Day 55: Final Chicago Post

     It's Sunday morning and I'm writing this final blog from the house back in Lisle.  We moved back yesterday and I had time to write but I just couldn't get my head in the right place so I waited until today.  I think that I was looking for an excuse to be angry and several people gave one to me and for most of the morning I took advantage of those opportunities and was a pain in the butt to everyone around me.  But I have a wonderful wife that helped to put things in perspective for me when she told me to stop being a baby. So now I feel that I can be more reflective of the last couple of days and also of the last couple of months.  It has been a great ride.

We spent many nights on Navy Pier.

     Thursday we were in the city and I walked my north route going 9 miles and walking the lakefront on the return trip.  It's amazing to me how many people go to the beach everyday.  I never really thought that it had that much draw but I was wrong because on any given day, good weather or bad, thousands of people are there.  In the evening TWIK and I went to Zocalo for dinner.  She had red snapper and I had the chili rellenos and both were excellent.  It is a very cool restaurant and if it wasn't for me being so cheap I would give it a 5 out of 5 bricks, but it is pretty expensive so only 4.

The building next to ours from
the sun deck.

    On Friday I got up early and had breakfast on the sun deck.  I planned on renting a bike and riding the lakefront, but by the time I was ready to go it started pouring down rain so I changed my plans and went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  You can see my pictures from Facebook here.  I drove back to the apartment and we waited for friends of ours from Lisle to arrive. When they got here we showed them the apartment, walked to Navy Pier, had dinner at The Billy Goat Tavern (not the original, but the one on Navy Pier) and then we went back and watched the Olympic opening ceremonies.  It was a very pleasant way to spend our last night downtown.  Over the past two months we have had several guests and that has been really fun sharing our experience with our friends.  On Saturday we packed up and left.  We did stop for pie.

Picture from our last night in the city.

     So thus ends the Summer of Brick.  I am so fortunate that I was able to do this.  I don't try and make some rationalization about teachers getting their summers off.  It is a perk of the job, plan and simple.  I fully enjoy my summers and I enjoyed this one more than any of the previous ones because it was the most purposeful.  I feel like I truly made the most out of this time.  With almost no exceptions I found something to do everyday that I really enjoyed and I was happy to share with anyone that cared to share it with me.  I hope I get the opportunity to do something like this every summer from now on.  If not, I'll always have the "Summer of Brick".

Day 51

Church at the Auditorium Theatre 

     I am pretty involved at our church in Lisle and have been for over 18 years.  We are a small church which means that people that are involved get to do multiple jobs for very long times.  When I knew for sure that we were going to be living in Chicago for two months I told our pastor that I would be taking a leave from those jobs for the times that we were gone because I wasn't sure which days we would have free and which days we would have plans.  He was fine with it and it has worked out so that we have been able to go to some church services at places that I have heard about for a long time but never got to experience first hand.  Sunday was one of those days when we were able to attend a satellite church of Willow Creek called Willow Chicago.  It was held in the Auditorium Theatre on Congress and they pretty much filled the place.  It was entertaining.  They had a simulcast sermon on their big screen and the speaker was very funny.  Their band was excellent, but I was a little shocked by a prelude that included a cover of Depeche Mode's "Your Own Personal Jesus".

Loco Moco

     After church we went to the only Hawaiian restaurant that we've come across in Chicago, "Aloha Eats".  It's been two years since our trip to Hawaii and I would go back in a heartbeat.  So we weren't looking for a Hawaiian restaurant, but when we found one we put it on the list of places to try.  Now I won't lie and say that we fell in love with Hawaiian food while we were there, but I will tell you that I ate more fresh fish in a week than I usually eat in a year.  They have a strange obsession with Spam and macaroni salad is ubiquitous in their restaurants.  But I did become fond of something called "Loco Moco".  It is a combination of rice, brown gravy, hamburger patties, and fried eggs.  It's comfort food.  As for "Aloha Eats" I would give it a 3 out of 5 bricks.  It was great for the nostalgia, but the food was only okay.

     Monday I walked 10 miles during the heat of the day and then we came back to Lisle so that we could get ready for the move back.  We decluttered the apartment a bit.  TWIK had some chores to do and I needed to mow the weeds, I mean grass.  It rained last night so that mowing didn't get done, maybe today.  But everything was leading up to the White Sox game last night.  Ty had such a good baseball season his senior year that he was named All-Conference, All-Area, All-State, and played on the Coaches Association All-Star Team for the West.  It was such fun being the guy on the side taking pride in all of his accomplishments.  Last night was probably the culminating event when he was recognized in a pre-game ceremony at U.S. Cellular Field.  It was pretty cool.

