Brain Cells on Parade

I’m in my third week at the new job in Evanston, and I’m entirely satisfied with how things are working out. The first photo I want to show you is the building I now work in:

Yeah, it’s a whole six stories tall, which takes a bit of getting used to after the ~60 story building I worked in for all those years in the Loop.

The part I can’t photograph is how much quieter it is in Evanston. I have to admit that I’d worked in the Loop for so long that I’d stopped thinking about how noisy it is there. But last week, I volunteered to walk several blocks in mid-afternoon to carry out some office errands, and I suddenly realized that I could hear things like breezes and birds. There’s simply no way I could have heard these things if the normal mid-day ambient noise of the Loop had been humming in the air.

You had to know that I couldn’t write a post like this without talking about food. There are a lot of choices within easy walking distance, but I want to single out two of the main ones we utilize in my office. One is the inimitable Lulu’s Dim Sum and Then Sum, of which I have written in other posts. Tasty as it is, it’s a little pricey to visit too often, though it worked out nicely for me today. A coworker got Lulu’s Pad Thai with Shrimp and found that she couldn’t even get through half of it. Oh, she thought it was delicious, but it’s an ample portion festooned with big fat shrimp. She’d never ordered it before and found it to be a lot more food than she could consume in one sitting. In the spirit of showing that I’m a team player, I came to the rescue and saw that none of the dish went to waste.


Also note that if you A) show up with children in tow, or B) have an affinity for action figures with your dinner, there is a table full of cool creatures near the front door.

And then there are those days when you don’t want to spend a lot on lunch. Or maybe you just have a taste for something cheap, basic, and greasy. For those times, we have Gigio’s in the neighborhood. You can get a generous slice of pizza for two and a half bucks, plus a sackful of blue collar cheesy fries or onion rings that are seemingly fried in a mixture of equal parts oil and sweat, all prepared and bagged for your pleasure by a cadre of muscular, swarthy laborers. If all this is making your mouth water, well, make your way to Davis Street in Evanston and knock yourself out! At the very least, I can promise you the least pretentious restaurant experience you may ever find.

That’s enough about Evanston for one post. It’s a lovely town with a lot of character, and I’m happy to be there!