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This morning at breakfast -- which is a story in itself, inexplicably involving ebook publishing at a breakfast cafe, tell you all about it later -- Mum leaned forward and said, very gravely, "You are going to have so much to blog about today!"

IF YOU ONLY KNEW, MUM.

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People follow my mother around.

I wish I could explain this, or pretend it didn't happen, but it does. I used to think she was paranoid until it started happening to me (though not as severely...yet, anyway). People follow her around, and they want to talk to her, too. For example, this morning the three of us went out to West Egg, a well-known breakfast joint in downtown Chicago. When our waiter came up to our table, she said "Hi, how are we today?" and my mum said, "Fine, thank you! How are you?"

Apparently this was a cue for our waiter to launch into an explanation of how she was working to self-publish an ebook.

No, for real, this shit happens all the time to my mother. So Emmy and I sat there patiently while this woman not only told my mother about how she was going to publish an ebook, but launched into a detailed lecture on other people who had made hundreds of thousands of dollars writing ebooks. It was this weird combination of way more detail than even I (who am vaguely fascinated by e/self publishing) know, and rather offputting naivete about the process and results of ebook publishing.

And she just kept talking. About ebooks. Which would be fine if we were in a bookstore, instead of sitting at a table in a restaurant waiting to order our drinks, my mother DESPERATE for a cup of coffee.

So finally, because my mum will never do this, I just up and interrupted her in the middle of a sentence and said, "I'm sorry, my mum would like some coffee and we'd like to look at our menus."

Which is, of course, cause for sullen, monosyllabic service for the rest of the meal. Which is frankly perfect; as long as you bring me my food while it's still hot, you be as sullen as you want to be, so that I don't have to hear you pitch your fucking ebook to a captive audience of paying customers.

The eggs benedict was great, though, and mum got broccoli in a crepe which I guess is something she has been missing in her life.

It happened again when we walked into a Pier One in Old Town this morning; the one clerk in the store abandoned her cash register to FOLLOW US AROUND extolling the virtues of various wares. I nearly had to ask her to leave us alone, but Emmy glared at her and there is nothing like the glare of a teenage girl to make a person back the fuck off.

Old Town was a lot of fun, but it's basically three blocks long, and there's just not a lot to do there if you don't need a drink or want your hair cut. We did buy some nutmeg at the Spice House, where they are not PSYCHOTIC and left us alone to shop.

We stopped on the way back from Old Town for lunch at this place called The Goddess And Grocer, which is like the result of a three-way between a sandwich shop, gourmet deli case, and import grocery store. Their crab cakes are seriously desirable, and their cupcakes aren't half bad either.

I was going to take Mum and Emmy down to the Water Tower after that, but we got sidetracked when Mum said "What's Filene's Basement?" and we decided to invade the department store. I think between them they tried on every scarf and hat and inspected every wallet in the entire store. I had forgotten how hardcore they shop. Nobody bought anything, but I'm well aware that buying things is only rarely the goal of shopping.

I found a straw trilby I liked, but then I found a giant hole in it, so no trilby for Sam.

It's just as well we went there, really. There were vaguely creepy people at the Water Tower holding signs offering passers-by Free Hugs, so we didn't stay at the Water Tower very long. Fuck you dude, keep your weirdo hugs away from my baby sister.

Then I made the mistake of showing them the Water Tower Place mall, though really it was unavoidable because Emmy wanted to visit the American Girls store, which we did with vigour. We didn't make it all the way through the rest of the mall, but only because the Swarovsky Crystals store distracted them.

In all, though, we came through pretty unscathed: an entire day of shopping, more or less, netted us a couple of nutmegs, a jar of pizza spice, A TOTE BAG (NO LIE), an American Girls hat, and some jam to eat on our scones at breakfast tomorrow.

Now we're back and they're both asleep; I think the only reason I'm not is the sugar rush from the cupcake.

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It's not a visit to Chicago for my family without a trip to the Weber Grill Restaurant at Grand & State.

I eat at Weber Grill once in a while, because it's close to my train station and because what's the point of living in an awesome place like Chicago if you can't gloat about it? But last time I had lunch there it wasn't that good, which made me sad because usually Weber Grill is excellent. I think I know what happened; they just went through a pretty drastic menu rewrite, so my theory is that they have had a change of chef, and the chef on the way out was like "Fuck it, let the food suck".

Tonight's meal was AMAZING. When we got there at 6:15 we had reservations for 6:30, which was good because the people who came in behind us were told there was an hour's wait for a table. The place was packed to the walls, it was unreal. I've never seen even Weber Grill that full, and it's a popular restaurant.

But we got seated, and we got our drinks and bread rolls at good speed, and our food came fast and hot. Weber Grill specialises in barbecue and burgers, and their new burger menu has some really nice variations on the classic. So that was a great meal.

So now it's time to watch some movies (we wrangled a DVD player out of the concierge) and eat popcorn. BRING ON THE BOLLYWOOD.