Day in the Life of an Idiot

 We were headed down to Chicago to visit the University of Chicago. Mason got some early recruitment spam thanks to having taken the PSAT early, so we signed up for the University of Chicago's open house. There was going to be a half day program (from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm) program on Friday. So, we booked our hotel for Thursday and Friday nights. Going from a list provided by the U (with U visiting discounts), we ended up booking the London House: Hilton, with a view of the Chicago River, and... it turns out, this monstrosity:




But, I get ahead of myself.

We headed out fairly early on Thursday morning.  But, rather than eat on the road, we stopped at Grandview Cafe and fueled up before hitting the highway. This meant we had a leisurely breakfast and probably didn't leave town until almost 9:30 am.  Usually, when traveling with Shawn we would have left at LEAST an hour earlier. We also would never have done what we did for a late lunch, which was drive into Madison, Wisconsin, to State Street and have a sit down meal at Taiwan Little Bites:



The food here was really pretty amazing. Mason lamented that Madison was too far away to make this restaurant a regular. We are going to be hard pressed to drive past Madison now on our way to Indiana and not BEG Shawn to let us detour. Though, I think it could potentially drive her nuts (much as it did Mason) that I sort of drive into Madison by feel and muscle memory (I used to go to WisCON a lot and can still find the Concourse Hotel without much trouble.)

Then, we got checked into our fancy hotel and then promptly took a taxi out to the iO theater (Kingsbury Street) to watch "Improv Shakespeare."  The venue reminded me a lot of Bryant-Lake Bowl. There was a main bar area, complete with too-loud music and a fairly decent burger menu with the stages off down weird narrow halls. I had bought the tickets ahead of time and picked them up at the will call window (which always makes me feel like a fancy urban theater-goer). Even though it was general seating, the usher showed us to TERRIBLE seats. We were in folding chairs in an added row between two sets of tabled seats. It was like if someone had a regular restaurant set-up and then just added a row of chairs right behind the seats at the tables. So, like the two ladies in front of us felt compelled to introduce themselves to us because we were basically breathing on their necks, like odd, vaguely uninvited guests. I did not like that part much, but the show was actually quite hilarious. I tend to really enjoy improv, anyway, and it is recognizably one of the hardest forms of theater. But, these guys were great. There were a few absurd moments, but there were many, many more, "How did you manage a rhyming couplet about how Burgundy is in France?" 



I was a little concerned about how to get a taxi back. A friend of mine said that the bar could call me a cab, but the bar did not. Their suggestion was "walk towards the translation" and hope. It had started raining, but that's what we did.

And I hailed a cab like a f*cking BOSS.

The cab drives were both memorable. The first one was memorable for that classic big city white-knuckle, grab the roll bar, "did he just jump the concrete median? Yes, he did!" kind of ride. The drive home was far more stately and relaxed, but filled with an honest to god character who wanted to complain about the city's corruption and had the oddest vocal tick. He ended every sentence with either, "You know what I mean?" or "Yeah, I know what you mean." 

Today, Friday, we spent the largest portion of the day doing the program that they had for us at the University of Chicago's Open House. We listened to a lot of talks, got a campus tour, and generally got star-struck by the amaze that is the University of Chicago. Mason would love to go there... for all sorts of reasons, but not the least of which is that the main quad's architecture is gorgeous. I think any kid that dreamed of going to Hogwart's would be happy to go to a school that looks like this...



But because I screwed up and mis-read the agenda, Mason and I survived on only coffee until almost 2 pm, when we finally had lunch at a noodle shop not far from campus. 

Parking around the U is also kind of a nightmare. Possibly, I should have figured out how to take public transport in, but instead we ended up at a parking ramp that was not only expensive, but weirdly hard to figure out how to get back into as a pedestrian. We figured it out, but there might have been some yelling.

Things kind of went pear-shaped from there. I probably should have had a better plan for us, to be fair. Normally, I do. But, I wasn't able to get any good Chicago guidebooks before we left town, so we were kind of dependent on the kindness of strangers to tell us what cool things we should do and see. Everyone seemed to think we needed to see Millennium Park. Well, first of all, we might have enjoyed it more, if I had listened to the GPS and kept driving to find the right place. Instead, Mason and I ended up wandering about in some other, very uninteresting park muttering. "Where the heck is the bean?" forever. Finally, we got back in the car and found the right place. By that point, everything would have had to be on fire to impress us. So, we were very, "Meh, a bean," and annoyed by how much it cost to park in the official lot.



Mason and I went back to the hotel after that and Mason promptly face planted on the bed. 

