fang.the.tall was in town!

Last week Wednesday, I suddenly received a Facebook event invite for that night, at 4:15 p.m. for an event at 5, that fang.the.tall would be at Portillo's for one night before he went back to his homeland (Malaysia). Before I texted sashagee that I wouldn't be home for dinner, someone else said "Is this tonight?" and fang.the.tall posted that Facebook had messed it up and it was next week (aka yesterday). So I told sashagee about it, and we made plans.

Yesterday I finished work and wandered around the nearby Nordstrom and attached stores--the mall on Michigan Ave is obviously not doing well, being kept alive by that Nordstrom and maybe a couple other stores there--until sashagee and Laila arrived on the L. We needed to keep Laila occupied, so we went to Eataly to pick up these particular candied fruit sauce in porcelain jars that sashagee likes, had some dessert before dinner (fruit tart and tiramisu), and then went back to Nordstrom so Laila would have an open space to walk around in. We spent most of our time in the perfume floor, where Laila charmed the saleswomen by taking all the testing strips that sashagee used and stuffing them in her shirt. When it was all done, we headed over to Portillo's.

I haven't seen fang.the.tall in eight years, but we follow each other's lives on Facebook--I've seen him arguing about asshole Malaysian politicians, he's freaked out that I got to see Sun-mi in concert, we've argued about hanzi vs kanji--and so he knew about sashagee and Laila. justpearlstuff and bradford.bensontaylor were there too! I haven't seen them in four years either, since before the Plague Years. I introduced my family, we all caught up, and we ate Chicago's finest Italian beef for an hour before Laila got too restless and we had to go home to get her to bed. Apparently the party went on for hours after we left, but that's the life of a parent--you show up when you can.