Sunday, November 11, 2007

Vacation

My good friend Christine twisted my arm to fly to Indiana to visit. Okay so she didn't twist very hard. Alright, I admit that she didn't twist at all...she just invited me. So I went. And it was fun. Way Fun.

What could there possibly be in Indiana to do that's fun, you ask? Not much, unless you like gazing out the car window at mile after mile of farms (which I do). BUT - in Chicago, there's lots of fun stuff to do.


Exhibit 1: Museum of Science and Industry
This place was very cool. My two favorite exhibits were Star Wars and the U-505 Submarine. Star Wars is just plain cool, so that's a no brainer. We had a weird karma thing going with the sub, which I'll explain later.

The Star Wars exhibit was filled with the actual costumes and models that were used to make the movies.

Staring at what are you?

Christine was pretty excited to finally meet Chewie. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was just a costume.


Awww, what a cute widdle dwoid! Oh, and please ignore the date stamp. These photos were actually taken November 2, 2007. Somebody needs to learn how to program her camera.

"My date's cuter than yours."

"Maybe so, but yours has body odor."



The original stormtroopers were always my favorite. I know they were supposed to be bad guys, but I choose to think of them as misunderstood.



Yeah, bite those nails. Little did we know that Darth was just a pudding hearted softie inside. How disappointing.

There were also interactive stations where Christine had to elbow little kids out of the way to get her turn.



Here she is building a robot. Notice the tongue assisted concentration.



This one was a cool holographic game where you moved cards around on a board, and the screen showed a Tatooine moisture farm. The object was to place the condensors at optimum locations in order to achieve the highest efficiency and volume of water harvesting.

Next it was on to the awesome exhibit of the only German U-boat captured during WWII, the U-505.


We spent most of our time at the museum walking to and from and around and under this submarine. Not because it was so fascinating; well, it was fascinating, but not THAT fascinating. No, this hunk of steel kept sucking us back into it's vortex.

Upon arriving at the museum, we bought our tickets, which included a specific time to enter the Star Wars exhibit. We had an hour to kill, so we wandered around and found ourselves at the entrance to the U-505 exhibit. It was fascinating. As the hour wound to a close, we attempted to buy tickets for the on-board tour of the sub, for 1:30, giving ourselves two hours at Star Wars. The silly ticket machine wouldn't print, so we had to get help from museum employees. At 11:35 Christine secured a hand written note that would get us into the 1:30 tour. We raced off to StarWars.

About the time we were testing the robot we built, I looked at my watch, and to my horror it said 1:25pm. Wow - those two hours went by fast! We rushed through the rest of the exhibit, and then trucked back to the other end of the museum to do the sub tour. Huffing and puffing, we race walked up to the entrance to the tour and handed our note from the teacher to the attendant. By this time my watch read 1:45, so I proceeded to beg for her to let us in to the tour even though we were late. The puzzled attendant looked at us like we were insane, and said hesitantly, "But, it's 12:45." What?! I then remembered that Chicago is in the Central time zone, and my watch was still on Eastern (Indiana) time. D'oh! We smiled sheepishly and slunk away to other parts of the museum to kill 45 minutes.

At promptly 1:30 Central Time, we arrived at the submarine tour entrance for the third time in two hours, and presented our pathetic note to yet a different attendant and talked our way into the tour. It was very cool, and worth all the frantic hiking.

Exhibit 2: Downtown Chicago

After the museum, we headed north along the waterfront to downtown Chicago, to locate the theatre and parking. I don't remember being downtown in a city with so many skyscrapers before. I know, I'm a hick. So I had to do the touristy thing and snap pics while Christine was navigating the one way streets and trying not to hit pedestrians.


This, uh, sculpure was unlike anything I've ever seen. A huge, whatever-shaped mirror. Judging by the crowd, I think a lot of people felt the same way.



How often to you get to take your picture in a mirror?

Exhibit 3: Wicked

The highlight of the day was seeing Chicago Theatre's production of Wicked. Wow. The set, the music, the orchestra, the voices, the dancing.... just, wow. This was my first Broadway experience. I think I just might be addicted. Karianne and Susan expressed more than a little jealousy over this experience of mine, and are now lobbying to take a trip to see it in LA. Hm... we'll have to think about that.

Thanks Christine, for a wonderful weekend!

6 comments:

  1. It was fun! Seeing Chewbaca was a life-long dream! And seeing a Broadway play was like living in a dream--amazing! Thanks for a great weekend. Next time you come, I'll let you loose with Dad as he visits my cousin's farm. You'll be in hog heaven (literally and figuratively). :D

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  2. Glad you had such a good time. Let me warn you, once you start taking vacations all by yourself, it can be addicting. WHEN you guys go to LA to see wicked, count me in. I would go again in a heart beat.

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  3. Yeah mom, when. We are not thinking about that, just doing it.

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  4. So cool!!! At least when you went back for the tour it was a different attendant. It would have been more embarrassing to have to see the same person again! :)

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  5. AWESOME!!! I LOVE CHICAGO! AND CHRISTINE! AND YOU!!! AND I'M JUST ALL MUSHY AND CAPITALIZED TODAY.

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  6. im with pat lets make it a girls trip...i wanna see wicked.

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