I am happy to say that I have a plan for when he wakes up hungry. I researched late-night food places, so I'm going to treat him to a short walk down Michigan Avenue to a fun place (Safehouse) that is open until 2 am. So, no matter when he wakes up (presumably) we can still do a fun thing... unless he sleeps through, in which case, ah well. Next time.

Tomorrow, we pack up and check out, but we've got tickets to the Shedd Aquarium (free, thanks to a friend who volunteers there) and so we're for sure going to see that before we leave town. We may try to see a few other things, that'll be completely up to Mason. I don't really care when we leave time, though I would like to be home before midnight on Saturday. But, we're not likely to do Chicago again overnight like this for a long while, so we might as well live it up.

 Our trip to Chi-Town was successful.  Mason got to see "Sue," as well as fall deeply in love with the "Evolving World" exhibit in the Natural History Museum.  I had to laugh.  Whereas I was very much conscious of the fact that we only had an hour until we were going to meet up with Susan and Zoe (the most adorable baby in the world), Mason just wanted to watch the prehistoric ocean video over and over.  It was fairly awesome.  I was completely animated, but it looked real.  It showed various prehistoric arthropods and triobites and other weird creatures -- some of which, we learned from a volunteer, they couldn't animate eating because they still hadn't discovered where the mouth of the animal was located.  I shot some video of the video, so that Mason would always have a little taste of that exhibit.  Anyway, Mason was much less impressed with the hall of the dinosaurs (which I have fond memories of tearing through with Maureen McHugh's husband, Bob, at the Chicago Worldcon.  I really wanted Mason to see the underground exhibit that Bob and I loved best, but, alas there was no time.  Next year.)  

My favorite part of the trip happened while we were waiting for Susan and Zoe to find us.  Right on the lawn between the Field Museum and the Shedd, a hawk came swooping down and landed in the grass -- which is quite unusual for them.  I thought it looked like it might have captured something like a songbird, so Mason and I crept closer to investigate.  It took off with a pigeon in its claws and dragged it into the underbrush.  Then all of a sudden -- whoosh!!! -- out flies the pigeon in one last daring attempt at an escape!!  Mason and I are watching this drama with our mouths open.  I'm shouting, "Go!  Pigeon!"  But, the hawk won the day.  She nabbed that pigeon right out of the air and slammed it into the ground again.  This time opting for cover right away.  A couple of other women passing by watched with a lot less enthusiasm.  I think they thought we were pretty insane to be so enraptured with this gruemsome display of the natural food chain in action.  Anyway, with the excitement over, Mason and I noticed Susan coming, and we all exchanged hellos and greetings and oohing over the baby.  Then as we were heading in the stroller-friendly entrance to the Shedd, who should hop up out of the bushes but the well-fed and satisfied hawk!  It sat there digesting for some time.  I got a great photo of it, which I hope to put up here sometime soon.

The jaded Chicagoians mostly ignored the hawk.  I mean, here was this amazing and magestic wild animal sitting less than a foot from the entrance to the Aquarium and most people just walked by it, as if were a common sight.  If I hadn't been "oohing" and "ahhing" and shouting my excitment to Susan, Zoe, and Mason, I think most people wouldn't even have stopped.  Which seems wierd to me, since they were all headed in to "view" animals.   The experience reminded me of what Mrs. R. said about Mason at our parent/teacher conference.  She seemed genuinely impressed at how engaged he is in his environment.  At the time, I mentally chalked it up to our lack of TV obsession, but I think that it's all down to grandma and grandpa Morehouse in the end.  My dad was notorious for slowing the car to a crawl the moment we spotted an egeret in the marsh between the north and south side of LaCrosse, my hometown.  My mother could identify most species of wildflowers, even when we were passing clumps of them at highway speed.  My folks would have been just like me -- shouting "Holy cow!  Would you look at that hawk?!!!"  

The Shedd was amazing as usual, though as Susan said at one point, "And now we're viewing the exhibit: Sea of Humanity!"  There were a LOT of people there -- of course it was a Friday, so I should have figured, but it made the experience a lot less personal than say the one we'd just had with the hawk.  Mason's favorite part was seeing the baby hammerhead (shovelnose?) sharks, and the blue monitor lizards in the new lizard exhibit.  Again, most people just took a look to see if they could spot the animal and then moved one like a scavenger hunt, while Mason sat and watched those blue monitor lizards for ten or fifteen minutes.  They were very active and... uh, playful.  They laid on each other, as, I told Mason, ima and mama do.  

It was a good time, and I'm very glad to have met little Zoe and had a chance to hang out with Susan, even though it was classic parent with children chat -- a few minutes of "oh, yeah, the baby" and "hey, Mason, don't get lost!"