Cafes and walking around in Ukrainian Village, Bucktown, Wicker Park and East Village

Today we spent a lot of time in a few of Chicago's neighborhoods.  First we went to Cafe Ballou and my owner worked for a bit - he also read from Alias Grace for a bit too.  The bathroom there is crazy - there is an actual bath in there.  I took a few minutes to get to know the TP there too, of course.  Embarrassingly, there are pictures.  Then we walked around and you can see some pictures from that (including a squirrel that I thought might jump at me).  We ended up at Filter, a diner/cafe where we had more coffee (we got pretty wired that day) and had a chicken salad sandwich.  The dude next to us smelled a bit and the outlet didn't work for the laptop.  Then we went back to Ukrainian Village where my owner met his friend.  I got put in the car not too long after that, so that's the end of my day.

Overall it was a good day!

Cafe Ballou

Getting to know the help.  Also, want to bathe?

See, it's a public restroom

Cafe Ballou

Killer Squirrel!

Wicker Park / Bucktown

McDonald's casts quite a shadow...

Filter

Coffee in a Chicken Soup mug

Filter

Filter

Chicken Salad

TP

I need T.P.

Belvidere Oasis

The Belvidere Oasis is fairly similar to the O'Hare Oasis but I was able to see this one during the day.

As always, I enjoy the fact that there are a lot of cars going by - people traveling.  I like that atmosphere.  Also, it was a warm day and the snow was melting, which was also nice. BUT... I came across a few distant cousins (not TP rolls, but empty doggie-doo rolls) who were being kept locked up - it was hard to look at.  I had to remind myself that they couldn't think.

Anyway - Oasis #2 for Ollie. :|

Christmas funeral

Christmas 2011 - Rockton, IL.  I attended another empty TP roll's funeral (you can see the video below).  He, er... she... no, 'it' never lived and it was not like me, so the funeral was not sad.  But it's what made me decide that I needed to do more than what most of my fellow empty rolls had done.

I realized I wanted more... this was my first thought.  I remembered a few things - being warmly embraced by some toilet paper.  Spinning, and sitting still for a long time, then spinning again.  Then that warm embrace was gone.  Something made me think I wanted more, so I willed myself to get more and poof, there I was sitting on my owner's desk, next to his computer.  He'd drawn some eyes and a mouth's grin on me - I hadn't had those before.  So, now that I could see, I wanted to see more.  He helped me, and brought me to places.  I will tell you about those places here in this blog.