Weekend with BK & AK

A week ago our friends Brian & Amanda, formerly of Chicago and now of Springfield, came northward just to hang out with us (truth be told they came northward for work but a good side effect is that we got to catch up a bit). They're the ones who I claim are living a parallel life. It's always hard moving away from a city and reestablishing a support base. Perhaps we should be pro's at it, as one friend of mine (Miss Teka from Chi-Town ... "WestSide") says "They call people like you and Amanada, nomads". I suppose she's right to some extent, at least lately. I don't know if it's the urge to travel and try new things or if we feel like every place we've been to is "lacking" something, or if we're just making the hard decisions now so that the future will be easier, regardless, we've moved a fair bit in the last few years.

Since 2003
Fairbanks to Chicago for an internship
Chicago to Fairbanks to finish up grad school
Fairbanks to NYC for an internship
NYC to Anchorage to pack up and head south (young man)
Anchorage drive to Denver where we spent 3 weeks identifying if it was someplace we wanted to settle down in
Denver drive to Chicago
Chicago to Minneapolis

These don't include the multiple times we've moved internally in the city.
Lived in 3 places in Fairbanks
2 Places in Chicago
2 Places in the Twin Cities.

We hope the next move is into a house of our own again and is the last one for a long while! We'll wait until we sell our Chicago home for that to occur.

Anyway - So, Brian and Amanda come up and we get to catch up. On Friday we went out to dinner with them and the Callahan's (who did the initial luring us up to Minneapolis by the way). It's been our evil pleasure to introduce people to new and "exotic" foods, especially Midwestern lifers. Exotic here in the midwest means that the potatoes are seasoned with garlic, or the bbq sauce is all the way from "New York City". Pretty much they don't get out much. I can't claim to be too exotic in my palette, I usually draw the line at organs. I'll eat most preparations of meats/foods that use normal cuts, it's when they start getting into organs that I don't eat it. So, fancied up east african curried beef is fine but grilled liver and onions isn't. We found a good place to try, an Afghani place, figuring that it's just an adaptation of meat and potatoes, so the midwesterners would like it. We were vetoed (we were actually vetoed by a fourth couple who wound up not coming to dinner but instead met us afterwards which was fun) and wound up at a local chain bar & grill type and followed it up with some ice cream from Grand Ole Creamery.

On Saturday we went out with Brian & Amanda (they're one of the more adventurous of our midwest friends) to the Midtown Global Market. Aaahhhh, a place where I could be adventurous without forcing the others to be! Brian and both Amanda's got some Holy Land Deli food (Amanda and I have eaten there previously) while I got the aforementioned East African Curried Beef from Safari. Mind you, I cannot attest a single bit as to the autheticity of the food as I've never been to East Africa but it was tasty.

We spent the rest of the day chatting and watching Grizzly Man.

It's nice to be part of a community, perhaps now that we've moved across town we can start laying roots again. Just hopefully we don't forget (and aren't forgotten by) our old roots.