friday night - gingerman tavern: a friend held her birthday party here, and it was a thoroughly adorable place. tiny, cramped yet cozy front room and an expansive backroom with a few pool tables and plenty of room to mill about. all sorts of people - yuppies, hipsters, plenty of medill graduate students - hanging out in perfect harmony. and extremely attractive male and female bartenders. probably a good place to get a drink before a show at the metro.

saturday afternoon - the chicago lakefront path: despite it having snowed a few inches the night before, the lakefront path was cleared and, refreshingly, empty. i had a great seven-mile run from the belmont harbor almost down to navy pier and back. the snow stretching to the lake was beautiful to look at and the weather was sunny and crisp. i thought i was being all hardcore, running out saturday in the cold, but while running i noticed a dude KAYAKING IN THE LAKE. that, my friends, is hardcore.

saturday night - mama desta's red sea: hooray, good ethiopian food! in september i had gone to some place called ethiopian diamond and found it truly lacking. i went on to assume in my haughty manner that no decent ethiopian food could be found outside of d.c. well, i was proved wrong when i went out to mama desta's with some friends. i should have gone earlier - it's just a few blocks up from my apartment, and is super delicious and mostly affordable. good honey wine, friendly service, jolly little atmosphere. no awesome singing and dancing a la dukem, but that's okay.

sunday night - peter's lasagna and viewings of west wing + grey's anatomy: you probably can't get your hands on the lasagna part (though i think this was the recipe he used), but i was totally excited to sit down for two hours last night and watch these shows. i haven't seen west wing in, oh, approximately a billion years, but i thought last night's episode was really good. of course, just as it starts getting decent again, it gets canceled. le sigh. as for grey's anatomy, well, that show just gives me the warm fuzzies. i don't think i've laughed so hard in a long time as i did at the hot dog eating scene. but that may have just been the five glasses of wine.