Members Only (Anyone Can Join!)

The past four days or so have been absolutely bonkers. (Sidebar: 'bonkers' is one of my new favorite words to use.) Between Members' Nights at the Field Museum last Thursday/Friday and the Windy Pretties meetup on Saturday and yesterday, I've just had so many exciting events to attend!

Since my life is usually a comfortable rhythm of Thursday night jaunts to check out Chicago restaurants, Friday supermarket runs, and laid-back weekends, I'm going to take advantage of this unusual burst of Exciting Activities and tell you all about it!

Members' Night

First of all, as I tweeted immediately after getting home on Friday night, everyone needs to become a Field Museum member so they can go to next year's Members' Night! For those of you who don't know, Members' Nights are two evenings a year when Museum members get to go behind the scenes and see all the exciting things that go on at a natural history museum besides the fabulous exhibits.

During Members' Nights, the research and collections areas are opened to members, and the science staff puts out fantastic demonstrations to show what they do with the 30 million specimens housed at the Field. (Yes. 30 million. With an M and an -illion.)

This sign made me snort-laugh out loud.

I went on both nights and could not stop telling everyone I saw how amazing everything was. Among my personal highlights:

1) a tour of the bird prep lab, where bird specimens are prepared for storage;
2) a demonstration of fluorescent minerals (which I kept referring to as the disco geology nightclub);
3) a tour of some of the oversized anthropology collections, including artifacts from Pompeii (!!!);
4) a tour of the oversized paleontology collections (translation: enormous dinosaur bones);
5) the insects extravaganza, which included an incredible array of pinned insects, an aluminum cast of an ant colony, a variety of live insects that knocked my socks right off, and a touch screen game that I spent far too long playing;
6) a chat with an environmental social scientist who travels to Peru with other Museum scientists to inventory wildlife and work with local indigenous populations to advocate for indigenous land rights and more government conservation; and
7) trying my hand at contributing to the MicroPlants project!

Clockwise from top right: birds, disco geology, blue morphos, the world's coolest-looking aquatic dinosaur, sarcophagi and an archway from thousands of years ago.

In fact, there was so much to see and do that I'll need to bring Jeff back to the Museum to see my new favorite exhibit, because we ran out of time!

The Windy Pretties

If you're a major Trashy Diva fan like me, you may have heard of Divacon: TD's annual get-together down in NOLA for all their superfans. This year, a group of Midwest Divas had our own mini-Divacon, dubbed the "Windy Pretties." (Yay puns!) The fabulous Natalie single-handedly put together an amazing weekend of events and I'm still riding high from all the fun!

Pure hype on Saturday night!

I must sound like a broken record, but I'll say it again: one of my favorite things about the retro-style community has been meeting so many lovely, kind people who share my interest in dresses. Chicago has a pretty active group of Divas; we meet up fairly regularly for drinks and/or dinner and it's always such a blast. For someone who tends to be a loudmouthed introvert, it's a rare joy to meet a group of people whose company just feels comfortable.

Natalie did such an amazing job organizing fun events that the Chicago gals were joined by Divas from Wisconsin, Indiana, and even Washington DC! This was super exciting for me, since I got to meet two longtime Insta-pals, Annabel and Haley, and make some awesome new friends! (In fact, you might recognize Haley in the photo above from her guest-starring role in my first post on Bernie Dexter's instant-classic Kelly dress.)

The Windy Pretties kicked off with afternoon tea at Russian Tea Time in downtown Chicago, which was a delightful twist on classic afternoon tea. I drank enough tea to drown a horse and actually couldn't finish all of the pastries that came with the full afternoon tea service. (If you've ever seen me eat, you'd be impressed by this fact.) I had the Russian caravan tea, which was fragrant, had a nice strong flavor without being bitter, and came in a glass that more closely resembled a cross between a beer stein and a medieval goblet.

Of the food at Russian Tea Time, I particularly enjoyed the scones with butter and strawberry jam, and the chicken finger sandwiches. Everything was delicious and I highly recommended taking a leisurely few hours to have afternoon tea there.

Afternoon tea service for two. All this food for two people. YESSSS.

After tea, a few of us popped into the Art Institute to check out the Miniature rooms and the Impressionist paintings, before heading to our respective places to change for the next event. After a lightning-quick trip back to my apartment to Clark Kent into one of my favorite dresses, I got back on the L and headed up to our next destination: Holiday Club.

Natalie somehow booked us a private room for a few hours without selling any kidneys or firstborn children, and got a friend to DJ for us, so it was basically paradise. There were a few folks who weren't able to make the tea but showed up for drinks, and I was happy to see a few more familiar faces and meet some significant others! Natalie's friend was such a good DJ! I found myself shouting "YAY I love this one!" practically every time a new song came on.

I also learned what Malort was, and took a great video of some of the gals doing a shot of this hilariously awful Chicago classic. All I will say on the subject of Malort is this: I look forward to the day when I can drink something that was variously described to me as tasting like feet, armpit, and grapefruit. (I don't like grapefruit.)

I headed home from Holiday Club around 10, but I know a stalwart few Divas and their partners went on to Late Bar. Someday I'll go there!

Sunday's main activity was a trip to Vintage Garage Chicago, which was completely life-changing and will be the subject of its own post. For now, suffice it to say that the reason I didn't take many photos was because I found too many amazing vintage goodies to carry them all and safely operate my phone.

It was such a treat to have four days in a row of such exciting activities, and I'm already looking forward to getting together with some of my new Chicago Diva pals for a meetup in June!

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