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I hope a Whole foods opens in that spot. With about 4 bars in it.

jeff you are super in to drinking at whole foods

errbody in whole foods gettin tipsy

drinking at whole foods is always delightful

i am more a fan of having a slice of pizza at whole foods

I'm never in the mood to stay at any grocery store any longer than I have to. Sometimes I dilly dally around the bakery at Fresh Farms but most of the time grocery shopping is strictly business.

I've only ever drank at the Kingsbury one, but they usually have very good draft lists at both bars. Plus I have a lot of pals that go there every Friday after work.

http://www.beermenus.com/places/12664-red-star-bar-whole-foods-lincoln-park

Routine would be to have two drinks at the bar, then another while I'm shopping.

binny's on a friday nite can get you hammered just w/ the free samples

That Sears store kind of sucked, though, which is the thing people seem to forget to mention when hassling Chicagoans for acting like we're better than Sears. The Lands End part was okay but the rest was a mess.

Agree. That's what the guy said too, he was just like welp the store sucked and it died who cares the end.

I don't have any friends (outside of you guys) who like to drink at Whole Foods! It still sounds totally bazonkers to me.

Sears in general is kind of a shit show. I've blocked out the specifics but I had a Kafka-esque battle with their CS reps about a defective air conditioner shortly after we moved here.

i live practically next door to the dinosaur sears on lawrence, its so weird and old but i like having it there

that sears is kind of cool, I like feeling like I'm shopping in a store in 1920.

Whole Foods bar is a good place to drink with a baby.

Not that the baby is drinking you know what I mean.

I still hate that Whole Foods though.

I liked having that Sears there b/c every now and then I needed some shit and there it was. But that was once every couple of years and Target will take up the slack just fine.

You're right about the bookmarks being better in Transit Stop, Jeff. I spent some time w/ it today and I just have to do a bunch of bookmarking and remember how to navigate it. Unfortunately you can't just click the location arrow and list all the stops closest This is my biggest beef w/ it. Frequently I want to find out which bus lines are nearby. I'm supposed to just know that info when I'm in a strange part of town?

For a moment this morning I thought, hey, maybe Electropuf (whose website is gone, BTW) will let me have their API and I can build my own dream CTA app, which, come the fuck on, eat me, Jesse.

I've only ever drank at the Kingsbury one, but they usually have very good draft lists at both bars. Plus I have a lot of pals that go there every Friday after work.

I like that northwoods-cabin upstairs corner at the Kingsbury Whole Foods.

That Sears has been so understaffed that the few times I've stopped in there for something essential, it was never worth waiting in a long line. (No crowds--just 8 out of 10 customers in the entire store waiting in line.) Reminded me of Borders' last days in that way.

It's been varying shades of that for a long time. The last several years have felt like a protracted going out of business sale.

The guy on the radio was saying the State St store had been losing money since it reopened in 2001. The sad part was how they stopped all catalogue operations (closed warehouses, shipping centers) not long before they could have become competitive in Internet sales. Oh well!

i remember the Sears "wish book" was the most amazing thing to flip though before christmas as a kid

I would love to browse some old Sears catalogs right about now. So soothing!

Those things were nuts. They had Star Wars toys that I'd never seen anywhere else, before or since.

Oh god the Wish Book! Almost as good as actually getting toys.

I still look at catalogs as a form of self soothing to this day.

Since we lived overseas so much of the xmas experience was using Sears and JC Penney mail-order catalogs to build xmas lists. I wonder how many years I asked for, and (fortunately) did not receive, a rock tumbler.

OMG I wanted a rock tumbler so bad!

Unrelated but hilarious: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/01/23/chicago-gop-hopeful-reveals-gays-cause-autism/

She's running against Jan Schakowski!!! Lololol good luck w/ that you fucking loon.

Well no she's running in the republican primary and would run against Jan if she won. But still. LOL.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishbook/sets/72157603419794725/

Chicago: There Is No Foreeable End To The Deep Cold Here

Unrelated but hilarious: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/01/23/chicago-gop-hopeful-reveals-gays-cause-autism/

She's running against Jan Schakowski!!! Lololol good luck w/ that you fucking loon.

― carl agatha, Thursday, January 23, 2014 5:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the fuck?! I mean, apart from her batshittedness, there's like a total of 3 conservatives in that district. Maybe her campaign is actually some sort of elaborate tax dodge.

ugh i am so deeply bummed about -XX degrees on the first week of school

also i might need to go to kingspa on sunday

http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-indiana-crash-fatal-photos-20140123/

This is horrifying.

That is among the last things I need to click on right now.
Just drove back from the airport and the story on the radio was about the brain dead pregnant woman in TX. Too much gloom for a day that's already plenty gloomy by itself.

Yeah. I watched two hours of local and national news on Wednesday, much of which was about the weather, plus reading all the politically minded people I follow on Twitter and I had my first good old fashioned anxiety incident since my pregnancy got all complicated. It sucked.

I'm sorry. It always sucks. That's why I find twitter exhausting tbh. When they're not making jokes I don't understand about things I (usually) don't care about, people are so upset about so many things (because there sure are a lot of things wrong with the world) and 1) I don't feel like chiming in with my own worthless opinion and 2) I just can't take that level of zzzzzzz on top of the shit at work, friend and family issues, etc. My constitution hasn't become weaker, there's just more noise out there than I know what to do with and it's kinda paralyzing. Better to just otherwise occupy myself.

8 hour sauna day

my office's ancient heater seems to be finally wearing itself out, so we've relocated to a meeting room with a 7th-floor view of LSD, the jardine water traetment plant, and the ice floes on the playpen

that's better than the closet you were in, right?

8 hour sauna day sounds great
will my kindle melt if i bring it in there?

I unthinkingly wore my glasses into the sauna at Thousand Waves and it felt like a terrible, disastrous turn of events though I didn't stay in long enough for anything to actually happen to them or my face.

Anyway ask a Yooper.

It depends on how hot the sauna is? I've been in saunas that made shampoo bottles melt and they're generally at least somewhat damp places so it's probably not a good idea.

Anyway the concept of reading in sauna is a bit alien to me b/c I never wear my glasses in (this also makes nudity easier to deal with imo).

Reading a newspaper in a sauna is one of life's great pleasures.

Would not recommend anything that you actually want to keep past the duration of the sauna visit. The Reader fits the occasion perfectly.

king spa has like 12 diff dry saunas, each at diff temps. some i'm sure low enough for kindle use.

there's also the lovely lounge area though

Is anyone else unable to access Gmail? downforeveryoneorjustme.com says it's working, but when I try to go to the site it says:

Temporary Error (500) We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.

It's down per everyone freaking out on Twitter.