Coming out of the dugout

Being introduced

The Jumbotron shot

     I hope he realizes what he accomplished this year, it was stellar!  If he had aspirations to continue with baseball I have no doubt that he could play in college at a pretty high level, but the kid has a good head on his shoulders as well and wants to make his education his priority.  What kind of a father would I be if I didn't support that?

Day 48

Free t-shirt from the concert

    About the second day that we were downtown, I came across this website http://chicagofree.info/.  I signed up for the email reminders and it has been great.  I have found out about days that were free at various attractions, street fairs, music events and so on.  But the absolute best thing that I got from "Free Things to do in Chicago" was the information about the Pop-Tarts Crazy Good Summer concert.  It was free for the first 4000 to sign up for it and if it's something to do on the Internet I'm a viking.  So I immediately got my name in and found out right before the concert that we got the tickets.  Now I will admit that the line up was targeted for a little younger audience, but if I learned anything from the Summer of Brick it's that age is a condition of the mind as much as a condition of the body.  So TWIK and I headed out on Thursday to watch Austin Mahone, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Boys Like Girls.  It was really, really fun.  I didn't know the first guy but I have loved Call Me Maybe ever since I saw the Youtube Harvard Baseball Team video.  And Boys Like Girls is TWIK's favorite new band.  In addition, Pop Tarts knows how to throw a free concert.  They handed out Pop Tarts, Pringles, free speakers complete with batteries and even gave me a plastic pancho when it started to rain.  They even had a parent's tent for the old people that brought their kids to the concert.  It was one of the best events in The Summer of Brick

City in the clouds.

     Before we left I was up on the sun deck and loved seeing all of the buildings in the clouds.  Earlier in the day I had spent about an hour and a half at our health club.  It was probably the most I've used the facility since we've been down here.  I'm starting to feel the crunch of trying to do all the things I wanted to do before our time is up.  Speaking of that, the people that we are sub leasing from gave us a call asking if we could be out by the weekend so that they could also get their stuff out since they've decided not to re-lease the apartment.  That was earlier than I had planned, but they've been good to us so we agreed that we would be out by the afternoon on Saturday.  So we are down to a week.  Ouch!

Another great FSL.

     Friday I had a plan to have a lunch with a former student that I hadn't talk with for over 17 years.  He's not even on Facebook so connecting up with him was completely by chance, but it was a really good opportunity to catch up with one of my past favorite students.  I was happy to hear how well he is doing as his life parallels mine quite a bit.  He too married an Asian girl in the medical field.  Later on Friday night Ty came down to spend the night.  We went out for Korean BBQ at 9:30 and stayed out until close to midnight. We are also getting close to the time when Ty goes to school so I think our whole family is living life with the idea of savoring our times together.  It has been great fun doing our summer stuff when Ty joins us.  

Today they ran and I walked to Lincoln Park Zoo and we looked at the animals for a while and then headed back to the apartment.  We spent a little time watching the sail boats on their Chicago to Mackinac Race.  Now we are headed out to lunch, I'm blogging while they get ready.  Life is good.

Day 45

     Monday was a Lisle day, a pretty good one but not much to report.  We saw Ty, I cleaned the pool, we had dinner and that was pretty much the day.  On Tuesday we stayed in Lisle until the afternoon and then we went to Revinia.  If you've never been to Revinia it is something that you should try at least once.  It is an outdoor music venue that has shows pretty much every night of the week.  The price of admission is based on the popularity of the act (obvious I know but what I'm saying is that sometimes you can go and it's pretty cheap).   It is also customary to bring food and drinks and basically have a picnic while you listen to the concert.  Some people get really carried away and have tables and candles and wine and the whole nine yards.  I was a tag along with TWIK and seven of her work friends.  I didn't know that no one else's spouse or significant other was going to go and that I would be the only dude.  Had I known I might have passed, but actually I'm okay with being the only guy on a girls night out.  So we went to see Diana Krall.  I have to admit that I didn't know much about her, but I listened to some stuff of her stuff on Youtube and I thought that she was very good and I like her style of music.  For the ladies it was just background noise because they were having a good time with each other.  Trying to be cool and unobtrusive I just sat back, ate and grooved to the tunes.  It was a very pleasurable evening.

