Isabel's Blog

Month: July 2014

Nothing worth having comes easy

July 23, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I haven’t been blogging much lately because I’ve fallen back into my old patterns of definitely not getting things done. Which is bad and needs to change. There are so many things in my life that I want to do before I die, but the change required to accomplish these things terrifies me.

I’m scared I’ll be making a mistake and/or scared that I’ll fail. But even when I think about potential worst-case scenarios, I know rationally that things really aren’t that bad, because so far in my life I’ve been extremely lucky and have had very fortunate circumstances.

One of my biggest work-life hurdles is that I get discouraged easily. When things get hard or don’t turn out the way I want or expect them to, I shut down and give up. Maybe because I am lazy, or maybe because I’m insecure, but either way I need to learn to work harder, because nothing worth having comes easy. Whether it’s a job, career, a project, or an opportunity, if I give up, I definitely will not be successful.

So, this is just a little reminder to myself: work harder, don’t give up!

Chi-town eats

July 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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Chicago food photo highlights: Fat Rice for brunch (noodles for brunch! And Macau style egg tarts!), eating at Longman & Eagle three nights in a row, Pilsen for insane amounts of Mexican food at Nuevo Leon,  Bang Bang pie (strawberry short stack and key lime), Leghorn Chicken (pickle brined fried chicken!), Hot Doug’s (foie gras hot dog!!!) and these weird but delicious quail egg with coconut and condensed milk shooters that taste like key lime pie from Slurping Turtle by Takashi Yagihashi (from Top Chef).

One of the first days we also had donut showdown: we bought a bunch of donuts from Donut Vault, Glazed and Infused, and Firecakes and did a blind taste test to see which made the best old fashioned sour cream glazed. Donut Vault was the winner. We had these amazing lemon poppy seed donuts that day. So good. I would go back to Chicago for Donut Vault donuts alone.

Drove to Chicago

July 3, 2014 / / 1 Comment

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Because Dave and I are such patriotic Canadians, we went and spent the Canada Day long weekend in Chicago (I accidentally wore my red and white on June 30th, thinking it was July 1st). Also we love seeing Janice via road-trip as much as we can every summer.  Here are some snaps from the trip!

Since we’d done some of the more touristy stuff last year (though we had to see the bean again, despite the heat), we had a lot more time to explore the suburbs like Andersonville, Pilsen and Logan Square (which was where our Airbnb host was located). We also had a lot more time to eat. So there will be a follow-up food post to come.