Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!

The Chicago trip was quite fabulous. On Thursday, we went to the Museum of Science & Industry to see the DaVinci exhibition and Frogs! A Chorus of Colors.

We had a little trouble getting into the museum at first, due to a lack of any kind of signage indicating the way to the entrance. We were looking for something that would lead us to a grand, impressive entrance, sort of like this:



But could only find this:



Doesn't really instill confidence that one is about to have a memorable experience, does it?

Once inside, things started to improve. The DaVinci exhibition was HUGE, and really fantastic. They'd built replicas of dozens of his inventions, presumably based on his original sketches, and had lots of information with each invention. I've decided that the next time I have to take one of those dumb email quizzes that include the question "If you could have lunch with one person, living or dead, who would it be?" I'm going to choose DaVinci. I always knew that he was brilliant, but I don't think I ever really thought about the scope of his imagination and creativity before.

Here's a picture of a mill wheel that was allegedly in use in Vinci while Leonardo lived there, and supposedly might have been watched by his eyes:




The frog exhibit was also spiffy. It was actually better than I expected. We looked at every single terrarium and I learned lots of cool facts about frogs.







Before we left for the day, we headed over to the chicken hatchery, just because.

We stopped by the Fairy Castle, too, and for the first time it wasn't packed full of people.

After leaving the Museum, we took a bus up to Michigan Avenue, where we eventually met up with our friend / hostess / college roomie J at Lush. Body wash mission: complete.


The next day, we headed back into the city to go to the Field Museum. We toured the King Tut exhibition, which was awesome if very crowded, and went through the Underground Adventure, which was cute but definitely geared toward kids.

That evening, I met up with a very dear friend and her hilarious family, and got to hang out with her delightful one-year-old. Good times!


On Saturday, the bibliophile, J, J's husband N, and I all went to the Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park. It was really, really cool. The best part of the whole experience was the butterfly haven.

An old friend from high school met up with us at the Nature Museum, and ended up joining us afterward for lunch at a cute Mexican place, ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery, and our attempt at dethroning N the Game Champion later that evening back at the ranch. The coup was not successful, as we did not realize beforehand that N was a lit major in college. Curses! However, the sheer obscurity of the game held him to a single pie piece for at least an hour--a new record!--and at one point he actually said, "Is this what it feels like for other people when they play Trivial Pursuit?" We counted a partial victory.

On Sunday, the bibliophile, J, and I went to a small food fair hosted by Whole Foods, which turned out to be a nice, relaxing way to end our visit, as well as a great opportunity to procure free snacks for the train ride home.


For a few more frog & butterfly photos, check out Shutterfly.

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.