Week of fun

On Tuesday (August 11) I played softball again. I managed to get base hits and to get pelted with a ball. They were trying to get me out and the dude threw it from center field to third...but my leg got in the way. I've got quite the bruise to show for it. I think it is still swollen almost a week later.

Besides playing softball, my mom, Bill, and Maegan came to visit this past week. We had a lot of fun for their short trip. We started Thursday morning going to MSI. Maegan and Mom got to explore the Harry Potter exhibit, while Bill and I went through the Smart Home. The Lego exhibit was still around so of course we had fun building skyscrapers again.
After the MSI we went to the Robie House and then on to the zoo. Here's a pic of us on the carousel (where else do you take a picture at the zoo?). We managed to see a lot of the zoo in the short amount of time we were there. Hudson was out, as was Wicket, but not Obessa. We also saw Abby (the ostrich) and the giraffes.

On Friday we explored downtown Chicago. We started by going to Navy Pier. The Air show was in town so we got to see them practicing. We got a pretty good view of the planes as they turned around and stuff. Here's a picture of us on the anchor at the end of Navy Pier watching the planes. When the planes took a break we decided to go to the American Girl store. Wow. Just Wow. It was crazy in there. Some of the clothes needed to be a few sizes larger, and Maegan did manage to get a couple of very cute outfits. I was shocked by the amount of people there! I asked one of the workers and she said it was a light day. It was busy enough that I bought Maegan's Christmas present now so that I won't have to go back and get another one... While the girls did American Girl Bill went to save seats at the top of the Hancock Tower. You'd think with the Air Show practically at the base of the building that the lounge would have been full -- oh no. We got good window seats that looked out west and managed to get a few good glimpses of planes flying around while we were sitting there. After that we walked around Millineum Park and went to see Buckingham Fountain. It was being renovated when Mom was here last so it was nice for her to see it. At the Bean I bullied Maegan into doing handstands with me against the bean. She kept saying she could do it and I kept asking her to prove it. We eventually were able to get a handstand together. :) I was just happy to be able to do handstands again. I haven't really been able to do one since I hurt my wrist a few years back, so it was nice to see I have the strength to do one and hold it a while (we won't mention that I balanced by putting my feet on the Bean).

That basically sums up the week though -- we had guests in town and managed to see a lot of Chicago on foot. We wore our guests out, which may not have been the nicest thing to do in hind-sight, but it was fun and you only get so many chances to see all this stuff, right?!

Anyway, its late, but I wanted to get this up before going to bed tonight. Off to sleep so that tomorrow I can ride a bike to work for what looks to be the only rainless day this week.

A Weekend of Harry Potter

Since I got sick when Harry Potter came out we finally decided to go see it again last Thursday. I really liked the movie overall. I think that it fits with what they've previously cut from the films, so that's exciting to me. I'm curious how they are going to do a lot of the stuff in the upcoming movies, but other than that it was good.

We also ended up seeing it on the Omnimax screen at the MSI. We had friends come down from Minneapolis for the Harry Potter Exhibit at MSI. Since they were showing HP 6 in IMAX on the dome screen we decided to see it that way as well. Seeing the movie in 3D on the dome screen was simply amazing. It was wild to see the graphics and have it literally be larger than life.

Before we managed to see the movie or explore the world of Harry Potter, we played with Legos. There is a temporary exhibit at the MSI about architecture and legos. The guy has created a replica of the Chicago skyline completely of Legos, well he did all the buildings over 1000 foot in Legos at least.

