Green Chicago

The Player and I just got home last night from a whirlwind trip to The Windy City.  We left early Monday morning on Amtrak (environmentally friendly not driving our private greenhouse gas producing vehicle, thus green!)  We stayed at the Palmar House (expensive but booked on Hotwire very much the opposite of expensive and thus saving us some greenbacks!)    Yes I know my punctuation is wrong in those sentences but where does the . go with the exclamation points and parantheses for competition?  Help!

I did not take my camera. So this blog will not be punctuated with personal photos, but maybe a few Google Images will appear. You never know what might happen next! As Kung Fu Sammy says, "Expect the Unexpected."

Kung Fu Sammy does not end sentences with exclamation points, being a centered kung fu master of a skunk.    Also he probably has a copy of Skunk and White's Elements of Style.

The trip was a joy.  It was so wonderful to share some of my favorite haunts in Chicago with The Player.  One of the highlights was going on a Monday night to The Green Mill where we listened to great jazz provided by The Patricia Barber Quartet.  (More green!  More punctuation worries!) The music was great, the people watching was fabulous, and we met the owner of the Mill, Dave.  I knew he was the owner because everyone else was dressed in the dark clothing required of jazz club patrons and employees (oh, wait I was wearing a light beige shirt...oops) and he was wearing hunting gear.  Specifically a red and black checked flannel shirt, jeans, and a hunting cap.  No apparent weapons, though.  

The music was sublime.

People-watching highlights included 2 sisters (possibly twins?) who I nicknamed Morticia and Medusa Kardashian.  They were all about the people-watching in a reverse sort of way, as in they were there to be seen.  Medusa had blond streaks in her wild dark wavy mane, and wore a poncho made of some poor little animal that she had probably just found and killed and skinned herself.  She spent most of the evening looking at herself in the mirror behind the bar.  And holding her stomach in.  I wonder if she noticed there was world-class music being made around her.  Morticia was less self conscious, probably because she wasn't worried about snakes coming out of her head or animal guts still stuck to the inside of her new poncho.  I wondered where little sister Minerva was on Monday night?  Possibly out on a date with Mayhem. 

I googled some images of Medusa and then decided I'd rather not frighten you all.

The Player fantasized that Patricia Barber would talk to us and like us so much that she would invite us to her house the next day for lunch.  Unfortunately even though the Green Mill is small and intimate, we were sitting at the bar in the back and could not even see her. 

Except a view like this as we came out of the bathroom which is practically on the stage. 

She could not see us, and so we did not meet her or talk to her or even get to wink at her.  The owner of the bar did buy us a drink, though.  

Only seeing the Chagall mural topped that!