Sharp Dressed Dyke

Forgot to write about this weekend last year, I'm not going to forget about it this year.

Our original plan was to go out on Friday night, taking the train right after I was done with work, but sashagee was feeling really awful and so we stayed in and decided to go out the next day. Saturday morning dawned and fortunately sashagee was much better, and Poppa and Nana kindly drove out to get us in Chicago and brought us back to their home in Batavia. We got there around 11:15 a.m., dropped off all our stuff, and then got Laila ready because it was time for Batfest:


This is the only picture of Laila in her costume that we got--no matter what we could not get her to look at the camera--and for a chunk of the event she was pretty anxious. There were a lot of people out and about on the streets, looking at the booths of people selling farmer's market foods and arts and crafts, but once we got past that and went to some of the stores that were giving out candy, that's when Laila really got into it. She still wanted me to carry her for a big chunk of it but once she realized people were handing out candy, that's when she got down and interacted with people. Her best interaction was probably with the people at a driving school, where she actually said "Trick or Treat!" to them. They were sitting down at the other end of the room after a long morning of handing out candy, though, which might be why.

When we passed by Batavia Creamery, though, Laila got really animated and asked for ice cream, so we went in and got candy and then stayed for a treat.

We walked up and down Wilson seeing if there were any more stores offering candy, getting Laila a couple more pieces, and then called it a day and went back home. While Laila played with Poppa and sashagee rested upstairs, I went out on a walk in the neighborhood to look a the leaves--while the trees are just on the cusp of starting to change in the city after the long and unseasonable heat we've had, in the suburbs they're much further on and I was able to see some really nice oranges, yellows, and reds, even though the weather was cloudy. I stayed out for about an hour, making sure to get enough steps to close my rings on my watch, and then went home just in time for everyone to be back. sashagee was up, Laila was inside, and everything was as it should be, just in time for us to head to our next event--mabown's annual Hallowe'en Party. There's a different theme every year, and last year was themed as a murder mystery that we had to solve--sashagee got extremely into it, hence why I'm sad I didn't write about it at the time. This year was a speakeasy, including needing to know the password to get in...but we showed up right when someone was guessing it so we didn't have to actually do anything but follow them in.

Down below was the bar, manned by zbrund:

We got drinks, hung out, and chatted with people. That was basically the theme of this party--it was much more low-key than last year, since last year there people were running around trying to find all the clues and piece them together, but this year the one mystery was the password and, well, I already mentioned how that went for us. We had a nice time but only ended up staying a couple hours because sashagee started feeling sick, and seriously enough so that we left a couple hours early and drove home so she could go to bed. And that ended up being the theme for the rest of the weekend, because Sunday she slept most of the day, Poppa and Nana played with Laila (and I did too, but I wanted to give them more time) and I went on another walk and looked at the leaves, this time in the sunshine. Just after dinner, my parents drove us home, and sashagee went right to sleep after putting Laila to bed.

A lovely start to the weekend, but kind of a disappointing ending. Laila had a good time, though, and I'm glad I got some walks to look at those trees.

Every once in a while I get lunch from the cafeteria on the 16th floor, when there's a popup restaurant that comes to visit (and sometimes when they don't). Here's an example when I went pick up Tandoor Char House, always a good meal. This time was Thai 55, and while I got curry I forgot that the curry was pretty perfunctory--meat, a bit of pineapple, sauce, rice, no vegetables. I made some notes for the future:

RESTAURANTS GOOD
Arepas George
Tandoor Char House

RESTAURANTS BAD
Thai 55

...so now I can check it when a new restaurant shows up and see if I want to go or not.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The point is that there's a bunch of offices on the 16th floor and none of them are occupied. Some of them still have chairs set up in meeting rooms with sealed doors. I took this photo:


...and it doesn't convey the eeriness at all because the camera enhanced the ambient light. There's half a dozen offices like this scattered around the floor and none of them have tenants, though there are some general conference rooms there as well (one of which was in use when I was looking around). This one I took a picture of was the only one with a name still on it, and when I looked up the law firm I found that their website, still updated this year, lists its location in our building as their address, but there's very obviously no one in there and nothing necessary to run a law firm. Meanwhile, this commercial real estate website shows that same address as being available for so which is it? The firm's website lists awards and publications that mostly stop in 2010, but other websites still list them. So, I have no idea if they exist or not.

I'd do the same and chase down some of the other rooms but all of them have nothing on the nameplates, just a suite number.