Musings of a Punk Rock Father

Our friends from Denver, Herb and Cara, left this morning. We had a great weekend with them, and it was good to get to know Herb. We went to their wedding back in November, but only got to share about 30 seconds of conversation with them.

Since it was about 500 degrees below zero, we opted not to go walk around downtown Chicago. It feels like kind of a disappointment to be so close to Chicago and not be able to share it with out of town friends, but when your snot turns to icicles upon opening the front door, it's probably best not to try to brave the cold.

Instead, on Saturday Herb showed us his boyhood home in Palatine, then we showed them the third most impressive structure in Chicagoland after the Sears Tower and Wrigley Field, Ikea. We made some exciting purchases: two bath mats, a garbage can and a shower curtain liner. Herb and Cara picked up a sweet light that projects different images and different colors on the wall.

We also went to a mid-day lunch/dinner at Wildfire in Oak Brook. We were seated immediately, and when we walked out there was a 2 hour wait. Wildfire has some amazing filets; I got the horseradish crusted filet and Herb got the bleu cheese crusted filet. Quite good. The one downside was the attack from a dish of sour cream, or some other creme/sauce concoction, from some table near us. It suddenly flew over our table, with some lannding on Cara and Herb, some on the table, and some in the hair of a girl at the table next to us. The restaurant was really great about it, offering to pay for the dry-cleaning of any clothes, and they comped us dessert.

We capped off the night with Melanie's superb creme brulee, and a viewing of the Tom Cruise-Steven Spielberg opus, "War of the Worlds." I still like the film.