There were also tables set up so that visitors can create a skyline. Naturally, since we played with Legos as a child we wanted to add to the skyline. But we wanted to build buildings from the groud up.
After we played with Legos, went to see Harry Potter on IMAX, and through the Harry Potter exhibit, we went to the zoo for the employee picnic. We went a bit early and were able to see the butterflies, and the pachyderms, but by then we were hot and sweaty so went to eat. After dinner we got to ride the carousel and see the Dinosaurs Alive exhibit. The exhibit has about 30 animatronix dinosaurs. They've used animals sounds (like Lions or gorillas roaring) as their sounds. They are kind of cheesy, but kind of cool at the same time. We got our picture taken with the Triceratops.Overall it was a good Harry Potter weekend, with a bit of the zoo thrown in. We're just trying to keep cool and out of the humidity. This weekend was lollapalooza here in town though, so we should have known it would be a steamy, sweltering weekend.

Peaches

We've decided that we miss peach season. We keep trying to buy peaches in the super market but they just aren't the same as the ones you get at food stands along the side of a road. Peaches don't grow here, so we've got no roadside stands to get peaches from. It is unfortunate, but we'll make due.

Other than missing peaches the big event of the past week was having our power out for several hours on Saturday. The power went out about 430 am Saturday and I was at the zoo when it came back on. We looked outside when it went off and couldn't see anything. The entire grid was out on the way to the train station -- we looked for open windows as tell tales that the power was out, and there were a lot of those. Chris was around, but he went out for lunch and it hadn't come back on by then, so it was a good long power outage. There were a TON of trucks lined up around the streets here. We still don't know what caused it, but it made up grateful for our electricity. It was interesting trying to do things in the dark and all. It was an overcast dreary kind of day so there wasn't much ambient light to be had. We got some much needed rain, and hopefully we'll continue to get some rain.

1st Base

We've decided that we can take -25, but hate 80. The weather is starting to get warmer here, we've been in the 80s a few days in a row now. We can't believe that we've started thinking of 80 as hot. Not warm, downright hot, mind you. Its still pretty cool during the nights (in the upper 50s low 60s) so we're not having to use the ac much. Hopefully the summer will finish out like this.

With the gorgeous weather and wanting to get involved with a church I recently went and played softball. Yes, the soccer player who has never played softball in her life went and played. I got stuck on catch duty, which got me lots of practice throwing. We had a good pitcher so there were lots of strikes and I got to practice throwing. I apparently bat left handed though and I managed to connect with the ball the three times I batted. (I actually was on deck four times, but the first time the male in front of me was walked so I got to walk as well :) which saved me an embarrassing chance at hitting) The last bat I made it on base while the first two were outs, but close with my running ability.

In terms of food stuff -- I'm having a specialized blood test done that will test 150 different things and will give me back a rotation type diet. So it will tell me what food I can eat safely anytime, what I can eat occasionally, and what I can never eat. They messed up the blood they took last week so I get to have more drawn tomorrow for that. Hopefully they'll get it in less than three pricks.

One of the guys Chris works with had surgery yesterday so he is working late. He is back on leaving on the last express train and coming home on the last express train, putting him home about seven. It makes for short nights, but we have fun anyway. We're currently working our way through the John Grisham movies, well the movies made from his books. We want to work through the Harry Potter movies, but apparently so does everyone else in the Netflix world. We still need to go and see the new one. We actually went out and saw it opening night but I missed it so I want to see it again.

That's the news from Chicago. Hope all is well with you guys.

Ikea 101

Rule #1 of Ikea: Never take Chris. Chris hates the store. According to him anytime a map is required to get out of a store there is way too much stuff and you just don't need to go there.

Rule #2 of Ikea: Ikea actually has some pretty good stuff for fairly decent prices since we don't have a lot of money to spend on furniture. The problem is this often means Chris has to go to Ikea which conflicts with Rule #1.

Rule #3 of Ikea: Never let Carolyn wander around Ikea. Carolyn doesn't entirely mind the maze of stuff and can get really cool ideas from wondering around Ikea, however, it takes FOREVER. For example, we needed a cabinet to put all our blankets in (to be referred to as a blanket cabinet for the rest of this post) and we ended up getting something that will work as a blanket cabinet, but it didn't come in any of the more traditional spots. This rule often conflicts with Rule #1 (Big surprise there!)