      Today I walked south on the lake shore and got caught in a little shower.  I really like walking in the rain when it's not too much of a down pour.  Someone should write a song about it.  "I'm walking in the rain, tears are fallin' and I feel the pain" or something along those lines.

I know this picture isn't too good but you can see Ms. Krall on stage as well as on the big screen. 

Day 42

      As I suspected Friday stunk.  I drove back to Lisle to go to the dentist only to find out that I'm looking at at least four more visits.  Yuk.  Sorry to all my dentist friends, but I'm very much an anti-dentite.  The rest of the day I pretty much just did the chores and tasted the grit from the cleaning.  I went back downtown about the same time that TWIK got off work.  She made pasta and we watched a movie, a Friday to be remembered.

Professional volleyball on Oak
Street Beach.

      Saturday I was back in the swing of things.  I decided that I was going to walk to Wrigley and the timing was good because they had a day game and I could walk with all the people on their way to see the Cubbies.  I've already said that I like the crowds and so this was fun for me.  The distance was 5.2 miles and the most I've ever walked in a day was 9 miles.  So this was going to be tough.  I added to the distance be taking a less direct way home because I wanted to go by the lakefront and check out the Jose Cuervo Beach Volleyball competition.  The women had the main court at the time I was there and they were good, but on the outside courts the guys were playing and they were awesome.  They play a very fast paced power game and it was cool to get to see it up close.

Looking down Michigan Ave.

     Afterwards I had some friends that were spending the weekend at the University Club on Monroe St. and Michigan Ave. and they asked if I'd like to come and see the place.  Even though I had already logged 10.5 miles earlier in the day I decided this was too good to pass up so I walked another 3 in the round trip there and back.  The University Club is over 100 years old and is one of the classiest places I've ever been.  It's all dark wood, vaulted ceilings with chandeliers.  I couldn't help thinking of Hogwarts.  In addition to that it over looks Grant Park with a fantastic view of the Bean and Millennium Pavilion.  It was well worth the trip, but it brought my total mileage for the day to over 13 miles walking.  Needless to say I didn't follow it up today.

The Wrigley Dixieland Band

What we did do today was go to Wrigley to actually see a baseball game.  We again went with friends and they are season ticket holders.  The reason that is significant is because season ticket holders have access to the United Club (something I didn't even know existed before last year).  It is a restaurant in the upstairs portion of Wrigley and they have really good food.  And if you get too hot or it starts raining it's a great place to get inside and relax and watch the game on their t.v.s.  I've been twice now and it is pretty special.  The game was great because the Cubs actually won and  swept the Diamondbacks.  Even when they don't win a trip to Wrigley field is always a good time.  We are now back in Lisle because Ty is coming home from his trip to Florida tomorrow morning and as always we are missing him terribly.  We will probably be here for the next couple of days, but we do have a couple of exciting things planned for the week.  The S.O.B. continues.  (Of course you know that stands for The Summer Of Brick)

Day 39

The Fredo from Lucky's.  Man vs. Food
came here and the challenge was to eat 3
of these in an hour.

     Wednesday was a pretty good day of exercise, eating and good company.  It started with me swimming at our health club.  I don't know if I'm getting better, but I do seem to be able to get my laps in faster.  Then I walked to UIC to meet former student Tony Marotta for lunch.  I have really enjoyed the lunch dates and meet-ups that I've been having with people while I've been down here.  It's not that I can't do this when I'm in Lisle, it's just that I haven't so maybe I'll make more of an effort after July.  We met at Lucky's.  The owners there put both the french fries and the cole slaw inside of the sandwiches making them huge.  I took most of mine out before eating it, but it was still difficult to finish.  This was another 4 out of 5 bricks.  Not the ultimate, but pretty darn good.  In addition to the nine miles that I walked and the swimming I also walked the ten flights of stairs from our apartment to the sun deck just for the heck of it.

Dinning by the big tank.

     Later on Wednesday we got dressed up and went over to the Shedd Aquarium for "Jazzin' at the Shedd".  It's a special promotion that they run where they have a couple of jazz groups playing, they have food and drinks for sale and they provide seating and servers.  It's a neat idea and seems to be extremely popular.  Since I had already been to the Shedd I mostly followed TWIK around so that she could see all the cool stuff they have there.  One thing that I did do this time that I didn't do last time was visit the jellies.  This exhibit was really nice and I have some great pictures from it.  I like the whales as well, but they are always not what I expect when I think of whales.  They are more like fat dolphins.  The music was really good and I like when we get dressed up to do stuff, it makes it more like a date.

