Sunday, June 29, 2008

Chi-Town Shakedown

I'm venturing out of my normal territory quite a bit this month, but I can't complain. This time last year, I was sweating buckets and swatting bugs down in Louisiana and Mississippi. Let me tell you, when it's late June, I'll take Chicago over Baton Rouge any day. I've really only driven through Chicago and spent a little time in the suburbs, so it was fun to get to spend a couple days downtown. Of course, there was some work involved, but our location was definitely one of the coolest of the year:


It's tough to beat a beautiful day on the shores of Lake Michigan. The only downside was our close proximity to the hot dog vendors. I probably gained 5 pounds from root beer and hot dogs alone. You can't not eat a Chicago-style hot dog (or 3) when you're hanging out right there.

Of course, we made some time for antics after work was done:


Leah and Angie, I thought of you guys when I was at the Art Institute and saw this Picasso painting called "Crazy Woman With Cats." Apparently this is what you two will look like someday:

No trip to Chicago would be complete without catching up with my old friend Rob. We used to kick it together down in Arkansas until he decided to grow up and get a real job looking at spreadsheets and talking about money all day long. It took a few hours to get him to stop talking about gross profit and ridiculously expensive neckties, but soon enough we decided that we wanted to go swimming in Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, it was a little cold for that kind of thing. Until Rob remembered that he had some wetsuits we could put on:

That was a fun little adventure. When we were done swimming, we didn't feel like changing again, so we walked the mile or so back to his apartment looking like ninjas. Or scuba divers. Or idiots:
If you can't tell, I had an excellent time in Chicago, but after six days in a row of working, I've found myself in the midst of summer needing a vacation, so I'm out.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Don't know how I missed this post well over a week ago... sorry about that. When are you in town? You have to come meet the heir.

kw said...

Yay! You do exist! (And my RSS reader didn't pick this post up for a whole week.)

Sounds like Chicago was faaaaaantastic! The Windy City is a place I've always wanted to explore, so I'm jealous.

September is coming up soon!