Marion's Bday Party

Today we went to a birthday party for Jason's grandma, Marion. The only thing was ... Marion could not attend because she passed away when Jason was very young. So this was a memorial party, with pictures, special memories, and family coming in from out of town to get together. It was a pleasant day. We hung out in Jason's mom's botanical garden which should be profiled in a magazine or something. We got to play with Jade and Jasmine, the resident cats. And we met a couple of Jason's aunt and uncle's dogs, one a very barracuda-like chihuahua.

Later that evening we went to see Wall*E, the Pixar animated movie about the little trash compactor robot that saves the day. This was a really good movie, although a bit sad, because it shows how humans destroy the earth with their consumption.

Carnival of Carnivores

This was our 18-month anniversary day! We went out that night to Naperville Ribfest. We met up with our friends Rodney and Christina there.

It was still incredibly hot, but C and R had managed to score some prime real estate in the shade. Jason and I split a delicious rib sandwich and a huge plate of cheese fries. Yummers. We drove Rodney and Christina crazy using our "What's deep but not profound" riddle. We'll be surprised if they ever want to hang out with us again after that ... ;) Then we went to check out Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. We got up very close to the stage to the standing room only area. We were surrounded by people in leather, with tattoos and spikey hair. As we were listening, we all realized that we only knew one song by Joan Jett -- I Love Rock and Roll. Although a couple others rang some faint bells.

After they sang that song (wildly successful with the crowd), we ran off to see Foghat. We watched them for ages but those dorks never sang any of the songs we knew! Although we did thoroughly enjoy watching the lead singer sing into a fan with his long hair blowing around. Now I wonder -- why didn't his voice get distorted by that fan?

So we left -- and realized that we were going to need to wait like 2 hours for the line to get on a bus back to where we parked, so we walked back to our cars. Thanks to Rodney's super iPhone which provided us with directions.

We started out this day with an 18-month anniversary breakfast at the Egglectic Cafe in Wheaton. Then we headed to Batavia to save Jason's mom's cats from starving while she was visiting her sister out of town. The kitties were very happy to see us. Then we went for a bike ride around the Danada preserve in Wheaton. It was 85 degrees, no shade, we forgot water, and there are some good-sized hills. Desperately, we sought out a soda machine at the Danada equestrian center for some liquid refreshment, but it denied our dollar bills! We almost committed vending machineicide. We turned around pretty quickly, but we did do 6 miles total.

Fourth of July

Time again for fireworks! This year we went again to the Pleasantdale Park District's celebration. But first we had a delish barbeque dinner at Kelly's parents before walking over. It turned out to be a chilly evening, strangely enough. Cara's boyfriend Evan took lots of crazy cool photographs of the fireworks, but of course none of them hold a candle to the amazing ones I took with my extremely high-tech point and shoot.

The fireworks were 20 minutes and set to music. Kelly especially liked the ones set to "What a Wonderful World", and Jason especially liked the ones that went "Bam!" and set fire to the kid's hair in front of us. Just kidding about the kid's hair, he was fine.

Jason and Kelly both learned that day that hot air balloons are full of hot ordinary air, not any special gas.

Fables from a Jasonfly: What I Tell You In My Blog Is True

Tonight we saw Fair to Midland at The Fuel Room in Libertyville (part of Austin's Saloon & Eatery). It wasn't a packed show but the crowd was full of die-hard fans. We got there a couple hours early and shared a chicken pretzel sandwich; or was it a pretzel chicken sandwich? Which 'wich was it? Who cares it tasted good either way.

The first band on stage was 18 Speed Tranny. The drummer had a beard that reached all the way down to hell. These guys were heavy metal to the core! We enjoyed their performance, but after awhile the songs all started to sound the same. The next band was Munroe. Their set, musically, was a little more interesting than Tranny, but by now I was impatient to see Fair to Midland: I've really been into FTM's new album Fables from a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True.

Munroe had some issues. To begin with, they came out much later than expected, and the singer just couldn't seem to get his guitar tuned. The other guitarist was odd in that he sometimes "fondled" the bass player's strings. What the heck was that about?

