Chicago Summer 07

Getting big, little girl in front of Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park, Chicago.

Whoa Ada!!

Street fest dancing.

Krape Park duck boats

A few excerpts from some emails I recently sent. Presently too busy trying to figure out what is creating all the huge holes in my lawn to properly tend to this post. It looks like a discourteous golfer took chipping practice in my backyard.

Listen to my last 24 hours. Interrupted five minutes before school got out yesterday afternoon by an announcement - "tornado warning - this is not a drill". so we get the kids (3000) of them out into the hallways and wait fro the storm to blow over - and blow it did. trees down everywhere, power lines, etc

an hour later we are released from the building. i walk to the train line and their are branches down all up and down the tracks. after about a 3 hr train commute - i get home to a house with no electricity. so i sat around in the dark waiting for the elctricity to come back on so I could watch my newly installed cable. no dice. woke up this morning at 5:40 - 20 minutes late - because still no electricty and manual clock not obnoxious enough. no hot water in the shower due to electric hotwater heater.

walk to the train station only to see my train pull up when I was about 200 yards away - no way I could make it. turned around and walked home - and on the way realized that my car was in the garage - which has an electric garage door opener. by this time i had worked up a healthy sweat due to my brisk walks. fortunately my garage is goofy and has two big doors - but one opens up onto the lawn and is not electric - so i opened it and white trash like drove across my lawn to get to the street.

halfway into the hour drive i get a call on my hp from my father in law telling me that they called his house (where i stayed this summer) to tell me that my school is closed. so here i sit in my empty school thinking about how nice it was to hear the generator click in while i was watching tv at night during a power outage...

from the other side ...

Ian
thursday we had the stomr i told you about the other day. power out all over chicago. friday morning power still out but we had set manual alarm clock - for FIVE TWENTY - the time I now have to get up. the alarm did not work as well and I got up at 5:40. i was about 200 yrds from the train when i saw it pull up to the station - all i could do was get really sad and watch it pull away. turned around and headed back to the house to drive. my run to the train had got my sweat going - so i was prety well sturated - nothing quite like being saoked with sweat in your work clothes that you are going to be wearing for the next 10 hours. as i approached my house i realized i had quite a serious dilema ahead of me. my garage door is electric and the power was out. i could not turn on the lights in the garage to see how to do it manually so i was screwed. but fortunately our garage also has a big door facing the lawn which is manual. so i opened it up and drove across our lawn to get to the street. half way to work i get a call on my handphone - school was canceled for the day .....

i'm considering making a reality show

of my present life - my life as a clueless new homeowner.