Or the Roller Derby Play

Yesterday was my half birthday and I celebrated with theatre and cupcakes (actually, that sounds like just about every other day in my life... but I promise I was celebrating!).

Photographic evidence

It was a nice day out, so I actually decided to walk a large portion of my journey (which ended up being two miles according to Google). The play was north of Chicago Theater Works so I ended up taking the bus to where I would normally get on the train and walking from there. It was really interesting to see things that I had been passing on the train for months up close and get a new view of things. I also ended up going closer to Wrigley Field than I ever had. I took a picture to prove it. (I also think I ended up being closer to Wrigley Field than I ever have been to Fenway Park, which is a little embarrassing for someone whose spent almost an entire lifetime in Boston...).

Now, I take my half birthday very seriously. It is like my regular birthday except better because there are zero expectations but I still get cake. You would think I've sampled every cupcake in Chicago at this point, but I was just as surprised as you are to find out that I have not! Jennivee's Bakery! Just a few blocks north of Chicago Theater Works! (South of Wrigley, I figured I would take some poetic license and get my Wrigley Field bit out of the way before writing about things that I actually care about). The bakery is fairly new, opening between when I created the Cupcake Crawl list and when we actually began our journey, which is how we missed such a conveniently located spot.

I was at a crossroads (Sheffield and School St to be specific). Do I stop at this bakery and treat myself or do I return to my non-cupcake sampling ways until Mr. Ryan Lind makes a triumphant, but currently undetermined, return to the Windy City? (I swore off trying new bakeries between October and Ryan's visit so that we could try them together). I decided that it was my half birthday and I obviously could not have a proper half birthday without a cupcake so I went in.

I didn't get a good pic, so I stole this from their Instagram.

Honestly, everything in the bakery looked delicious. I decided not to get a monstrous slice of cake, although it would have been well within my right as half-birthday girl (although I'm not sure my wallet would have agreed as a slice cost twice as much as a cupcake!) I probably would have ordered the "Bad and Boujee" cupcake on the name alone (the sign did proclaim it to have the best name ever) but I couldn't resist a chocolate cupcake with a champagne-infused raspberry mouse! It was a celebration after all, and it wouldn't be a proper one without champagne! (Although I'm pretty sure I've never celebrated anything with champagne in my life, unless you count mimosas at brunch, where I am celebrating the weekend ritual of overeating at mid-morning meals).

This cupcake was UNREAL! The mousse was perfection and the chocolate cupcake was very dense -- almost more muffin like -- but didn't make me feel like I had a cement in my stomach once I'd devoured every bite of it.

Perhaps the best part of Jennivee's is that it is kitty corner from one of the cast of TnT's favorite post-show hangouts AND it's open until midnight, so maybe next time the cast wants to grab a beer (or five), I will fill my stomach with the one thing I love more than alcohol.

After cupcakes, it was on to the Pride Arts Center to see For The Love Of... (Or the Roller Derby Play). Yes, that was the show's real title (it also came with an equally wordy tag line "A show about women who skate hard and love harder). I was going to see a play about roller derby! The show had been written and directed by women, along with having an entirely female cast.

The show reminded me a lot of a play I did in college called Shooting Stars about an all-women's basketball team in the 1960s. I played a character named Gay and there was also a character named Butch but it definitely wasn't a play about lesbians, unlike what I saw last night. I would say that For The Love Of... was 95% modern-adaptation of Shooting Stars and 5% what Shooting Stars would have been if Gay and Butch had been lesbians.

It wasn't perfect but it's great to see women represented in all of those creative and on-stage roles. We can always use more of that! It also made me consider strapping on skates and finding a roller derby league for what feels like the zillionth time.

After the play, I didn't walk home, just to the train station (and I talked to my sister while I walked because while I might be a big bad feminist, I'm not a naive big bad feminist and I was walking in a neighborhood that, while not appearing too shady, is not one I often visit). We discussed binge-watching Netflix's newest series 13 Reasons Why, which you didn't really need to know but I've included because when I take the time to write a long-ass post like this one, I like to make sure it is overly detailed. Whitney might come to visit me at the end of the month, along with my dad, so that would be very exciting.

The plans for today include hitting send on this blog post and going to work at CTW tonight. I have no idea how I'll fill the time between now and then, but if it is blog-worthy, you shall be the first to know (or maybe you'll know in a month or two, depending on how I am feeling...).

Flashback Friday

I was deleting old photos from my phone when I found this guy! A literal Flashback Friday from today to the fateful Friday when I fought swarms of Cubs fans on the subway to get to my internship at Lookingglass, got to go to their victory parade and the only thing I cared enough to take pictures of was this very cute puppy.

(That was also the Friday where I decided I would call out sick if I ever needed to go downtown on a day where there was any type of sport-related tom foolery happening).

