Again, only half the story ...

Much like taking credit for the Chicago pictures (he only took, like, 99% of them. at least one is mine) Damian failed to mention that I TOTALLY beat him at WineStyles last Tuesday.

This may be because I talked Damian out of writing down his initial answers, then wrote them down myself. Hard to say.

But, whatever. I still got more points. D's going to try to avenge him good name and educated palate tonight.

I say, look at the family history, baby. You got no chance.

Wine Styles

In typical fashion, we have become members at a wine store near Argonne. The store is called Wine Styles and we really enjoy it. It isn't even close to the biggest or have the largest selection in the area (still a good selection) but it is a lot of fun. We joined because of the tastings. They have tastings on Tuesday and Thursday. More on that in a second. The memebership gets us both in (and guests...) for any tasting as well as 10% discount on wines, etc. Plus two free bottles each month (for around the same value as your membership). So we are basically buying two bottles a month and everything else is gravy. A coworker of mine is a member and invited us to one of the tastings and we were hooked immediately. The owners Tim and Maggie are a couple our age who simply decided they wanted to open a wine store when they graduated college. They really enjoy what they do and it shows during the tastings. Everyone brings in their own food from outside (they don't serve food) and you sit around sampling wine and socializing. Not bad.

Thursday tastings are fairly typical. You get three whites and three reds. They supply a sheet with all of the wine info and descriptions to help you better describe what it is you are tasting.

Tuesday is a little different. It is still three whites and three reds but with a twist. It is a blind tasting. Here is the description from their website:

Here's how they work...
We give you six wines (3 whites and 3 Reds) and a sheet with descriptions
of each wine. The catch is, we don't tell you which wine is which... That's your job!
It's a matching game, of sorts, and is a bunch of fun. Stop on in to learn more

You match the wines with their description but also, one white and one red does not say which grape it is made from. You also have to guess that correctly which is harder than it sounds.

So in conclusion, we are probably drinking too much wine but it's been a lot of fun.

Dine Away Hunger

Before I gush on about Adelle's, I need to clarify something. In a previous post I mistakenly took credit for taking all of the Chicago pictures. I didn't realize I had done this (I had a couple of drinks and I was tired) but I should give credit to Ashley as well. She took some of the pictures there were posted so it was a team effort.

Anyway, on to more delicious things. We have managed to do a few fun things lately but I only have so much time but I wanted to mention a restaurant we went to last Wednesday. It was for an event called Dine Away Hunger where 17 Wheaton restaurants donate a portion of their proceeds for that night to the People's Resource Center in Wheaton. The money goes to stock the food bank at the Center which provides food for 18,000 DuPage County residents who need assistance. We had not been to a nice dinner in Wheaton yet and thought this would be a good time to do so. Ashley made reservations for us at Adelle's.

We started off sharing the portobello fries which were so amazing, I think even Graham would like them. Ashley had the pistachio crusted salmon and I had the beef tenderloin. It may have been the best steak I've ever had. And while we were there we figured we may as well have desert also. They also have a good wine list and we both enjoyed our selections. Anyone coming to visit should check out their link above and let us know if it sounds interesting. There are plenty of other excellent suggestions in the area but we haven't been to most. Yet...

Awesome

Guess who learned this news the hard way?

Getting By With a Little Help From Our Friends

I think it goes without saying that we are WAY over the Residence Inn. Even before the incident with the mysteriously wet pillows (Really, I think housekeeping was just being nice and washed our personal pillows. They smelled like roses.) We miss our own space and our own bed and our red wine glasses.

The glasses in our "kitchen" (more on that in a second) look something like this:



Only uglier. (FYI, I found that picture by googling ugly wine glasses.)

Those wine snobs are onto something. Red wine really does taste better when it is served in the right glass. I thought my usually questionable ability to select wines (I choose the pretty labels) had really bottomed out. Then D suggested that maybe it was the glasses. I'm going with that.

Now, the kitchen. It's nice to have a full size refrigerator and a real microwave and dishwasher, but, friends, our stove does not work. We had a frozen pizza in there for an hour and a half last night at 100 degrees more than the instructions called for and it STILL was not cooked. So our sustenance choices are eating out or stovetop/microwave dinners. Any suggestions for the latter would be appreciated. Kraft dinner? Not all that I remembered.

But! When we sent out the email letting everyone know we were moving to Chicagoland, our friend from way, way back (half our lives, yo), Kris, wrote back to say that she and her husband and 7-month-old son were also moving to Chicago just days later! I drove into the city (only half an hour on the expressways on a weekday! Yay!) last Tuesday and had lunch with Kris and her gorgeous, happy son. We successfully navigated the El and shopping on Michigan Ave with a stroller. I controlled my shopping impulses, but did find some couches we might neeeeeeeeed for our family room.

