Chicago: Amazing lunch, books and projects

Yesterday seems so long ago. Perhaps because I was still full from yesterday's lunch until about 2pm today! In the morning I started working on the mud room remodel (pictures to come soon) by patching the hole that Marty thought was 5"x5" but when I removed the painted pieces of cardboard that was covering the hole it turned out to be more like 14"x7"! Then I met Marissa and her husband in town and we had an amazing lunch at Bandera.
To start we shared a side of mac and cheese and Bandera's famous cornbread.

Then my main was the Seattle style (BBQ? not sure how that makes sense) salmon with cucumber salad and green rice. Inthe background there Eric (left) got a stake sandwich with awesome fries and a cup of jus to dip the sandwich in. Marissa got a salad with rotisserie chicken, when I took a bike of the chicken it melted in my mouth! It was all sooo good, so good. I hadn't saved room for dessert but I got it anyway, berries and marscapone. It was heavenly! Eric got banana cream pie and Marissa (right) had key lime pie (which she said was amazing).

After lunch, I rolled myself over to After-words bookstore on Illinois (once I figured out how to get off Michigan street... curse your layered streets Chicago!) I find myself drawn to the travel section; I purchased 2 books. I stumbled across A Field Guide to America's History, it's full of entries like "mills and factories" and "barns" with information on where to look for things and brief histories including drawings. I'm pretty excited about it! The second book I bought is blue highways which was recommended to me by a friend of my mom at church back in Delaware. I started reading it on the L back from the city yesterday and have already been inspired to take the blue highway route.

"He said, 'I noticed that you use work and job interchangeably. Oughten to do that. A job's what you force yourself to pay attention to for money. With work, you don't have to force yourself. There are a lot of jobs in this country, and that's good because they keep people occupied. That's why they're called 'occupations' (page 10)." I'm looking for job opportunities in my travels with the main goal of finding work... I guess he's referring to life's work?

I almost bought a book called Experience Architecture, but decided I won't need it until I try to write more about architecture and continue my thesis from undergrad... hopefully I'll get around to that someday soon, perhaps in my travels. With my new plans though, I don't think I'll be going back to school. I might just have to try research and writing on my own. That's a topic for another day though :)

Today I worked more on the mudroom remodel, here is a before shot (after the room had been cleared out).

The mudroom is becoming an extension of the kitchen, along with repairing some holes I am installing some cabinets and a countertop. Hopefully I'll be able to paint it as well, or at least prime before I head to my next stop (Columbia, MO)!