This post is sponsored by Oakbrook Center. Full disclosure: I have loved Oakbrook Center (on the corner of Route 83 and Cermak Road just off of Interstates 88 and 294) for all the days I’ve lived in the western suburbs (that’s more than twenty-one years). I love it for many reasons: the shops, the restaurants, the environment, the outdoorsy element of it all, and especially because it reminds me of Park Forest Plaza, the shopping center of my childhood. These shopping centers that aren’t enclosed were the mothers of modern malls, and I think they’re totally fun. While you might think that the best time to visit Oakbrook Center is…
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There’s No Place Like State Street for the Holidays
For some unknown reason, it’s been a couple of years since I have gone into the city and visited State Street when it’s all dressed up for the holidays. I’ve visited the city itself in December, but I’m typically at the Christkindlmarket, on Michigan Avenue, or at some other area of town for a blogger event. Over the weekend I was invited to see the group Straight No Chaser (they were amazing, by the way), Because the weather was supposed to be rather hellacious, I kept an eye on my weather app all morning and chose to head in much earlier than I needed to be in order to miss…
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Currently Breaking My Heart: Gatlinburg
You may not have heard until around lunchtime today because for some reason the news outlets weren’t covering it, but Gatlinburg, Tennessee was on fire. Actually, it has been on fire for a couple of weeks–East Tennessee has been experiencing its worst drought in about a decade–but yesterday the winds kicked up and some fires that were simmering in the Chimney Tops area blew out of control and caused terrible devastation. Hundreds of homes, dozens of businesses, gorgeous, beloved areas of Smoky Mountain National Park: torched to the ground. It’s upsetting for anyone who has ever set foot there because truly it’s one of the most beautiful areas of the…
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Thirty-ish.
I remember when I was a kid I was fascinated with the year 2000. It didn’t seem real to me that in my lifetime, all of a sudden the years would begin with “2”. I figured out that in the year 2000, I would turn thirty-two. When I was doing that math, thirty-two seemed a million years away. It also seemed SUPER OLD. Tomorrow I’ll be sixteen years past thirty-two, and there’s really no need to do that math because in addition to what they say about fifty being the new thirty and forty being the new twenty (or something like that), mentally I honestly still feel like I’m half…
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World Series 2016: Go Cubs Go!
My very favorite baseball team is the Chicago Cubs. Actually, my very favorite team in any sport is the Chicago Cubs. When you’re from Chicago, it’s kind of a rule that you have to pick a baseball team, because we have two. You HAVE to choose. The Cubs or The White Sox North Side or South Side Red, White, and Blue or Black, White, and Silver Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park (It’s not technically Comiskey anymore but go with it.) The thing is, I don’t actually remember picking the Cubs; I only know that I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember. One example of how fiercely I…