Rock on, Tina!

Seven costume changes. Four dancers. Three-inch high Louboutin heels. Two backup singers. Fireworks. Fireballs. On Fire.

Abby and I went to the Tina Turner concert in Chicago this past weekend. She played a few songs that I hadn't heard before, but she didn't disappoint on her oldies. What I can't get over is that this lady is 69 years old and she is kick-ball-changing around in her Louboutins and belting it out with the best of them. The highlight of the show was the encore, when a crane swing her out over the crowd and she was dancing on the platform, as we held our breath that she wouldn't fall into the crowd. Of course, the crowd would save her...they loved her. She is a diva, after all!

It wouldn't be a weekend with Abby without an adventure. On Saturday morning, we pulled out our tickets and realized that we bought them...for Friday night. Whoops! Fortunately, StubHub came to the rescue and we found tickets for cheaper than our original tickets. Once we got to the concert, we were randomly chosen for an upgrade, so we actually got closer to Tina than we ever imagined!

Thanks, Tina and Abby, for a fabulous weekend!

Sweet Home Chicago

About two weeks ago, Scott and I took a jaunt to Chicago to see our friends Abby and Nathan. It was quite an exciting weekend. Between experiencing a Cubs game (vs. Pirates, Cubs won), walking around the Magnificent Mile, laughing at Second City, gambling at the Arlington Heights horse racetrack and stuffing our faces with sushi, we saw a lot of Chicago and had a great time!

A few pictures from the weekend. The sign in Japanese says (hopefully) Fukedome, which is one of the Cubs' players and whose shirt I was wearing. And the giant polished steel structure is what, I am told, Chicagoans affectionately refer to as "The Bean." You can see the Chicago skyline reflected.

Thank you, Abby and Nathan, for such a fun weekend!

What's Love Got to do with It?

When I was five or six years old, I would prance around the house with my favorite red purse, belting out the words to "What's Love Got to do with It?" My dream was to be Tina Turner - complete with the crazy hair - and marry Michael Jackson.

Well, some dreams don't quite come true. Alas, marrying the King of Pop was not in the cards, and neither was pulling off the crazy Tina hair - or getting the fabulous Tina legs, for that matter.

But dreams can come pretty close - in October, Abby and I will rendez-vous in Chicago to see Tina perform on her last tour ever! I'm pretty excited about the whole thing and just hope that Tina is prepared for me to sing with her on stage. Oh, Tina, you're "Simply the Best!"

By the way, do you know that Tina is 69 years old? I just hope I can age as gracefully as she has.

The Windy City

I just got home from a week in Chicago (which capped off the end of our US ethnography research - yay!). Every time I go to Chicago, I realize how much I really like the city. It has such a different vibe than New York. As you walk down the street, you see people walking together, talking together. Colleagues and friends are huddled together, scurrying off to lunch. Other groups are standing outside, giving hugs and kisses goodbye or hello.

New York is so different - no groups of people, no hugs and kisses. Just people alone, scurrying off to lunch by themselves. No one looks at you. There's really no relationships, at least in the street, like there are in Chicago.

What gives a city it's own vibe? How is it that each city has it's own trademark, it's own personality? How does that get started, and how does it perpectuate itself? Is it a cycle, where once the vibe is established, it attracts people who enjoy and seek out that environment? But there's got to be more to it than that, because people move to cities for jobs and families, external reasons besides being attracted to a lifestyle.

It reminds me of a house smell, in a way. Ever notice how different houses have different smells? And even when you move into a new house, eventually, it'll take on your smell. You can identify people by that smell. How does that smell get started and what contributes to it? And despite bringing more stuff into the house, or having more people in a house, the same smell lingers.

I like Chicago. It's vibe, it's personality, and yes, it's smell.