What a treat last night. We left Mason at home (with some helpful neighbors), and I took Tricia out to her post-Mother’s Day present. We went to Culinary Classes at the Rosebud. Rosebud is by far our favorite Italian Restaurant(s) in Chicago. They open up their corporate kitchen and have their top chefs teach people how to cook their signature dishes. We watched them cook, then we ate the results. Oh my Gosh. I’ve never eaten so much in my life. We learned to make coconut shrimp, Louisiana chicken gumbo, crab cakes, steak au poivre with french fires and sesame Chinese green beans, and apple crisp. For $75 a person I’d recommend coming to Chicago for a cooking class and skipping the restaurant altogether. It’s just as much fun, you learn something, and you go home with t-shirts and other crap. Yummmmm…..

My sis, Lindsey and her fiance Mike came into town for a quick Spring Break jaunt. There was plenty of eating, including Rosebud on Rush, Gino’s East, Jimmy’s Grill, and Steak and Shake yummm. Thanks for coming, we had fun!

What the hell happened to me this morning? I’m on a workout kick. I get up with my friend, and the best youth minister in the world, Jim, every Monday, Wednesady and Friday at 5am to workout. That requires me to get up at 4:30am. We did our Friday “Max-outs” - where we test our progress by doing the most we can do on a bunch of exercises. Well I was pretty thirsty, and brilliant me doesn’t have a water bottle. Long story short, after the workout was over, I nearly passed out in my car. I gutted it out and made it home. Where I literally crashed. Shaking, out of breath, nauseous, I couldn’t even unlock the door to go inside. I had to ring the doorbell. My wonderful wifey took care of me while I couldn’t even tell her that no, I wasn’t having a heart attack, I just worked out too hard without water. I drank six full glasses in 10 minutes. I felt worse than a drunk with the room spinning. I’m better now, but I think I learned a little about my body today, and I think I’m going to go water bottle shopping.

The Bills flag has returned, but the heister is still unknown. Mysteriously it showed up on my neighbor’s flag pole across the street on Saturday morning. I went out to confront him, and he said he didn’t do it. Someone else in our ‘hood framed him. I think I know who. Better watch out. Revenge is sweet - but unfortunately, not sanctioned by the Catholic church (see below).

Tricia and I ventured out to the 2002 Chicago Autoshow yesterday. Whereas last year, finding the CTA bus back to Union Station (no signs anywhere!) and sprinting after the friendly bus driver were our greatest adventures, this year involved taking our brand new son Mason on the trip. The competent McCormick place staff directed us to 3 different floors for entry into the show. And thinking we were smarter than 1 million other Chicagoans we bought our tickets on the Internet so we could go to the special “Fast Line”. You know, the one that ended up having 1 million other Chicagoans in it.

OK, about the cars…You can tell the economy has been horrible by how few concept cars there were. The 2002 Concepts didn’t seem to have nearly the imagination as last year’s either. I really think the car companies are all played out on the cross-over SUV and were just out of ideas for this year. My favorite trend however is the retro-new vehicles. My favorite is the Chevy SSR. This thing is part truck, part convertible, part hot-rod. It is bad ass! I like that the car companies are digging into the past - a time when people didn’t have to please all the demographics to get a car produced. Funny that I found a classic 1950’s Chrysler 300 to be best in show.