road trip!

Even though this was a busy weekend, with on-campus-recruiting and fall class registration deadlines, but I still made time for a fantastic road trip to Milwaukee. After relaxing all-day Saturday, I have planned to do a ton of work and research on Sunday, until I woke up to an email about watching the Giants play the Brewers in Milwaukee. After some quick phone calls and logistical planning, four of us were off to Wisconsin!

Three more weeks before the Chicago Long Distance Classic Half Marathon, and I've got a lot of training to do!

pitchfork

Even without much prior knowledge of the bands performing, the Pitchfork Music Festival was one of the coolest music festivals I've ever been to. I spent nearly all of Saturday at Union Park, and most of Sunday afternoon and evening. Here's why it was so awesome:

- Public transportation. Getting there couldn't have been easier, as the park was right off the Ashland stop on the Green Line, and only three stops outside of the Loop.
- Great music. Although I knew of only a few bands in advance (The New Pornographers and Of Montreal), I enjoyed listening to most of the acts.
- Superb planning. The festival was spread across three stages, and the layout/schedule was planned perfectly such that there was no overcrowding or volume interference at any of the shows.
- Flatstock. This trade poster festival at Pitchfork was awesome. I've always been a fan of cool concert art, and this was a collection of companies that all made cool, unique, modern posters for indie rock bands and venues.
- Affordable prices. The two-day ticket was only $35, and most impressively, bottled water was only $1!!!

wow! time flies!

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last posted! Sadly, my return post will also be a short one, as this is one crazy week for me. Who'd have thought that my summer class schedule would be even busier than my routine during the regular school year?!

A lot of it has been trying to catch up after missing a week of class while I was in Pasadena, but even before I left town class has been mad busy. I plan on posting a better update next week, once things calm down and I've turned in my assignments for this week.

festivals galore

People weren't kidding when they told me about all of the outdoor activities in Chicago over the summer.

All summer:
Movies in the Park
Millennium Park Free Programs

Upcoming:
Taste of Chicago
Wicker Park Summerfest
Plus tons more...

There was even a World of Warcraft festival this past weekend, Darkmoon Faire!

boat tour

I went on my second Chicago boat tour yesterday. My first one was the "Barge" Review last fall, when they packed law students onto a boat, in the cold, with nothing but an open bar to entertain us. Basically we all got trashed and I remember little of the actual Chicago architecture.

This time around, the weather was much better but my city views were limited as I didn't want to deal with the crowded roof deck. My favorite views were when we were in Lake Michigan facing the city, with the sun going down.

Afterwards we tried to get the whole LLM group of 30+ students into Timothy O'Tooles (the only place we thought could fit all of us). However, they were being extremely strict with checking IDs - even on a Wednesday evening at like 8:30PM. Not used to carrying around their passports, a bunch of LLMs only had their student ID cards, or ID cards with no age info, so sadly, most of them ended up just going elsewhere (although I'm sure they enjoyed much better food).

land of the free

As a child, I was a library rat. I could spend all day, every day, inside the library. It was always quiet, cool, and filled with exciting ways to kill time. In addition to reading books, I could play Oregon Trail and other educational games on the Apple II's, watch old videos on their film reel machine, and look up news articles of all sorts on the fancy microfiche machine.

One of the first things I try to do when I move to a new city is get a library card. You can always count on libraries to provide free wireless internet, movie and book rental, and sometimes a few other cool bonuses. However, the Chicago Public Library tops what I know of the last two library systems I used (New York and San Francisco). First off, they have an awesome Museum Passport program - library members can check out free passes to Chicago museums that are good for one week and for up to four adults! I picked one up yesterday for the Art Institute.