Then. Fair to Midland. Within the first 30 seconds they had displayed more energy, more experience, than the other two bands combined (although Mr. Beard from Tranny tried his best to get the crowd going via hand gestures and flying/twirling drumsticks). I knew FTM had energy, but I wasn't expecting the lead singer to be so crazy, and he was obviously drunk. He was jumping, kneeling, falling, and pacing all across the stage. His voice went up, then down, then everywhere in-between, his facial expressions going from pensive to crazy as he bared his soul for the audience. And while the musical message seemed to be getting through fine, his attempts at speaking to the crowd were barely comprehensible. However, the band was magnetic and most of the songs were played pretty well. Truth be told, I loved every minute of it!

All the pictures, by the way, were taken by a photographer at the venue, including this one of me and Kelly.

Video from the show at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFNVS9hc_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II89xtrplCo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoasu2IpdCU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIm32kQAs54

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91b4Z95Btg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAlI9cTYB70

Just Another Saturday

... for love. We hit our favorite breakfast spot in town, the Geneva Diner, for a delish breakfast. It was a rainy morning, and we passed by all the drowned Swedish Days festivities on our walk to and from the diner. Then, since Swedish Days was kinda lame (we'd tried it the night before), we biked to St. Charles on the Fox River trail. In all we did a little over 7 miles round trip. We stopped in at Town House books to soak in the lovely independent bookstore atmosphere, then grabbed a couple of lemonades on the back patio. Then we biked to a nearby park to play mini golf. Jason told me he'd had his first kiss in the park. My first kiss was in a park, too. We played mini golf and Jason got TWO holes in one, the show-off! And he won by one point, which is funny because the first time we ever played mini golf we'd tied exactly. On the bike home, the river was so high that it had washed out part of the trail, so we had to go around. The mallads were loving it. They were thick as pigeons on the banks. We discovered that the trail on the west side of the river goes through the park where we first played mini golf, and where we once flew a kite. Jason and Kelly both had to wipe huckleberry jam off themselves as the ripe fruit was all over the trail, and our tires were smushing it and spitting it out on us. Kelly got sunburned on her arms, her first sunburn on the first day of summer!

Pizza Amore

Just because.

South Kettle Moraine Camping

This was our BIG GROUP camping trip of the year. Tony and Susie gave us a ride up in their big red truck, and Jamie (Jason's coworker) and Joel and Cara (Kelly's sister) and Evan met us up there.

Susie and Tony had visited South Kettle Moraine before, so they knew exactly which site was the coolest one. If you want to know which number it was so you can reserve it too, too bad! We are keeping the secret. It was in a campground loop that was super quiet because campers were not allowed, and it was also a walk-in site. The con -- dragging all of our car camping equipment up a hill. The pro -- total privacy. The awesomeness of the site alone was worth the whole trip.

Hiking options were only so-so, but we did hike the Scuppernong Trail and a nice part of the Ice Age Trail. Most of the trails were for die-hard mountain bikers, and not wanting bike tire marks on our foreheads, we avoided those.

We saw some neat birds, the most vocal was definitely the Oven Bird. They were singing their little hearts out ... "Teacher Teacher Teacher Teacher!" until I wondered if my sister was going to go crazy. Jason and I hunted one down so that I could see it, since it was much easier to hear them than to find them. We also chased a really big bird through the trees in the campground. We think it may have been an eagle. But we never got to see more than it's shadow navigating the treetops as it flew out of sight.

We had a great campfire on Saturday night with the whole gang. Jason showed how manly men make fire with flint. And we ate like kings -- giant cheeseball, cheese fondue, cheese curds (do you sense a Wisconsin theme?) and brats. We had so much food that we took half of it home. Evan pulled out his pipe and looked seriously Sherlock.

Also a big hit -- the hammock. There was someone snoozing in it practically at all times.

And, Jason made a lovely funeral pyre for the goldfish bag, may it rest in peace.