I passed on the goat.

     Today we planned to visit the "Taste of Chicago".  The Taste is one of the few events that drew me downtown year after year.  I've always liked the festivals that communities do in the summer.  Lisle does "Eyes to the Skies", Naperville has "The Final Fling", Wheaton has the "Cream of Wheaton" and Chicago has the Taste.  It was a big disappointment this year.  They have cut it back considerably from past years.  It will only be five days instead of ten, there were probably less than half of the vendors that are usually there and because of that there wasn't the variety there that people are used to.  We spent about as much time at a cooking demonstration as we did walking the midway of restaurants.  It might be something that has run it's course if they continue to scale back.  I don't think people will make the effort if it stays this way for long.

Add caption

     So after that we decided to go to our fallback and see what was happening at the "Pier".  (that's what the locals call it).  There were two things that looked good; one was the Chicago Match Sailing Race and the other was Dueling Pianos at the Land Shark.  We got there at the end of the sailing races and they were very exciting.  I guess it's a pretty big deal, Chicago is the only American city on the world tour of this competition.  After that we went to listen to some more music.  I have really been impressed by the quality of the music that they have on the "Pier".  We have been over about four times and we have never been disappointed.  And it's even better that all of the concerts that we've seen there have been free to the public.  So the last two days have been pretty fun filled.  I start tomorrow off with a 9:00 am dentist appointment.  Woo-who!!

Day 37

Grace on the sun deck.

     Not much to add over the last five days.  Friday TWIK's father and his wife came down for a nice visit and to see the apartment.  Saturday we came back to Lisle and stayed until Monday.  I played golf before we returned to the city.  Monday night we took a long walk to eat at the Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Company, very good stuff.  I'm giving it a 4 out of 5 bricks, I liked everything except the sauce in the pizza pot pie because it reminded me of spaghetti sauce.  Otherwise everything was excellent.  I also liked the location across the street from where the St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place.  When we got back I realized that I didn't have my set of apartment keys so today I walked to Union Station and came back to Lisle again to retrieve them.  I'm about to walk back to the train.  Nothing planned for tonight except the walk back.  Sorry nothing very exciting to report.  Good stuff planned for the rest of the week so hopefully the next update will be more exciting.

I thought this was cool,
we saw it walking to dinner.

Day 32 (Independence Day Edition)

Great musician.  

     The last time I posted was on Sunday morning and I didn't think the rest of the day would be eventful, but thanks to Facebook I saw that a FB friend of mine was going to be playing with one of the three bands he plays bass guitar for at Navy Pier and so I was wrong, we did have a cool event.   We went and watched "The Kimi Hayes Band" play for about an hour and had a great time. So far we have gone to Navy Pier about half a dozen times since we have been down here. It is very convenient but it is also very cool.  Between the music, the people, the food and the fireworks we were very lucky to find a place so close to "all the action" and on any given day at any given time there always seems to be something going on there.

Not really health food, but this
has become my absolute favorite
thing to eat.

     Monday truly was uneventful, I watched a movie.  Other than that I did walk for a little bit but didn't go anywhere in particular and no one entertained me. Tuesday started a very rare occasion; TWIK had three weekday days off in a row.  That in itself is pretty exciting but we were also going to have two sets of visitors.  First a couple of our friends from Lisle came down to see the apartment and to have dinner.  They had heard me raving about the beignets from The Grand Luxe at Ty's graduation party and wanted to try them so we ate there and I think I can safely say they were not disappointed.  I don't know if we are in a rut but our "go to" restaurant has become The Grand Luxe, not only because it's close but we really want people that come to visit to have a good time and so far everyone that we have taken there has enjoyed the experience.  And the added bonus for me is that I most often get leftover beignets for breakfast the next day.  The second set of visitors were Ty and his friends and they stayed the night so that they could go to the beach on Wednesday.

The Corn Flakes box people.

      TWIK went all out making fruit pizza and buffalo chicken nachos for our overnight guests and like teenagers do they stayed up most of the night.  We love when Ty comes down and stays with us.  The worst part of being down here is missing him.  TWIK and I walked to the Art Institute of Chicago after depositing our sleepy guests at North Ave. Beach.  I have to admit the one thing that we haven't taken much advantage of while being downtown are the beaches.  I like to sit by or walk along them, but neither of us really enjoy laying out or swimming in the lake.  The first two Wednesdays of the month are the free days at the AIC and it has some of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world.  We spent most of the afternoon there and had a really good time.

