There must be a light under the bushel!

Chi-town

Life has been extremely busy the past two weeks. Work is demanding right now, which doesn't bode well for the upcoming year, but I did get in a short visit to Chicago last weekend, which will probably be the subject of several upcoming entries. Interesting things always seem to happen on vacation.

On Sunday afternoon, my friend Robin and I walked around Millennium Park and found a small crowd gathered around some kind of performance. Robin was enthralled with the kids' show that was taking place. Characters were dressed up in animal costumes, one of whom was a woman on stilts who was supposed to be a bumble bee. She constantly moved her hands, and Robin was very concerned with why she was doing that (maybe her way of buzzing?). Anyhow, we were the only adults standing around without children. I pointed that out to Robin, and she told me she was still a kid at heart. Whatever. It was a corny show that anyone over six wouldn't stick around for, so I was impatient to get going. Besides, I wanted to see the giant jellybean. The official name is "Cloud Gate," but I saw a picture in a magazine where I was getting my hair done not too long ago and decided I absolutely had to see what the magazine called a huge jellybean. This thing weighs 110 tons and is two football fields long by one football field wide. As soon as I stepped off the plane on Friday, I told Robin I was not going home until I saw this thing. I didn't make it to any museums this trip, and I should probably be embarrassed that I didn't care, so long as I saw the damn bean. So we trekked around the park a bit more, and I saw this huge metal mess. It turned out that the bean was under construction. I was so irritated! I could only see one end of it, but I still made Robin stand by it so that I could take a cheesy tourist picture.

In spite of my disappointment, we continued wandering around, and we next stumbled across what appeared to be a hot dog cart manned by two men with megaphones. Well, it was, in fact, a hot dog cart, although it didn't carry hot dogs, and the two men did, in fact, have megaphones. The cart was actually a Poetry Hot Dog Cart, where they were "Swirling Things Up" with their menu that included entrees such as chi-town raps and summer slices that could be ordered with a variety of relishes such as schmaltzes, joy sticks, and gloom. We sat and listened for a while, and saw the five young poets write poem after poem on demand. Most of the poems were composed in about five minutes. The ones they gave a little longer were, of course, much better, but they never gave longer than ten minutes or so. It was quite entertaining, and I did finally put an order in, but unfortunately, they lost my order so just threw a poem together before they took a break. Mine wasn't quite as clever as some of the others, but fun nonetheless. There was also a news crew from Chicago's Nude Hippo there filming. That was the second time I was captured on film last weekend (I'll get into the first time in a whole new entry!).

As we headed back to the hotel, I was disgusted with myself as I once again realized that I live in a city that has entertainment on a regular basis that could rival my vacation weekend, yet I rarely take advantage of it. It just seems like it has to be a planned vacation to get me motivated to get up and go even though I always enjoy myself once I'm out and about. Otherwise, I'm perfectly content just kicking back in my free time and living in peace and quiet. Maybe I just have a good balance of the two, but it would be a lot cheaper to do the fun things here instead of going to another city!