Weekend away

So Thursday night my neighbor gave me a ride downtown to the Fourth Street Parking Garage, where I caught the Megabus at about 10:45. I spent most of the next seven and a half hours alternating between shivering and sweating. The driver announced on the intercom (at about 2:30, as we were getting underway again after a brief rest stop) that he couldn't really regulate the temperature, and that he chose "warm," so we could just strip down and deal with it. He said that we were "not in a torture chamber," but he was wrong, and that fateful phrase echoed through my head all night. The air got so thick that even I was suffering; the freeze cycles felt like a relief.

Ellen picked me up at Union Station and we spent a little time in the city (including a serendipitous detour in Oak Park's Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District) before heading back to Champaign, where I met the Treehouse and its occupants.

That evening was the Andrew Bird concert, and it was amazing. For most of the two hours (!) he played, he was the only one on stage, but the live looping of his violin, electric guitar, and whistling created a masterfully full and complex sound. It was one of the best live shows I've ever seen; I think Ellen's description that I was as giddy as a schoolgirl is probably about right.

The next morning we hit the farmers' market for supplies for the evening's festivities and then hung out downtown for a while, enjoying the sunshine, drinking coffee and eating donuts. Ellen had persuaded me to bring my new pasta maker with me and had (sort of) planned a dinner party primarily to celebrate her roommate's birthday, but also as an excuse to eat fresh pasta. We made (albeit in classic Disaster Kitchen style) cappellini with fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, basil and parsley; rosemary focaccia bread; and a spring mix salad. After the rest of the guests left, the roommates went after the leftovers with chopsticks because we'd dirtied all the forks.

My bus left at 1:00, so Ellen and I got up relatively early and made it to the city in time for brunch at the amazing Karyn's Cooked vegan restaurant. Fortified with fabulous food and faced with a stack of papers to grade, I stayed awake for most of the trip home and had a much better--and even relatively productive--trip back.

Today I ran 10 miles (my weekend "long run"--hooray for tapering!) and tried to catch up on reading after a wonderfully relaxing weekend.

Paul and Ter get here on Wednesday!