update:photos from the after party and brunch

last night was the premiere of ‘galileo’s grave‘ at the ifp summit. the film was well received and looked beautiful. afterwards some of us went to the ifp after party at the chicago athletic club. i met malik the wordsmith, whose film received the grant that ‘galileo’s grave’ won last year, and who has toured with kanye west, p diddy, carl thomas, etc as a featured artist in various songs. i spent probably the first half hour or hour of the party schmoozing then elizabeth and i got serious about the free bar and i met some of the other rtvf grad students. when the party was winding down, brian, michael and i decided to *ahem* explore. long story short, clayton, elizabeth and the other grad students ended up joining us and we saw some excellent views from the roof, and found the hot tub and pool (although no one had the courage to get in…mike seemed ready to though).

today elizabeth and i went down to the ifp brunch (free!). i met elizabeth at her place and she made bloody marys. once at the brunch, we ate a lot of bacon, met some other local filmmakers and then hung out in the chicago athletic club lounge with clayton for a few hours. afterwards elizabeth and i went back to her place and watched ‘the last picture show’ which, oy vey – is one of the more depressing movies i’ve ever seen.

this evening i pan seared some oriental-marinated tofu (which i’m fairly certain is meant to be used in such as a stir fry and not eaten plain, but whatevs) and started processing the 120+ photos from this month. you can find the first batch in my photostream. included are some photos from lindsay and my trip to architectural artifacts and some from elizabeth’s housewarming party.

oh! also, friday night was andy’s congratulations-you-were-promoted party at tuman’s. after battlestar (which i watched with cecile and devin over some particularly delicious pizza) i rushed up to lincoln square so katie could make me up like a zombie. katie, andy and i were all zombies, although andy was the only one that tore up his clothes and bloodied himself. he looked really great though! katie and i looked sort of like creepy little girl dolls that had been brought to life. i only got a few photos, but katie took some polaroids that are pretty great, so hopefully she’ll let me repost them on flickr so you don’t have to go through myspace to see them and two are posted on flickr. we did a lot of serious dancing, although we had to wait for the people dressed as giant bananas to leave because they were taking up a lot of space. 🙂

wednesday

devin is/was on tour with tilly and the wall, so on wednesday jon, cecile and i went and saw them play at the abbey pub. conrad was there too (but no erik). good show – particularly the part where kianna did a stage dive at the end of their set.

post-show, jon bought the ladies some white castle. oh yeah. we do it classy here in chicago.

thursday

…was the caf launch party, which i heard was super-awesome, but i didn’t attend because i was making chocolate chai spice cupcakes for…

friday

…which was the day of the fb dvd launch party. friday morning katie and i glued together enough of our gorgeous letterpress packaging to make 100 dvd sets. when dawn got back from her insane grocery shopping we spent the next 4-5 hours peeling and chopping various vegetables. aaron and antonio got back from umoja in the early afternoon and they got the rest of the office ready – moved desks and computers, set up the projector, put up decorations.

by 6 o’clock the office was filled with the smells of delicious vegan dishes (seriously!) and we were all in party mode. the party was terrific – mike spun, we had a champagne and cupcake toast (dawn got teary!), and hired katie and offered drew and internship. hooray!

saturday

slept in on saturday, studiously avoided the pile of cupcake-related dishes in my kitchen, then drove to evanston to exchange a comic book. between when i left home and when i walked in the door to watch ‘brick’ with kareem, it was like 2.5 hours. w.t.f. traffic was insane and i was so ready for my stonecutters magic button that lets me bypass the as-far-as-the-eye-can-see line of cars. kareem got his hair cut/did/both? then we watched ‘lucky number slevin’ which was fantastic and reminded me of a lot of cool movies that i’m sure every reviewer on earth has already compared it to ad nauseum.

sunday

sunday was cecile’s 8th annual canadian thanksgiving dinner/potluck. i studiously avoided the pile of cupcake-related dishes in my kitchen, made green bean casserole and came over early to help her and trent cook and set up (after i had watched friday’s battlestar galactica which i missed due to the dvd release party). i had my first keg buying experience, my first the-tap-is-leaking-air-give-me-a-different-one experience and made delicious turkey gravy using my grandma’s recipe. over the course of the night i had the following things exploded/splattered/spilled on me: pbr, cool whip, thickening mix for the gravy. thanksgiving was great – about 50(?) people came over the course of the night and the food was amazing.

