Chicago

The primary reason for coming out this way was for Bill and Yelena's wedding. They held it in the Architectural Artifacts building, which is a very cool venue. It was great to see lots of familiar faces from our days back in the dorm, even though we're in all parts of the country now. I'll get around to uploading all the photos later when I have a better internet connection.

It was actually rainy on Saturday, the day of the wedding. I managed to get myself up to the John Hancock Observatory. It was worth it because the wind was blowing hard enough that the rain was going side ways up there (94 floors up). I almost thought it was snow given the way it was floating, but it was only rain. Crazy physics!

Of course Chicago is known for all the great architecture. I have a ton of pics, but it'll be too much to show here. This is the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park. Everyone here calls it the Silver Bean. I'm on the left side of the photo, wrapped up in a hat and scarf because it was actually kinda cold.

Visions of Eternity by Salvador Dai

One of the coolest things was going to the Art Institute of Chicago. True to all my friends' and colleagues' recommendations, it has the largest amount of Impressionist art I have ever encountered in one place. I took many photos (totally allowed) of many great works by Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Additionally there were a lot of great Dali work like the one at right. The "Melted Clock" wasn't here, but it was still great. I also bought myself a very expensive canvas tote, but it had The Gashly Tinycrumbs by Edward Gorey on it and I couldn't pass it up.

I went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum as well. It was really cool to see one of the most complete T-Rex fossils in the world (Sue). It looks so real! I was definitely in a Jurassic Park moment here.

I learned a bunch about the world on this trip to the Field Museum. I learned that there were actually 5 major mass extinctions, not just the one 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were wiped out. I'm still wondering how they figured those other ones out given the first one occurred something like 430 million years ago (there abouts). It's amazing what we can learn these days through science and technology.

I got to do a little comparison between my own feet and that of a dinosaur. I think I would have been road kill within 30 seconds if I lived in that era. That's just ridiculous!

All in all, it was awesome to see the city. I finally got a sense of where East was by the end of my 3 day stint there, and then it's off back to Norway (boonies) for some R&R before heading to Indiana.