Popcorn

On one of our trips to Jackson Blvd, our nostrils were overwhelmed by a distinct smell of something fabulous. The line was short, we went in and out in a few minutes, equipped with 2 small paper bags: cheese corn and caramel corn. yummmmmm. You can only eat a few at a time, the flavour is so intense, and definitely a small pack is more than enough... if you are anywhere around the loop, or Michigan ave, it's as good as the rumors say it is! garrettpopcorn.com

Walk on the beach

1) a huge experiment in physics
as the waves hit the concrete wall, they bounce back and interfere with other incoming waves. this creates a huge pattern of wavefronts (that you can barely see in this picture...), with the constructive interference causing a spike in the ridge in the junctions where two wavefronts meet.



2) written in stone
The stone wall is scarred with all sort of love statements, names, faces, drawings, cartoons, and what not. This is my favorite...

Eating/Chicago

Chicago Restaurants Review

Habeebi's
(1131 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-878-6600)
Wed, Jan 24, dinner. We had a plate of Hummus, Kube and Shawarma, at "Habeebi" restaurant, just down the street from us.
[Hummus: 2.95; Kibbeh: 1.65; Lentil soup: 1.95; Chican Shawarma (plate): 7.50]
When we asked Yussuf Habibi, the owner, where he was from, he said: "Palestine". Later on, we talked with him some more, and learned that he was actually born and raised in Jordan, and spent most of his life in Europe/America, but his family are from Jaffa. We got some "Baba ganush", which is eggplant in thina salad, on the house, as well as a 2nd bowl of lentil soup and a couple of fallafel balls that were left at the end of the day.
surprisingly, everything was very good, except for the pitas which were the flat thin american pita bread that you get at the grocery store. Is is so hard to make good pitas?!?
When we suggested that to Habeebi, he said that he had planned to have a pita oven but the architect took too much room for the men's restroom, and there was not enough space left in the kitchen. Too bad! This could have been a pilgrimage site for all israelies in Chicagoland.
We don't have a rating system yet, but this one is definitely a good israeli/mizrachi (outside Israel).
delivery+ lunch+ location+

Shiro Hana
3242 N Clark, 773-477-1652
Thu, Jan 25th (Ben's birthday)
Japaneze/sushi place. We found this one through the lonely planet book. It's located on the lively Clark street, and serves all kinds of sushi combinations as well as other Japanese food.
We had a few rolls of sushi - spicy tuna, California, salmon&avocado, shrimp tampura, and spinach, that didn't really belong. the wasabi wasn't spicy enough, but the ginger compensated for that. two cups of great misu soup came with the order. the prices ranged between 3-5$/roll (there were more expensive rolls on the menu), their wine/beer list is very limited, but the food, atmosphere and price were good :)
all in all, the best sushi joint we've been to in Chicago. that doesn't say much yet, as it's also the first one...

Pho777
1065 W Argyle St, Chicago, IL (773) 561-9909
We went there with Noga. It's a few blocks south of our apartment, and there's plenty of parking. the food is vietnamese, and the clients are too, which impressed Noga a lot. the interior design was too green to my taste... but the atmosphere was nice, and the company was superb :)
we had an appetizer which translates to "vietnamese pancake", don't remember what the real name is, but it was a pile of meat and sprouts covered by a yellowish pancake (looks more like an omlete i think), with a side of vegetables (lettuce, cucumbers) and sauce. it was good. for mains we had a chicken nest, fried noodels in a shape of a nest and with a herd of sea food and vegis in it, and delicious sauce, and ben had some beef+vegetable course. it is a byob place, meaning - we sent ben to the store next door to get a couple of wine bottles.


hop leaf
mmmmmmmmm... muscles in wine broth. good even without garlic. an when the musscles are all slurped, dip a piece of bread in it... mmmmm good beer, too!

Our car

Our car is fully equipped to battle life in Chicago:

Car ornament (it used to be air freshener, a few years ago. now it's just decoration, and helps us recognize our car in parking lots).


Time showing device. it has a systematic error of about 2 hours, since it still shows the daylight-saving time in ann arbor. good thing astrophysicists know how to subtract. or add. which one is it ?!?




Car Google


Car Google-maps


Navigation system


Required equipment to keep the navigation system in an operational mode


A driver :)

to public demand,

here's a picture of the view out our east window

Photos II

This is our living room.


Our kitchen...