The picture makes the
fireworks look further away
than they actually were.
AWESOME SHOW!

     We collected the kids and went out for lunch/dinner.  It was not worth mentioning because the place that we wanted to eat was closed for the 4th and so we just settled for a sub place on Clark.  Unfortunately the kids had to get back to Lisle for various reasons and couldn't stay downtown for the fireworks.  One of the things we had been anticipating since we determined the location of our rental was the fireworks on the Fourth of July.  The people that we subleased from used it as a selling point because the rooftop sun deck is a perfect vantage point to watch from without having to fight the crowds afterwards, unless you want to ride the elevator back down to your apartment.  They were awesome and our view was completely unobstructed.  After the show was done on the lakefront it was awe inspiring to walk around the roof and watch as various communities around the Chicago area had their fireworks displays in the distance.  It was one of the most memorable times we've had in a summer of memorable times.

     Since many of you come here via Facebook you might have already seen my albums for the AIC and the fireworks but if not here are links to both:

• Art Institute of Chicago
• Fireworks from Chicago's lakefront

I'll say this again and maybe I'll be happily incorrect like last time; today should be uneventful.  Now bring the magic Summer of Brick.

Day 28 The Half Way Point

    It's early on Sunday morning and right now I'm in Lisle.  Since this is the first day of July this is the half way point in "The Summer of Brick" and it's making me a little melancholy.  I've been thinking about next month when it's the first day of August and we no longer have the apartment and how that is going to feel a little bit weird to not have the option of staying downtown.  But I still have a month so I'll not be the pessimist that sees the calendar as half empty but rather the optimist that sees it as half full.

The Grand Hall at Union Station

     Thursday was a walking day.  I had no destination in mind, just a time goal.  I wanted to stay outside and moving for three hours.  So I didn't really venture too far in any one direction.  I spent time walking in Streeterville, along the lakefront, in Grant Park, and in the Loop.  I tried to slow my pace and just take in the sights and sounds of the city, but that is really difficult to do when everyone around you is walking fast and with purpose.  It was a very enjoyable walk, but it convinced me that it's time to buy some new shoes.  My dogs were barking by the time I got back to the apartment.  I fixed some pasta and salad for dinner after TWIK got off from work and we spent a quiet evening watching television.

I love this picture.  Our building is in the center
with the diamond pattern.  This was taken from
the Signature Room.

     Friday was a day that I wished I owned a bicycle because I would really have loved to go for a ride in the rain.  It has been unseasonably dry so far.  I can only remember it raining twice, but Friday we got a light drizzle and I didn't feel like walking much anyway so I opted for swimming.  I am a self-taught swimmer and that is to say I'm not very good at it.  I actually had a job as a life guard in high school but that was more about who I knew rather than what I knew.  So I've been trying hard to learn how to swim laps properly.  So far it is not pretty.  After swimming I had been contacted earlier by a former student that asked if he could take me to lunch sometime since we were both living downtown.  I said I would love that and he took me to the Signature Room which is located on the 95th floor of the Hancock Building.  It was great catching up with him and the lunch buffet was really good, 5 out of 5 bricks since I didn't have to pay so I'll go on the quality of the food alone for my rating.  The rest of the day was telling everyone I talked to about how cool lunch had been.

Ty's cupcake cake.  It did not survive the evening.

     Friday night we came back to Lisle to get ready for Ty's graduation party on Saturday.  We had made plans several years ago to have a joint party with our best friends the K's.  Our families have been friends ever since our sons meet playing baseball together back in second grade.  Saturday afternoon was a day of running to buy ice, picking up food and other party related supplies and the occasional jump in the pool to cool off.  The party went great and it was nice to see so many people there.  Although my evening consisted mostly of sitting, talking, and eating, the K's and TWIK outdid themselves in putting together a great event and if the comments that I heard were truthful then everyone had a good time.  We watched the Eyes to the Skies fireworks to top off party.  Today should prove uneventful.  We need to go help in the cleanup and then we are headed back downtown.  We did set up a couple of dinner dates for the coming weeks.

     And so at the half way point I'm going to declare "The Summer of Brick" a huge success.  Here is to hoping it continues.  

10 point bonus: where would you find this or several other inlays stating the same message?