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".