little blog on the prairie

I’m leaving on an jet plane. I know when I’ll be home again, but I just hope little Peanut doesn’t forget about me.

While I’m gone, I’ll be compiling my summer in C-U to-do list. These are things that I’ve always wanted to do, but never have. So if you have anything I should consider for the list, speak up. I’ll be back Friday.

since we had another edition of Thursday Random Thoughts:

• Speaking of zoos, the Peoria Zoo is having a big free bash on Memorial Day featuring music and other entertainment. One of the acts performing will be the Lady Bugs, a group of four singing sisters who are currently based in Champaign after being uprooted from their Mississippi home following Hurricane Katrina. Who knew?
• Someone got the bright idea to open up a kids’ hair salon in Normal. Like, weren’t we just talking about this?!?!? The grand opening is scheduled for June 9, but it sounds like they are already cutting as we speak.
• Lisa from Champaign Taste recently visited the new Seven Saints bar/restaurant in downtown Champaign. She took pictures, too.
• I don’t know about you, but I’m all over the C-U Humane Society Garage Sale this Friday and Saturday. I figure even if I don’t find any treasures, it was worth the donation.
• I’ve always wanted to go into the palatial home, now a retreat center, at Allerton Park. Turns out the staff is offering tours of the building on Memorial Day, from 10 to 4. I wonder if the Brown Bag will be open that day …

In the city-state to the north, the impending cicada invasion is all the rage. Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, revised its schedule so as to not compete with the noisy little insects. Brides have changed their plans for outdoor weddings. There’s even several blogs about them. Scientists predicted that today would be the day that the cicadas emerge.

But there’s no buzz (pun intended) about the cicadas invading C-U. The last time the 17-year cicadas emerged — 1990 — I was barely in high school and living in C-U was not on my radar screen. What I remember most about the cicadas in Chicago that summer was the crunch beneath my feet as I walked down our neighborhood sidewalks.

The exterminator was recently at our house and I asked him if the cicadas will make their presence known in C-U. He said that people who had cicadas in 1990 would see them again this year, but it’s not as widespread down here. After doing a little research, I found that we are on the southern edge of the Brood XIII habitat, as you can see in this map.

Last week the wheels on the van went all the way to Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington. It was a very easy trip — the zoo is not far from the Interstate, and with the exception of a lack of parking, it was relatively simple to get in and out of there.

The zoo itself is just the right size for our munchkins (and any kid under the age of 10 or so, depending on how zoo savvy they are.). It is also beautifully landscaped and well maintained. Since we weren’t expecting much, we were very pleasantly surprised. The kids are able to get farely close to the animals, and watching them watch the animals is a hoot. We especially enjoyed the funny otters and the rainforest exhibit, where the birds can land on your shoulder.

We were about at the end of the zoo — the grand finale is a leopard and a Sumatran tiger — when I realized we were missing one of Peanut’s shoes. Peanut’s grandma went back and retraced our steps, to no avail. We looked everywhere, asked at the lost and found, nothing. Then, my ace detective skills kicked in. I decided to look through our photos on the digital camera and see if I could find the last place where we had the shoe.

As it turned out, it hadn’t been missing all that long. It was hiding in the bushes right in the buffer zone between the railing and the leopard exhibit. And off we went.

Mr. lbotp and I escaped from the zoo recently and finally made it over to Pasha, the newish Mediterranean restaurant out at Village at the Crossing. I know it opened ages ago, but we run several months behind everyone else now. Such is life as the parents of a toddler.

In my opinion, one mark of a good restaurant is that there are so many delectable sounding items on the menu that you want to come back. That was my first thought before I ever even picked up my fork.

I really will talk only about one menu item because it was beyond fantabulous: the baba ghanoush. It was worth every penny of the $6.95 or so appetizer price. It was fresh, garlicky and just yummy yummy yummy. It made my day.

I will say that I have to agree with some of the criticisms I have heard about Pasha — their bread is tasteless and the cabbage salad that comes with most of the entrees is not really worth the calories. Some dishes are hits and others are misses. Nobody’s perfect.

But the baba ghanoush is about as close to perfect as possible.

Krannert Center has set its Youth Series line up for next season, and I can’t help but be disappointed. There is only one event that is appropriate for preschool children, Dan Zanes, and that is during the Wall to Wall weekend (Sept. 13-15). Last year, Krannert hosted our favorite children’s artist, Ralph’s World, for a Saturday morning concert that we had had on the calendar for six months. I made sure to send KC a thank you note for the wonderful show that encouraged them to schedule more events for younger children.