monday

uneventful except for the part where i spent the whole evening at cecile’s eating thanksgiving leftovers and making a really weak attept to kick a keg that would require a far greater cumulative appetite than that demonstrated by two less-than-five-foot-tall asian girls with relatively low tolerances for alcohol, particularly when one had just (maybe) broken her toe and hadn’t slept much all weekend and the other still had to drive home and get up early the next day for her internship.

oh, also i studiously avoided the pile of cupcake-related dishes in my kitchen.

tuesday

so uneventful i can’t even remember what i did last night. oh wait – caught up on a few tv shows, talked to people online, lamented that i could’ve been in 80-degree georgia with my family, and went to bed super-early. …after studiously avoiding the pile of cupcake-related dishes in my kitchen.

today

probably actually wash the pile of cupcake-related dishes that now threatens to overwhelm my kitchen with the smell of old chai spice mix and decomposing buttercream. oh crap there are some students coming to work for a tour tonight. maybe i’ll avoid those dishes for one more day.

update: all photos from the weekend are posted!

update: i can’t help but notice that pat’s photo is getting far more hits than any of my other photos. either this is from one person visiting many times (you know who you are), or a lot of people think pat’s hot. 🙂 it’s a toss-up i guess.

this weekend pat, jessie, lindsay and i planed or trained down to st. louis to have a mini-vacation with maria and nicole. it was awesome! the weather was INSANELY good. like spring! today it was 72 degrees!

pat, jessie and i flew out of midway on friday night. the flight was obscenely short – i think we were only in the air for about 40 minutes. lindsay had arrived in st. louis early in the afternoon. maria and nicole (and lindsay) picked us up at the airport and we went back to their apartments to regroup before going out; lindsay and i stayed with maria and clayton and pat and jessie stayed with nicole and matt.

that night we went to a bar in the loop called 609. it was fairly crowded though – no tables available. it was a neat-looking place though. they had a live dj, dance floor and hookahs. also, a lot of guys. i think i might’ve heard the phrase ‘sausage party’ bandied about; as soon as we walked in a bunch of heads shot around to size up the newcomers. creepy. anyway, we left to go to a different place we thought would be less crowded, but there was a line at that place and everyone was tired after traveling and/or working all day anyway. we went back to maria and clayton’s and watched some adult swim until everyone was ready to pass out. meanwhile at nicole’s, everyone was playing monopoly into the wee hours and making 3am taco bell runs.

saturday we met at 11:30 for lunch at fitz’s, a local root beer brewery and restaurant. i had a huge root beer float – sooo good! we went to the art museum (free!) and met up with a few of maria and nicole’s friends. i had texted pat mullen* earlier in the day to see if he was in st. louis or not and he was, so later on he also came to the museum! we walked around for over and hour then split ways with pat and maria and nicole’s college friends. we switched up cars so all the girls were in one car and all the boys in the other and headed to our next stop…

the anheuser-busch brewery tour! it was really interesting! i wish we could’ve seen more. we saw the clydesdales, the aging tanks and some other huge brewery machinery. nicole and matt had been a few times so they made sure we were in the right positions to be the first on the trolleys back to the free beer. matt and pat were so excited about the free beer i thought they might stroke out. we enjoyed our 2 free beer samples then the girls went back to nicole’s so lindsay and i could see her apartment while the boys went to pick up some board games and (at matt’s insistence) beer. we reconvened at maria’s and spent the rest of the night eating pizza, watching ‘napoleon dynamite’, playing board games and in pat and matt’s case, getting incredibly drunk. trying to understand what matt was saying when he was slurring and stuttering his way through the trivial pursuit questions was bad enough, but trying to play taboo, a game that requires quick-thinking, was positively disasterous. 🙂 eventually everyone got tired or too wasted and nicole drove matt, pat and jessie home. we went to bed sometime around 2.

today we went downtown to union station. we ate at hard rock café and fed the giant koi in the lagoon. we walked lindsay to the amtrak station then everyone else drove back to nicole and matt’s to relax before heading to the airport.

it was a really great weekend – hopefully i’ll be able to spend some more time with maria and nicole this summer and there is talk of them coming up sometime in the spring!