Rule #4 of Ikea: On the trip home the Focus will be full. The back seat will need to be put down, and one person may or may not have to ride in the back with the Ikea boxes. Since Carolyn inevitably has a skirt on her riding in the back doesn't work so well. Chris then has to ride in the back of the packed Focus holding onto boxes from Ikea that he is cursing after having been drug through a store he didn't want to go to in the first place.

Rule #5 of Ikea: Chris turns the boxes he sat with into beautiful pieces of furniture. Carolyn can have no part in the furniture construction because she might actually look at the instructions, never a good idea as they are invariably in Swedish.

Today was a "Break Ikea Rule #1" day, and as you might have guessed we had a lot of fun. I actually went by on Friday to scope out the joint and figure out what might work for the myriad of things we were looking for. The cabinet blanket was just one of the things, but it did take Chris several hours to put everything together this afternoon. It looks great and hold all of our blankets. This means we're getting rid of the last few moving boxes we've got! Yay! We've lived here close to two years (has it really been two years already?!) and we're just now getting rid of the last remnants of boxes.

After putting together the blanket cabinet, a DVD tower, and a desk chair, I talked Chris into playing volleyball. We managed to go to church this morning and one of the people in charge for getting people our age together asked us to go play. Since we've been trying to do something with the group since January, and they were playing sand volleyball on a nice warm (low seventies and overcast) day. We've not had many days without rain this summer, so we decided to take our chances. We had a lot of fun, both of us making fools of ourselves being so uncoordinated and all. They want us to come back though, so we must not have been that bad.

Happy B'day Carolyn

So Harry Potter came out for my b'day. Well, not technically, but we said it was since it came out at midnight. We decided to do something stupid and went to the midnight release. We had a bit of trouble getting tickets, but Linda ended up finding tickets for us at a really neat theater. We've managed to see several of the other movies at the midnight showing, so it was kind of a tradition for us, which is why we decided that even though the midnight show was on Tuesday night we were going to go anyway.

The theater is a "dinner and a movie" kind of place. So they let us in to the theater super early to take our dinner and drink orders. On Tuesdays the movie place has half priced pitchers of margaritas. Since it was Tuesday we had margaritas in the lobby with a few hundred other Harry Potter fans waiting to see the movie. I took the picture with my new phone that Chris got me for my b'day. Its a pretty spiffy phone and a pretty decent camera to boot.


A couple other pictures that I took...
The first picture is of Chris and me displaying our margaritas in the lobby. The second picture is of Linda and me inside the theater. Anyway, we ended up watching the movie and having a ton of fun. I actually got sick so I couldn't see much of the movie, but I did see the beginning and the end. I managed to read the books leading up to seeing the film and from what I saw I was fairly impressed of how closely to the dialog they stuck. The few diversions seemed to make sense logically based on what they've cut in previous movies and such.

Anyway, if you're ever in Chicago and want to see a movie then let us know and we can see what's playing at the dinner theater. Its kind of an interesting thing -- no sharing drink holders, and you get to sit in high back executive chairs.

Happy 4th of July

Well its the fourth and we are awkwardly stuck in Illinois. Its raining and it has been all day. We aren't at the lake which is weird for both of us. Despite what's been going on we typically go to the lake with Chris's family for the 4th. I have to work and with the holiday being on a Saturday this year, it just didn't work out for us to go. That doesn't make it any less weird though. If we were at the lake and it was rainy like it is we'd be doing all sorts of indoorsy stuff -- like playing Skip-Bo or video games with Chris's cousins.

This week was crazy. I went to Tulsa for Go-Go's funeral while Chris stayed here and took his bike around town. It apparently rained for the entire time I was gone, except for around the times Chris was riding his bike. He said it was an interesting week. My week was busy and I drove more this week than I have in the past six months I think. I mean I racked up something like 20 hours driving in the car and I typically don't drive more than 20 minutes in a week. We both got to catch up with family while I was gone so that's always good.