And yesterday got to have lunch with our friend Marty. Marty went to Western with D and made sure his resume got into the right hands when he applied at Indian Head. She now lives in Milwaukee. We met her halfway in Gurnee and had some delicious lunch. At least mine was ... ribs ... mmmm ... we also really, really miss our grill.

It's so good to be able to see some old friends again.

City of big shoulders

And to top it off, here are a few random shots WE took this weekend when we were wandering around downtown.

The Chicago Theater



Hancock Building



A couple of shots of the new Trump Tower under construction


Heading towards the lake...


A couple of shots of the Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower





Skyline from Shedd Aquarium



Skyline from the Field Museum

In case you couldn't tell, the Dockerys love Chi-town!!!

Bears Game!

A new co-worker of mine game me two tickets to family night at Soldier Field for Sunday. The tickets were for the Cadillac Club which is the super swanky section of Soldier Field so we are sure to be disappointed from here on out. Family night is when the Bears move their training camp for one night to Soldier Field and have fans come in and watch the practice. It was really hot that day and we were a few hours early so we killed some time by the lake and then went to the Field Museum.

Here are a few pictures from Soldier Field. It was the first time there for both of us so we were very excited. Here it is still looking somewhat traditional.

Then not so much...

They had the George Halas trophy on display from last year. The Halas trophy is what is given to the team that wins the NFC every year to go to the Super Bowl.

I bet coaches just love it when their giant mugs are plastered on the widescreen jumbotron.

Staley the Bear getting ready to lead the team onto the field for the first time in 07!

Even during warmups, Devin Hester got a huge applause. He, Urlacher, and Grossman were the crowd favorites although I was glad to see that the fans seemed extremely knowledgeable and cheered loudly for their important players who aren't stars as well. I do have to admit, Hester did look very promising on O, but I'm trying to keep my expectations in check.

I'm totally ready for football season now!

Cubs game!

Ok. Here are a few picutures from the game. It was a great time and the seats were simply incredible.

This is one of the pictures that shows just how close we were to the batters box.

Oh yeah, and as you can see the Cubs won 2-6.

After the game we wandered around town for a while. The weather was too great for us to just head back to the Residence Inn. On the way back to the train that night we were passed by a Gotham Swat Team truck. We were a little confused until we realized we were on the outskirts of where they were filming a scene for the new Batman movie. Just another random thing that added to a great day in Chicago.

Wrigley

We are heading downtown today to wander around and go to the Cubs vs. Mets game. We are really excited because we are in the third row, directly behind home plate. So if anyone is around a TV at 3 CT, we will be on Fox. We should be in camera view for every pitch. I'll post pictures, etc. tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon we are going to Bears practice at Soldier Field so I should have lots of pictures to post in the next couple of days.

We May Need to Move Again

Damian and I were really looking forward to being back in the land of Bell's. Especially given that it's summer, when Oberon is available. We talked about stocking up before we left Niles, but my brother wisely pointed out that he can get it in Cleveland, why wouldn't we be able to get it in Chicago? Great point. Or so we thought.

But now! Disaster!

And don't think that I missed the irony that Bell's was finally available in DC right before we moved ... to a place where Bell's is not available.

DHL is ruining my life.

I think that DHL might be the most incompetent company in business today. For a company that we have never used for our shipping needs, they have still managed to cause the following headaches:

1. They tried to deliver a computer to us that wasn't ours and wasn't addressed to us. And I don't mean it didn't have our names on it, I mean it didn't have the same number or street. I have NO IDEA how they ended up at our door. So we sent them away. They came back when we weren't there and got our neighbors to sign for it. Then we had this laptop on our kitchen floor for several weeks until D decided to drive it to the address that was clearly written on the label. Good thing one of us has a conscience. I was going to leave it there until DHL asked for it back.

2. DHL man ran over our mailbox. He wasn't delivering anything to us, but still managed to drive into our tree lawn and knock over our mailbox.

3. As I mentioned before, Cook County screwed up my certification paperwork (they claim they never received it, even though they called me with questions about it). So I've been scrambling to get my transcripts from K and U of M so I can reapply in a competent county. I overnighted my request to K on Saturday and they overnighted my transcripts on Monday. But they used DHL. I called K and got the tracking number. DHL says that it was delivered yesterday. In Lisle. WE ARE IN FREAKING LOMBARD. AAHH. I called DHL and they will be bringing the package to me here today (yes, verified the address and everything) and I made them refund the overnight shipping fee to K.**)

**I would like to say that I love my college. For "rush" handling of transcript requests, they charge a fee. They sent my check for this fee back because they were "doing transcripts Monday anyway."