3 posts tagged “illinois”

A couple of weekends ago, we went to Sparta's Butterfest. Sparta is Jess' home town, and being a small city in Wisconsin, it was only natural that its annual fair be named after a dairy product.

While the fair itself was mostly rained out, the sun was out for the parade on the Sunday. Being my first real parade in the good ol' US of A, I was not fully prepared for the Shriners (aka Freemasons) in their little cars; the barage of sweets and chocolate milk; or the local Republican candidate handing out flyers that just said his name and that he's Pro-Life. I kid you not.

It was actually pretty fun, sitting on the pavement in little chairs, clapping and watching the assorted floats, vintage emergency services vehicles and marching bands go by. The only similar thing I can really recall enjoying was Lewes Bonfire Night back home.

This weekend in Chicago, we're getting a different kind of fest - Chicago Pride - and Jess and I are going to the parade on Sunday. Of course, having been to another parade, I am wondering what the gays could possibly do to top fez-wearing go kart drivers and one-note, Right Wing politicians. Will they throw condoms and arseless leather chaps into the throngs of spectators? Will they have the characters from The Wizard Of Oz driving little penis-shaped go karts? I can only hope.

While I do jest, it's still amazing to me that Chicago is such a gay-friendly city. I always assumed the US was still very homophobic based on their reluctance to endorse civil unions and so forth.

This weekend was productive but generally sucksome.

It all started Friday night. I got out of work only an hour or so late after a network outage prevented me from launching a series of changes to my latest project. I met Jess at home, then we walked to a Thai place close to where we live for dinner. We wanted to go somewhere different as we usually visit the same five places to eat.

The food was great and it wasn't too busy, so we decided to add it to our roster. On the way home, we also spotted a diner we wanted to check out and picked up some DVDs to watch - Pulse, 30 Days Of Night and King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters.

We watched the hilariously terrible Pulse (I only chose it because it had Ian Somerhalder aka Boone from Lost in it), then called it a night.

It would have been a blissful night of rest, but I woke up twice almost choking to death like a Spinal Tap drummer. I took some drugs and fell back asleep, but then at 3am I needed the bathroom. I felt extremely nauseous still and ended up yakking. That was just what I needed and I managed to sleep.

After dosing up on Ibuprofen for a remnant headache, Jess I then headed out for the day. We went to Target to pick up some supplies and little bits (she got some clothes, I got Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360). From there, Jess went to fetch some craft supplies, I looked at nerdy things, then we grabbed lunch at Panera Bread.

When we got home, I played some Bully. This Rockstar game, the same folks who made Grand Theft Auto, was beset with controversy on its original 2006 release for the PlayStation 2. Rockstar even went so far as to rename it Canis Canem Edit in the UK to escape the negative connotations of the name. Naturally, it doesn't live up to the negative attention. Although basically GTA set in a boarding school, you are punished for bullying other students and instead must complete missions that get you in the good books of different cliques.

It's actually a solid little game - even if the graphics were very obviously scaled up in a hurry; with shorter, much less frustrating missions than its crime sim sibling.

By this point in the day, there were plenty of drunken Americans celebrating St. Patrick's Day so we remained very firmly entrenched. We watched King Of Kong first - a documentary about one guy's attempt at getting the world record at Donkey Kong. It was actually a really enjoyable film, and certainly showed the dorkier side of my hobby. After that, we watched the surprisingly excellent 30 Days Of Night before hitting the hay.

Jess had a brief lay in Sunday while I played more Bully. She got up, then we headed out to do our taxes to get them over and done with. The guy doing our taxes was very friendly and helpful, and didn't take forever despite the hourly rate H&R Block charge. As much as we knew it was coming, when we ended up having to pay him $255 to tell us we owed almost $4,000 in taxes for the year, it was still pretty depressing. Thankfully, we'd been saving in preparation.

After that bombshell, we went to the diner we'd spotted on Friday to get some lunch. It was busy, so the service was lacking, but the food was pretty tasty.

We spent the rest of Sunday doing very little - we played some video games, watched Rock Of Love and various other bits and bobs, and generally chilled out ready for another week of work.

Jess and I woke up pretty hungover this morning. We packed everything into the car, cats included, made a quick detour then collected Zach from his grandparents'.

The drive from there to Jen's place was extremely treacherous as we were basically driving through blizzard conditions - the snow was bucketing down and obscuring our view. Other than stopping midway for some food, we just kept at it, rarely passing 40mph. It was lucky we were so careful as we passed a ton more cars, lorries and pickup trucks either flipped over or stuck in the ditch.

We finally got Zach home and both Jen and Jess were worried about us driving the rest of the way as it was supposed to be much worse further south according to practically everyone. After watching the Weather Channel, I insisted we chance it as south of Milwaukee looked clear. Reluctantly, Jess agreed (her reluctance was because she is the one who has to drive, poor thing).

It was pretty much a piece of piss once we got out of Wisconsin. The roads were clear other than a few idiots who thought they were Nigel Mansell and once we got home, we got everything unloaded super-fast. We had trouble finding parking in our 'hood but we lucked out eventually.

Everything's unpacked now, so we're going to top up the meter by the car and get some food before we pass out.