I was up early on Tuesday of last week. It had been hot, and was still pretty hot, so I did not sleep well. Since I was up and it was as cool as it was going to get, I took advantage of the park and ran six miles. The cool thing about the park next to Shannon and Jo’s place is that you can go three miles north and only have to cross one street – most streets are crossed under bridges that go over the Chicago River’s north branch. It was a hot run, but I was happy to have done it.

I showered when I got back, and Mer was up but puttering. By the time I got ready and she got ready, it was almost mid-morning. We headed the four blocks south to the Brown Line of the El, and headed downtown. We got off the Brown Line at the Washington Library stop so that we could transfer to the Red Line to keep going south (we were headed to the Shedd Aquarium on the museum campus near the Field Museum). As we walked over to the Red Line, we came across a huge eyeball. Like 30-feet-tall huge. We had stumbled across the latest public sculpture in Chicago, The Eye and the Cardinal. The sculpture was actually supposed to be unveiled the next day, so we happened along just at the right time, when it was still uncovered.  We never really saw any cardinal – the best I could come up with was a banner of a cardinal on a lamp post near the giant eye. Maybe that is the cardinal, maybe not. Still, seeing the eyeball was a happy example of serendipitous timing.

Another happy example of serendipity was stumbling on the Bongo Room, a small restaurant on our way after we got off the Red Line on Roosevelt. We were both hungry, and the Bongo Room was serving breakfast. They had a great menu, with lots of unusual breakfast foods. I ordered the three-stack of red velvet pancakes, while Mer was very happy to discover she could order three different pancakes, which ended up coming on three plates. She liked them all very much, but was unable to finish the last pancake. Apparently, two is sufficient.

After breakfast, we continued walking toward the museum campus when we stumbled across more public sculpture. We came across 100+ bronze sculptures of abstract walking people, with no real arms or heads. They looked to be all the same to me, but I could be wrong on that point. There are certainly lots of interesting public spaces in Chicago!

We did finally cross the museum campus and get to the Shedd Aquarium around 10:30. We were pretty surprised to see a huge line. We waited in the line for about 10 minutes (Mer waited while I fled for some shade, since I had not used sunscreen that morning). In the 10 minutes, the line barely moved, so we figured we were looking at a wait of at least 45 minutes, if not more. We decided to change plans on the fly, and headed across the park system toward the Art Institute of Chicago, where Shannon works. We figured we would come back to the Shedd the next day, but much earlier.

It is not a small walk over to the art museum, and it was still fairly hot. We were both surprised to see a long tour of Segway scooters roaming around – there is a tour company that shows you Chicago on Segways. Anyway, we found Shannon’s office building on the second try, and security somehow recognized me as a relative and let me in the building. Mer and I were very grateful for the air conditioning and the water cooler. Anyway, as it turns out, Shannon was out doing his job, and we hung out in his cubicle for about 30 minutes, chatting with his co-worker. We then decided to take a walk about Millennium Park and then we would come back.

So, we headed over to the park, and walked by the faces that “spit” at you (near the Bean sculpture). Not surprisingly, the face-fountain was in high use that day with a whole mess of little kids splashing around in it. Mer and I were kind of heading toward a small artificial creek that marks the old shoreline of the lake; we wanted to dangle our feet in it. We decided to head over to the band shell in Millennium Park first. As we got closer, we heard some really excellent music. The Chicago Symphony was practicing in the band shell; they do this during the summer for exposure and to bring music to the public. Mer and I wandered over and sat down to listen. It was Latin-influenced music, with heavy rhythms, and it was a lot of fun to listen to. After about 15 minutes, the orchestra took a break, and the two conductors held a question and answer time that was fascinating to listen to. Both conductors were ludicrously young and handsome too, but that is probably beside the point. Once the presentation was done, Mer and I wandered over to the artificial creek and soaked our feet for about 10 minutes. I was wandering around in the stream and was firmly told by a park worker that that was not allowed – you had to be sitting. I complied, but I would think they would post signs if they really cared. Ah well.

After the toe-dipping, we headed back to Shannon’s office, and he was there this time. We had missed him by about 10 minutes, and he had come looking for us at the creek and at the band shell, but had not seen us sitting down front. We met a couple more of Shannon’s co-workers, and then Shannon walked us across the street to the Art Institute and got us in free. He went back to work, and we started looking around.

Mer wanted to see the miniature rooms, so that is where we went first. The miniature rooms are about 50 small rooms decorated as if from different times and different places, mostly 1600-1950 England and America. They are to scale, I think one real foot being one inch in the model. I liked the British rooms, but found I was not able to distinguish all the differences between a Virgina room from 1800 from a Kentucky room from 1800. They just looked like different rooms to me, but the furniture could have been swapped around without too much trouble and I would not have noticed. I’m afraid my mind glazed over for the last dozen rooms or so because they looked much the same to me.

Since it was right next door, we looked at the collection of paper weights. That sounds dull, but there are a lot of differences in fancy paperweights, and we only spent about 15 minutes looking at them.

We then headed over to look at the sculpture section of the museum. Sculpture is my favorite art form, and the statues were all very impressive and classical in style, which made for good harmony in the exhibit.

We ended our three-hour tour by heading over to the early modern section of the museum. This section houses painting from (roughly) 1900-1950, and in general I liked the paintings very much. These were all early modern paintings, so they tended to pass the Matt-test (the could-I-make-this? test), and they did not make me angry. We then headed back over to the El and headed home.

When we got home, both Shannon and Jo were home, and Jo decided to make supper. She made a vegetarian lasagna and some very good garlic bread, and Shannon loaded up Mythbusters using Netflix. We watched an episode investigating the Hindenburg explosion, and one that tested if you can get away from alligators by running in a zigzag (the findings:  if you can avoid the first lunge of an alligator or crocodile, you can usually get away even without the zigzagging).

After that, we were all ready for bed. Shannon man-hauled the futon mattress to the back bedroom, which was happily air conditioned. I slept very well that night.