Happenings: July 2006 Archives

On Monday, I journeyed into Chicago to hit up the Taste of Chicago with Mark and Laura. As it turned out, we bit off a bit more than we could chew with this idea, both figuratively, and literally:

Mark, about to chow one of those giant turkey legs in one gulp.

The day before the 4th of July is always the biggest day of the taste, and I heard that approximately 1.1 million people were at Grant Park that evening. When we first got there at around 6:30, the crowd was large, but manageable. When we left at 8:30, it was so crowded that we could barely move.

So, I really didn't mind leaving and watching the fireworks on TV instead.

Anyways, hanging out with Mark and Laura was fun, as always. They were super-nice to waste an entire evening of after-work time messing around in Chicago, and then driving me to the train station afterwards.

Thanks guys!

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Chicago, Taste of Chicago, 4th of July

My folks were interested in checking out the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum, so on Saturday the whole family trucked down to Chicago to see it. Apparently, tickets are fairly expensive (in the $22 range), and the exhibit is so popular, that your ticket only entitles you to see it for a certain period of time during the day.

The exhibit itself is pretty decent. The intricate artistry of the artifacts that were found in Tut's tomb is amazing. Some of the pieces rivaled what can be made today, and made it clear how the Egyptian civilization was an important milestone in humanity's evolution. The only real let-down was that Tut himself isn't actually a part of the exhibit. They have a life-size projection of the mummy's bones, but no mummy himself.

One odd thing - they are really pushing the audio tour (which we didn't have), which makes for a bit of a surreal experience. Mixed in with the ambient noise of the exhibit itself, are the muffled headphone noises of all of the other exhibit attendees. With their headphones on, it was almost like these attendees were little drones, immune to casual interactions with their fellow participants, absorbing the knowledge of Tut like a sponge.

And when we all finished, it was lucky that we could be re-united in the almighty gift shop. The tackiest thing that I saw was the King Tut kleenex dispenser:

Blow your nose with tissues from Tut's nose!

Yikes.

And I almost forgot, there was one really annoying thing - while touring the King Tut exhibit, all photography is prohibited. So, I don't have any pictures from inside of the exhibit, to remember the experience by. Totally lame.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Chicago, King Tut, Field Museum

Well, I'm back in California after my trip back to Chicago for the 4th of July holiday. My day today started at 5 AM central time, so by this point I'm pretty tired. Thus, I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures on my blog in order to recap my long weekend:

Scout's doing pretty good for an old guy.

All in all, things went well. United did okay with the flights, I didn't completely and utterly over-eat (although it was close), and I got to visit with a lot of people. Sara is trying to get me to go back next month for what might-could be Sleater-Kinney's last performance ever, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen.

-Andy.