Here’s an idea for the bars who are still crying foul over the smoking ban: schedule some kids concerts during the day. This is a concept that I first read about on zooglobble, a blog about cool kid music. In fact, Ralph’s World is doing a special tour just of House of Blues venues these days (he will be playing the Chicago House of Blues on June 2.) Of course, that’s on a large scale, but it doesn’t have to be so. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Sippy Cups or Justin Roberts in C-U …

Wednesday will be a good day. That’s when my shipment will arrive. 

Like the drug runners who use I-57 as a conduit for transporting drugs between C-U and Chicago, my mom travels up and down the highway carrying valuable (OK, valuable only to me) perishable goods, perhaps once a month.

She’s my dealer — my Trader Joe’s dealer.

Thank goodness for Mom. Peanut needs some more apricot apple sauce. I need some olive oil and raspberry preserves. Mr. lbotp needs more of his favorite bread, Milton’s.

My mom is the best. Happy belated Mother’s Day to you and all the moms out there!

When our Peanut was born, she was blessed with a head full of hair. (She had more than her daddy, I believe.) It grew and grew, and before you know it she needed her first haircut before her first birthday.

That was about two months ago, and she’s already overdue for another one. For the first one, we made a big deal out of it and took her to this adorable place in the Chicago area called Kidsnips. There, the kids get to watch a DVD (in her case, baby Einstein) or play video games, while sitting in a chair that looks like a car, or an airplane, or some other form of transportation. They only charged me for a bang trim, something like $5, so it didn’t break the bank.

But now that it grew out, and the nearest Kidsnips is in Naperville, something must be done about her lengthy tresses so she can see. I’ve been thinking that I need to take a deep breath, buy a pair of hair shears and bite the bullet. But I just don’t get along with sharp objects, especially when there’s a baby involved.

Where in G-d’s name does one get a child’s hair cut here?

become a nurse.

A very famous journalist told me that when I was in grad school, and it is one of those things that has stuck with me throughout my career. So that’s what I thought of when new commenter Amber, who visited lbotp after it was linked on illiniboard.com, called me a snob yesterday. Wow, tell me something I don’t already know.

Clearing out the notebook …

• As Lisa points out, this year’s debut of the Market On the Square (aka the Urbana Farmer’s Market) is Saturday. Can’t. Hardly. Wait.

• One of my reasons to live is cheddar fries. There is a place up north in my hometown that I cannot walk into without having some. There’s a new place in Campustown that claims to purvey real Chicago-style hot dogs (here’s a review from Normal; beware, their myspace page has very loud music) and also cheddar fries. Will they pass the lbotp test? My waistline is in trouble if they do.

• Check out these new and new-to-me local blogs: Greasy Spoons is about eating out. The author is based in Charleston but likes to eat in C-U.  Then there’s Lucky and Charmed (hat tip: Lisa), a blog out of Danville that is also centered around food. If you like photos with your food, check out Dan O’Brien’s totally awesome photoblog.

So Mr. lbotp and I ventured out to our first movie in C-U since well before Peanut was born. It just so happened that the one movie that we deemed worthy of our hard-earned dollar was the new Spiderman. Let me interrupt here by saying that normally, the only movies I pay to watch in the theater are usually what most people would term as highbrow art films that usually employ at least one British actor. But off to Spiderman we went.

Mr. lbotp couldn’t remember the last time he went to a blockbuster movie the very night it opened. Neither could I. And man, did we feel old.

Theater One at the Savoy 16 was packed, but it wasn’t full. It’s fun to see that kind of movie with a lot of people, to hear people’s reactions. It makes me feel more alive for some odd reason.

So the movie is about to end, Tobey Maguire has defeated his enemies and made up with his girlfriend. All of a sudden, the film just stops. No fade to black, no credits, no nothing. The lights came up and the natives were restless. Some people started to leave. On the screen, commercials appear. It’s clear no one knows quite what to do; no one knows quite how much time remained in the film. I guess we could have demanded a refund, but did I really want to sit through that movie again for what could have been two minutes or two seconds?

The clean-up crew comes in and I took the opportunity to ask them about it. They said the film burned out and we should talk to the manager. We’re about to walk out and in comes some guy in a suit who says that the movie will be back on in a few minutes. At this point the theater is half full. We sat through the previews — the Simpsons Movie, again; the Pirates of the Carribean sequel; and Shrek 3.

Spiderman returns — for all of 1.8 seconds. So we waited about 15 minutes for 1.8 seconds. That warranted the crowd’s biggest guffaw of the night.

At least we didn’t have to sit through another 2 hours and 19 minutes.

Maybe I should make them reimburse me for the extra babysitter cost.