ikea, it's basically the Disney World of home shopping. It's HUGE! I can't begin to count the number of languages I heard spoken there. They have a little cafe in the store with many choices for food, so you don't have to leave and come back. They have escalators for your shopping cart!!! BRILLIANT! the boyfriend and I walked around for several hours (yes it's really that big) and while we didn't purchase a lot, we got some great ideas.

After many hours of shopping it was time to leave the home store wonderland. We headed up to the northern part of Chicago to meet some more friends that we hadn't seen in way to long. We ended up going out to eat at this awesome place called Tapas. It's spanish cuisine and it's basically a bunch of small appetizers. It's best to go in a group and then everyone orders a couple things and shares. It's a little pricey, but i really enjoyed it. Again, wish we had a place like that back home.

After dinner it was time to head back home. I drove part of the way, but ended up being too tired and letting the boyfriend take over while i'll passed out in the passenger seat. We got home and crashed and then did basically nothing all day the next day. He slept into the afternoon and i layed on the couch watching tv and dozing in and out. It was pretty nice. We both eventually got up to go out to dinner. It was our "valentine's" dinner. He made reservations and one of the up scale steak houses in town, but i decided maybe we should save it for another time since we spent a little more than planned in Chicago. We ended up going to an italian place downtown that was really good. they had fantastic fried mozzarella cheese (so unhealthy) I had a chicken and crab fettucini and he had some kind of bowtie pasta, followed by creme brulee for me and cheese cake for him. Again... lots of yum going on here.

Afterwards we went to pick up the pup from Will's (he had been dog-sitting while we were out of town) Oscar was very excited to us. He's such a cute puppy!

I guess that pretty much sums up the weekend. I'm hoping to go check out a kickboxing class tonight. Tomorrow i'm off to Cincy for press check for our new catalog. Should be interesting. More on that later.