The city of Chicago has lots of February traditions (besides MORE SNOW, ugh). One of the biggies is the Chicago Auto Show, which will be held at McCormick Place and open to the public from February 8-17. The Chicago Auto Show is the largest auto show in North America and, because my feet have carried me around the one million square feet of display space that the show takes up in the North and South Exhibit Halls, I can reiterate that yeah, it’s HUGE. One of the special events going on is Women’s Day, which happens on Tuesday, February 11. Women get into the auto show that day for $6…
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Blue Man Groupie
Let me just get this out of the way: I have seen Blue Man Group Chicago more times than any other show in my life. Jim and I have been in the audience so many times that I honestly cannot remember how many times that has been anymore. To say that we love the show would be a vast understatement. Now that you know that little bit of trivia, it should be no surprise to you that when the Marketing Manager for Blue Man Group Chicago contacted me to ask whether I would be interested in some free tickets in exchange for a blog post about the show, I wasted…
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Blue Man Group Chicago: Indescribably Fun
Let me just get this out of the way: I have seen Blue Man Group Chicago more times than any other show in my life. Jim and I have been in the audience so many times that I honestly cannot remember how many times that has been anymore. To say that we love the show would be a vast understatement. Now that you know that little bit of trivia, it should be no surprise to you that when the Marketing Manager for Blue Man Group Chicago contacted me to ask whether I would be interested in some free tickets in exchange for a blog post about the show, I wasted…
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What Is Art, Anyway?
Last week, Jim and I spent a nice afternoon at the Art Institute of Chicago. I always enjoy strolling through the galleries and getting up close and personal with some of the most famous works of art in the world. I’m not the type of person to stand in front of a painting and analyze it in a conversation with someone else, but I do have my own agenda. What I do when I come across a piece of art I really love: 1. I look at it from afar first, and then I slowly walk closer until I’m only about a foot away. 2. If the painting has one…
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Revisiting “My Dad’s Holiday Inn”: #ChangeYourView
My Dad retired last year after nearly forty years in the hospitality industry as a hotel manager. I spent lots of time in hotels as a kid. We lived in some of them temporarily, and when we weren’t living in them we were using the pools or eating in the restaurants. Dad managed Holiday Inns the most through my growing-up years, and I have tons of awesome memories from his time working for that chain. In fact, when it was time to make a cake for his retirement party I used the vintage Holiday Inn sign as inspiration. (It was pretty cool: you can see that cake HERE.) His first…
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Taking A Moment
I’m currently in Detroit on business and I’m excited about it, not only because of what I’ll be doing while I’m here but also because I’m only THREE! DAYS! AWAY! from visiting my sistuh-from-anuthuh-mutha AND because I have been workingworkingworking like crazy on all of my various jobs for the past ten days in order to be able to make my deadlines AND not have to worry much about work other than “maintenance-type stuff” during my two trips. Shew. That was a long sentence. Actually, if you try and read it without taking a breath, you’ll have a teeny bit of an idea how it has felt to live my…
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New 1893 World’s Fair Exhibit At Chicago’s Field Museum!
When I was working on my book a couple of years ago, I researched the 1893 World’s Fair pretty extensively for the chapter I wrote about Chicago history. The World’s Columbian Exposition, as it was also called, is extremely fascinating to me. Here’s some of what I wrote about it: “The World’s Columbian Exposition was conceptualized as an 1892 celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World. The cities of St. Louis, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago competed fiercely for the privilege of hosting the World’s Fair and representing the United States to the rest of the world. (Chicago ended up having the deepest…
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Stalking In Starved Rock State Park
A little more than a week ago, Jim and I were sitting around trying to make a variety of plans for the weekends ahead. It’s what you do when you’re an Empty Nester, you know. Suddenly you have all of this time on the weekends because you don’t have kids coming and going at various times: if you don’t make plans to do things, you’re basically just living from meal to meal and that’s no fun at all. Jim and I are all for fun, so we spend lots of time on our calendar of activities. After a few minutes of silent and individual thinking he said, “You know, if…
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Bamboo Harmonizer Massage At Chicago’s The Peninsula Spa: Ahh-mazing!
I have been writing articles about the nuts and bolts of running a salon (marketing, customer service, employee issues, etc.) for NAILPRO, a salon industry trade magazine, on a regular basis–eight to ten features a year!–since 2006. (See?) I have interviewed lots of people in the beauty industry over the years as a part of my research, from nail technicians who work out of their home or in rented strip mall booths to managers of mid-sized salons to high profile people like Katie Cazorla and Tabatha Coffey. The similarities and differences of successful salons and spas fascinate me. Recently I was asked by the folks at The Peninsula Spa (located…
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A Skydeck Chicago Giveaway
Back in the summer of 2011, I was selected to be an “Ambassador” of Skydeck Chicago, which is the attraction/observation deck found (mostly) on the 103rd floor of the building technically known now as the Willis Tower (but still called the Sears Tower by me and the majority of Chicago natives). I thoroughly enjoyed my summer two years ago, making multiple trips up there for various fun reasons. Here’s the famous building in question: Wait, let’s get a little closer: See those four boxes all the way up there on the left? They make up “The Ledge”, which has kept visitors shaking in their boots (sometimes even from the ground…