Holiday lights?

Just before Christmas, I was walking down State Street to do some shopping and stopped dead in my tracks. You can't make out the music very well above the roar of the traffic, but you can't miss the changing colors of the lights. Love them or leave them, these are LED lights and the City of Chicago plans to leave them up as a year-round decoration. The Christmas music will be swapped for season-appropriate tunes, but the lights will remain.

I thought they were hilarious. My boyfriend thought they were phallic. What do you think?

Caffeine buzz

My sister visited me a couple of weekends ago. She lives on the East Coast and usually travels with a husband and a two-year-old. But on this particular weekend, I had her company to myself.

We packed in a week's worth of activities into just a couple of days, including dinner at Friend's Sushi in the Gold Coast, a visit to Saigon Sisters in the French Market (yeah, I might be an addict...), a Second City show, dinner at Chilam Balam, yoga at Exhale, brunch at Meli in River North and a visit to the Christmas tree at Macy's.


To fit all of this in and to stay awake for the late show at Second City, we started the weekend with a strong caffeine buzz at the Roasting Works Tour at Intelligentsia Coffee. The tour covers the history of coffee, coffee-growing regions, the smells associated with coffee and concludes with a take-home gift--a 1/2 pound bag of freshly-roasted Intelligentsia Coffee!!

I've taken the tour once before, about a year ago. My only complaint with the tour I took with my sister is that the guide turned the roasting machinery on while he was talking. Despite his headset, we found it difficult to hear.

This tour is offered twice on the first Saturday of every month. It books up several weeks in advance, so be sure to reserve your tickets as soon as you know you can go.