Father's Day Celebrations

Happy early Father's Day!

Continuing the tradition from last year, I flew my dad up to Chicago for a nice extended weekend. He arrived Wednesday night, and so far a great time has been had.

First stop in Chicago (immediately after picking up Dad at the airport), Le's Pho for a late-night dinner, where we had pho, shaken beef, spring rolls, and my favorite, a durean shake. Mmmmm. Dad and I are big fans of durean, but Thanh is not. A detail in my building argument that Thanh is not actually Vietnamese (he also doesn't like papaya or mango, somebody explain this to me).

Thursday was low-key, seeing that I had to work til' six, but Thursday night we headed over to Thanh's place to watch the Laker Game. Why Thanh's house? Well, not only does he have a fantastic view of Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago (his condo is on the 32nd floor), but he also has cable. About six months ago I decided to cut my cable connection so that I could save 60 bucks a month. (I catch my favorites on Hulu.com) I'm not a huge fan of basketball, but the Laker game was pretty exciting. And we had some yummy meatballs with rice that Dad and I cooked up for the occasion. Lakerballs and rice, I should say.

Friday afternoon Dad accompanied me to work, where he was an honored guest during my theatre classes. The kids were introduced to "Ms. McBride's daddy", and then they promptly ignored him while they galavanted around the stage as jungle animals. I was proud of their lack of self-consciousness, and Dad enjoyed their hijiinks.

Today Thanh and I took Dad to the Lincoln Park Zoo and Conservatory, one of the lovely and fantastic free activites in Chicago. Highlights were the Orchid Room (though my favorite is the Fern Room where I can pretend to be a dinosaur), and the Regenstein Ape House where we watched one chimp kiss another chimp's ass. Scientists call it "grooming". I call it inappropriate and unnecessary. There were also some very cute swamp monkeys that were playing tag and chewing on baby toys.

Here are some photos from our activities today.






Tomorrow we are off to Chinatown for dim sum at Phoenix Rising (I call it Pho-enix Rising. As in, "Thanh? What does Pho Enix Rising mean?" Hee hee hee....). Then to Mitsuwa Marketplace for a soba dinner and a cruise around the Japanese supermarket. Yummy fishcakes.....