It is a lovely spring day so I have decided to walk a portion of my adventure to the play tonight. I'm walking a part of my commute where I would normally be on the train, and it is already very interesting to see things at the street level.

I also downloaded the Blogger app for posting on the go. You're welcome.

Research

Earlier this week, I met a friend for lunch at a Thai place (my suggestion because I'd been there before and knew that it was within walking distance of his apartment). We had crab rangoons with real imitation crab and then because he is working on a show where he, as the props master, needs to create the "perfect ice cream sundae" decided we should find some ice cream... for research purposes. Surprisingly, there aren't a lot of places to get ice cream in Chicago! The results of a Google search for ice cream are about 99% Baskin Robbins and the last 1% of ice cream is like five miles away. We ended up at Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream, which is a mini-chain that actually started in Columbus, OH, but has rapidly expanded into the Windy City (and probably other places too). You can buy pints of their ice cream at Whole Foods for like nine bucks, but luckily, purchasing a scoop is not going to empty your wallet at quite the same velocity.

Jeni's is splendid though but neither of us actually got a sundae though, so I guess there is more research in our future.

So, updating you on EVERYTHING that has happened since I last really wrote has turned out to be more than I can chew, so here are the highlights (actually, really the only thing I have to share because March was mainly working 24/7).

My best friend, Mr. Ryan Lind came to visit in March! He was supposed to visit in February but every flight leaving NYC was cancelled thanks to a giant snowstorm, so we postponed. While he was here, we gorged ourselves on cupcakes and did lots of touristy things along with some not-so-touristy things.

We went to eight different bakeries and the best cupcakes we had were these tiny bundt cakes we got for free at an event we attended at CTW! Yup, the best cake in life is free apparently. I didn't take any pictures of the mini bundt cakes (they were very cute), but I did take lots of pictures of everything else we ate during our hunt for Chicago's best cupcake (which like I said, were the free mini bundt cakes from Everything Bundt).

I don't think we ever decided what the best cupcakes were, but I think the most disappointing was Goddess & The Baker's rainbow cake. This is what we were most excited for because rainbow! But it was just really plain cake in the end.

Cuties!

The other highlight of his visit was when Ryan finally got to meet Mandy! They'd met via Skype and have obviously heard all about each other, but it was their first time meeting face-to-face. Mandy is a working fiend so we just got to have a short lunch (at the brand new Whole Foods that is bigger than my entire apartment building) but it was nice to see two of my favorite people together at last!

And that was March, at least, the only part of March that I care about.

Today is my half birthday, which means I need to figure out where I can go to get cake in this city where I haven't already gone... I have the next few weeks to do nothing again, before my next gig starts on April 17th, so maybe you'll have more reading material between now and then, and maybe not! We'll see!

I told you that we also did the touristy stuff. 

WOW.

It has been almost a month since I last blogged. But I have a good reason for my radio (internet?) silence. I have worked every day this month EXCEPT for two! But I have the next two weeks off, so I will begin to update you on what has been going on and hopefully keep up posting with more regularity moving forward.

Oh My, You Should Eat!

I won't say that the past week has been a crazy one, just your average busy-I-have-no-time-to-blog week, but some interesting stuff happened over the weekend that I am happy to report on (as I procrastinate getting ready for work today).

Speaking of work, that's where my story begins! On Sunday, I had a mid-session check-in for the Mosaic Program... that I completely forgot about! Thank goodness I set a reminder (I normally don't) otherwise, I would have missed it entirely. As it was, I had about two minutes to shower and get dressed before calling an Uber and paying $11 to make sure I arrived on time.

Post-meeting, I decided to support the entrepreneurship of young America by being the last customer for a group of Girl Scouts outside of Starbucks. First off, these cookies have gotten expensive since ye olden days of scouting girls! And they have less cookies in the box. Also, I'm in the midwest so instead of being called Caramel Delites, they're called (the completely politically incorrect name) Samoas. I still ate them.

After that, I didn't have time to go back to my apartment before I had to return to the same general geographic location for a performance at CTW, so I instead decided to try out one of the restaurants on Belmont that I've always wanted to try, but haven't because I work at a dinner theatre and get to eat for free!

Clarke's has been staring at me as I stand on the train waiting to go home for months now! I was seriously craving a milkshake (despite having recently purchased cookies) and figured that any place with a 1950s housewife on their sign could probably make a good one so I decided it was time to go in.

I was right about the milkshake thing! I also ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. They're basically a dressed up diner so they had a lot of breakfast things that looked good too, but I wanted some salty french fries to go with my cool vanilla dairy confection, so grilled cheese was the perfect fit.

After that, I went to the theatre, did a play and the rest is history!