...and befroom.

there are also a couple of closets and a bathroom, which didn't make it into the pictures. I'll try to take a picture tomorrow early in the morning, the buildings in the neighborhood get colored in gold if it's a sunny morning... if our apartment was on the other side of the building, we would have been able to see the sunsets over the lake.

pictures...

driving into Chicago, Jan 3rd 2007. The city welcomed us with a magnificent sunset, and...

the full moon, rising over Grand Haven. yes, i know it's blurry, we were driving up lakeshore drive.

on the first weekend, we met Birgit, and took an extraordinary look at downtown Chicago: from the top of the Sears building, that's the tall one with the two antennas.
Sears building was actually the tallest building in the world, until it's record was taken from it by the Petrona tower in Kuala Lampur, and then by the Taipei 101 building. but as the explanatory film we watched (before taking the 1-minute elevator to the 103 floor) took a great care to emphasize, if you consider the antennas -- it's still the tallest building in the world.


and here are some festive trees, for ima.

back to routine (almost)

so we are now a couple of weeks officially in chicago.
we still sleep on an air mattress, but it's now on a bed, surrounded by more furniture and less cardboard boxes.

we are trying to adjust to life in the big city. for instance, keeping all our change for tolls, parking meters, and most importantly -- quarters for laundry. these machines "eat" 4 quarters per wash and 4 per drying cycle. but at least they don't take space in our small apartment -- they live in the basement...

we have a giant stove (i can't understand why american stoves are twice as big as the israeli ones, probably for turkeys ;) but it's so convenient!!
we have already used some of our cool kitchen stuff, the pots and pans, the new food processor(!), toaster... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

one important thing to find, was the nearest meijer store... which is not that near :( -- about 40-45 minutes away. we still don't know what the shortest (timewise) rout is. looks like they don't have such large cheap grocery/everything-you-need stores in town. i guess the cost of rent is too high, and/or city tax, makes it just not profitable. for instance, we found a cluster of stores (best buy, target, etc.) right outside city limits. what they DO have all over town, is walgreens. makes you wonder.

it takes us about 20 minutes to get to the university (give or take the time it takes us to walk from wherever we found parking, which can be pretty far away, depends on time). we both have our offices now, we met some of the people in the department, and found the important facilities (e.g., microwave). we like it there. i feel kinda lonely in my office all alone (there's actually another student there, she showed up today, but she leaves for france in a couple of days...) but i guess it will make it more efficient. it=working. of course, today all i did all day was to research the official immigration website and try to figure out exactly what forms we need to file. baaaa.

so far, so good. i love chicago.

Chicago, here we come!

fianlly, the hectic period is mostly over. the wedding was a big success, everybody had a good time, and nobody had a nervous breakdown ;)

we drove to chicago a couple of days after the wedding, and started settling in our new apartment. the original plan was to move in 2 weeks BEFORE the wedding, and then go "home" after the wedding and be all settled in... in reality, we had to learn an important lesson: when renting an apartment from private owner (=condo), be extra careful with the dates and promises they make. the short story, is that the apartment that we signed the lease for was not ready on time, we had all our stuff there in a truck ready to move in, and the apartment was just a big mess. we got really pissed off at the owner, so we broke the contract and rented another apartment, which is a nicer but smaller. we put all our stuff in storage and drove back to cadillac to get married.

the wedding was very nice. the ceremony was really moving - a lot more meaningful (i think) than the ones i saw in israel...
after the wedding we drove to Canada for a day and a half (the plan was to go there for a few days, but since we DIDNT move to chicago 2 weeks before the wedding we had to cut the "vacation" short, and go get into our new place.

we drove to chicago (11 hours from the cabin in canada!) and started unpacking, buying furniture and getting our stuff out of storage, etc. we bought a ton of stuff at ikea (elinor, you would have loved it!). they have a store here (in the suburbs) with 3 floors, it's absolutely huge.

then we flew over to Seattle for the AAS meeting , which was too big, and we had almost no time for anything besides attending/giving talks. too bad we didn't have time to see the city at all. we had plans to go to the "space needle", but each time something came up, we had to meet people and work on urgent things, and fly off... it was not too cold, and not too rainy, so we didn't even have to open the free umbrellas that we got for registering to the meeting. i guess they figured that everybody have enough conference-bags to open a small store.

anyway, we are now back in chicago.
we went over to ikea again, to replace a table, get the cushion for the armchair that somehow escaped our cart somewhere between the shelf and the cashier the last time we were there, and to buy the bed that was out of stock the first time we were there. amazingly, it all fit in ben's honda. amazing.
i will put on some pictures later, promise. but to those of you who cant wait and want to imagine, we have a corner apartment facing south and west, with wall size windows. it's very small. the carpet is grey, and the furniture are dark brown. except for the armchair, which is almond. the kitchen is small, and the bedroom is small, i guess everything is small except for the windows ;)
we still have a few boxes that will have to go back to cadillac...

we still sleep on an air mattress, but we have a home :D