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At the History Museum, the kids area was awesome. You could ride an 19th century bike, go different places via green screen, make yourself into a Chicago Hot Dog, and MAKE YOUR OWN ELECTRONIC POSTCARD:


I have one week before school officially restarts for me. Not that I will be teaching, however. I will be taking two classes: The Politics of Britain and Ireland, and Curriculum Theory and Development. This will mark the end of my "free" summer, although I hardly call the above classes work. . . they sound more like fun to me!
Which is one reason for going to Chicago last weekend. I wanted to take a few days of what you could call a vacation before I was back to the greatest job on earth.

I ventured into the city alone on my last day, hitting up the aquarium, planetarium and the Sears Tower before settling into Harry Carey's Steakhouse for dinner. Green line in, green line out - all done!




I did run into Mike Ditka at Soldier Field, which is really a sad story - he kept challenging everyone he saw to "take him on" and "nobody can beat Ditka! Not even Ditka!" . . . tragic. I avoided a direct confrontation by tossing a handful of jelly beans in the opposite direction of where I was heading. . . while he was anxiously eating the tasty treats I was hurriedly on my way.

About then I was hungry so I stopped for lunch at the Field Museum, where I snacked for free on what I could only call the largest table scraps I ever saw or ate. They were fantastic! Sun seared to a dark brown, I give this meat two thumbs up. Way up!

I also found out why the Surfer was here. . . it seems he was watching to see who would win the ultimate staring contest:


BRONTOSAURUS vs. SEARS TOWER!

These two mighty behemoths are locked in a titanic struggle for eye to eye superiority, of which I was able to capture just a smidgen of the tension here on digital film. If you were there in person, you could feel the hostility, the power the unmitigated might of these two beings, locked in a wild battle of frozen epic proportions.

The prize (of course there is a prize) is the city. The CITY OF CHICAGO. One can only imagine how long this might go on. . .


I caught this picture just before I had to leave the city, apparently Chicago practices a daily reenactment of D-day, only they do it with sail boats. Go figure.

I headed home that night, very tired but very ready to get back home and back to school.