Then today I learned that Chicago public libraries also give out free tickets to Ravinia! Each library only has a limited supply for each night, and each member can only request a total of four tickets for the whole season, and up to two for any one event. Call your local library to see what free concert tickets you can score! (Too bad they don't have Lollapalooza tickets!)

long day of tests

I took time off work on Monday for a long day of tests. I woke up bright an early to take a long statistics exam, in order to hopefully waive out of DECS-433, which is the introduction class to statistics for business and economics. I took tons of statistics and probability in undergrad, so all of the problems about confidence intervals, covariance, probability diagrams, etc. actually began to make sense by the end of the three hour exam. However, the understanding may have come too late for me to pass the waiver exam...

Immediately folllowing the waiver exam, I headed to the law school to proctor the LSAT and make what turned out to be a long $75. The meeting kicked off at 11:45AM, and although I had a small room of only eleven nervous test-takers, it still felt like forever until we finished at 5:30PM. At a certain point I started wondering if it was worth it, but the I realized that $75 can go far on my stretched budget. Plus I read over half of A Fine Balance while making sure there was no LSAT funny business.

After a quick refresher at home, I met up with friends at my favorite Hawaiian place in Chicago, Aloha Grill. No matter how much I though about it, I can't help but order the Combo BBQ Mix plate everytime I go. I swear, next time I'll get a mini-plate and spam musubi...

This morning, I overshot my El stop as I was completely engaged in A Fine Balance. I won't run the story for anyone by posting my thoughts on the web, but let's just say I found the book completely depressing. It almost made me never want to go to India.

In other news:
Tomorrow I'm going on an architectural boat tour!
Coming up this weekend, Taste of Randolph Street!

beach, zoo and the blues

After a late Saturday night, I decided to start my Sunday slowly. I slept in (very very rare for me, especially in the summer), and waited for Jack to call me to go to the beach. After he and his friends finished at Ribfest, Jack picked me up and we headed out to North Avenue Beach. He and his classmates spent two years at Kellogg without ever visiting the beach, but we had a good time relaxing in the sun. On the way back to the parking lot in Lincoln Park, they wanted to stop by the Lincoln Park Zoo, another Chicago landmark they were visiting for the first time before graduating next week. I've been there a few times already, but it's always enjoyable (and free!).

After having a quick dinner at home, I bussed down to Grant Park for the Chicago Blues Festival. Although I only caught about an hour of the festival, I thought it was really cool.

In other music news, here are some albums I got this weekend that I'm looking forward to checking out:

- The Bravery, The Sun and The Moon
- Nelly Furtado, Loose
- Killers, Sam's Town

busy saturday

Saturday morning kicked off with me waking up Jack. After a fun game night with law school friends, I met up with Jack and his Kellogg buddies at Sound Bar for a late night of watching Jack dance.

I had ambitious plans for Saturday:

Printer's Row Book Fair - Although this didn't match up to the SF Library Annual Book Sale, it was still impressive and lots of fun. Before used book shopping, I usually like to have a list of books to pick up. I quickly jotted down a short list of books I wanted: Devil in the White City, What is the What and The Namesake. Although I didn't find used copies of anything on my list, I ended picking up five other books: A Fine Balance, The Human Stain, China Boy, A Thousand Acres and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. All for $20 total!

Ribfest - After building up an appetite book shopping, I went straight from the Loop to Lincoln Square to Ribfest Chicago. Along the way I finished half of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a very light sunner read, on the 30 minute train ride. At Ribfest I promptly gorged down seven rib samplers, each a small plate with 2-4 bones off a baby back rib rack. With my appetite sated, I took the long train ride home and spent a few hours recovering at home before going out again.

Jess's birthday - After a big rib lunch, I followed up with all-you-can-eat sushi at Sushi Para II. After sushi, we merged Jess's party with another birthday party from the law school, hitting up Trinity Bar and Maxbar. Along the way, we were surprised by the Chicago World Naked Bike Ride!

chicago #1

One list where Chicago comes in #1: A sportswriter's basketball scorecard

And for those who don't know, I'm rooting for the Spurs. Gotta support West Coast dominance (although the window is rapidly closing on my beloved Lakers)!