Madison

I just talked to Dan on his cell phone. He and Bill are halfway to Ball State and Steven is safely at his friend's family's house. So I will actually have a couple of days to myself other than work. I will not know what to do with myself. Fantasies of long hot bubble baths and being able to watch chick flicks are dancing in my head, but I will probably just do extra housework and take apart the computer and take it in for its memory upgrade.  The computer repair place I talked to on the phone is very near a great little El Salvadoran cafe where I might treat myself to a wonderful lunch.

I have not talked much about the trip, as I have not had much time on either the work or library computers, but I have a few extra minutes tonight so I will talk a bit about the next stop on our trip, which was Madison, Wisconsin.

After finishing our visit to the Field Museum in Chicago, we walked back to our hotel across the street from Grant Park. We then got my little Jeep out of the structure and drove up to Madison, Wisconsin on I-90.

I have always been very fond of Madison. It is a beautiful small city with its downtown core on an isthmus between two large lakes, with a smaller lake also within the city. It is the capital city of Wisconsin, as well as being the home of a major university. We spent the night at a very inexpensive hotel out on the beltway, and ate dinner downtown at a great little tratorria which had great food and Italian soda. We walked around and allowed ourselves to be charmed.

links:

our cheap Madison sleeps: http://www.super8madison.com/

our charming dinner was at: http://www.foodspot.com/tuttopasta/

The following morning we went to Spring Green to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright estate.

Tigers game; still no internet

Friday night we went to the Tigers game at Comerica and had a lot of fun. They were playing against the St. Louis Cardinals and they won the game. There were a lot of hits made by both teams, and it was a lot of fun to watch. Also, a squirrel somehow got onto the playing field and ran around all over the place in the outfield. Everyone was laughing so hard its amazing no one wet themselves! Between innings the grounds keepers tried to chase it out of the stadium, and it ran into the bull pen. The grounds keepers then went into the bull pen with a big empty white plastic bucket. We never saw what happened after that, but hopefully the caught the little critter and set him loose outside.

We still do not have internet at home. AOL downloads patches and updates of itself automatically. It finally downloaded so much of itself that trying to start it sucks up 100% of the CPU, and the computer freezes up. Hopefully next week I can take in the computer and have more memory added to it! The computer is only 3 1/2 years old and was state of the art when I ordered it. This is extremely annoying!

Bill is feeling better from his sinus/ear infection. Steven is finally over his diarrhea. I was pretty sick yesterday, but am feeling better today - I am at work, after all.

Tomorrow Steven is going to a friend's house for a couple of days. Bill and Dan are heading down to Muncie for his college orientation. I was not able to get time off, so I will be home and working at night. It will be very strange to have the house to myself!

making it to the end of the week

Well, it has certainly been an interesting week since we got home. Poor Steven got sick on Monday and has been having diarrhea since we got home; he finally started feeling better last night. Bill has not been feeling well. He went in to the doctor today and has a sinus infection and an ear infection. He is now on a couple of antibiotics, and should hopefully be feeling better soon! I am just exhausted - the first three days of work this week featured overtime. I am hoping that tonight will just be for regular hours.

On the other hand, we made it through the horrible storms last night with no damage to ourselves or our home. Considering how near the tornados, hail, and flooding were we are very lucky indeed!

The computer at home is down and we will have to find time to take it in to get more memory installed so we can access the internet. But we have some alternatives in the meantime, as you can see by my entry here.

Bill will be going to his college orientation at Ball State next week. I am happy for him - I think he will have a wonderful time at college!

And tomorrow night we will be going to a Tigers game at Comerica. They will be playing the St. Louis Cardinals. That should be a lot of fun!

crazy weather tonight

We've been having crazy weather all night long. Every time I have been near a window to look outside it makes me glad that my department at work is two stories underground. Strong thunderstorms, golf all sized hail, winds, and torrential rains have been lashing our area of the state for hours now. There were many tornados in the county to the south of us and the county to the southwest of us. The closest have been about ten miles to the south of my house. We are under a flood warning, a flash flood warning, and a tornado watch as I type this.

King Tut and the Field Museum

After taking a shower I feel much more human. I will go upstairs and take a big whopping dose of naprosyn and go to bed in a few minutes. But first, a brief talk about the King Tut Exhibit at the Field Museum.

We had bought our tickets as soon as we knew the dates we would be in Chicago. We knew it would be very crowded, so we decided to go early on a weekday morning, in hopes of missing the possibly unbearably heavy crowds on weekends.

That worked pretty well. We had chosen a time that coincided with the time the museum opened, so we were able to walk right in and go straight to the exhibit, while there was a huge line of people there waiting to purchase their tickets.

I would really recommend buying tickets in advance if possible!

The exhibit did a very good job of placing Tut as an historical person - telling of the events leading up to his becoming King of one of the world's great super powers of his time, and how the last king before him (possibly his father) had made some huge changes in the state religion (to a monotheism), and how Tut tried to change things back to what they had once been (polytheism). They also explained the religious and cultural significance of the items placed in his tomb very well. At the end they showed some of the medical scans done on his mummy and offered possible explanations of how such a young and healthy man came to suddenly die (quite possibly an infection from a recently broken leg which might have gone septic).

Now, the dry climate of Egypt lends itself to preserving things that would have rotted in thirty years or less in my part of the world, much less the three thousand or so years since the death of King Tut. It was amazing seeing some of these things, knowing how old they are. There was a chair with its original woven seat. There were the sculpted wooden heads of a cow and a calf with the original paint still on them.

What was even more amazing is how beautiful many of the items were, and how well crafted they were. We might be hard pressed today to find craftsman/artisans with work of that high a quality. Most people just do not have the time to learn skills up to that level.

It was a morning well spent, and after the exhibit, we made sure to visit Sue the dinosaur, and some of the bird and animal halls. Dan wanted to see the man eating lions that inspired the film The Ghost and the Darkness, so we made sure to visit them.

Then it was on to Wisconsin! 

links:

Field Museum: http://www.fieldmuseum.org/

King Tut tour: http://www.kingtut.org/chicago/

some vacation links

I thought I would add some links to some of the things I have thus far talked about in relation to our trip. I will add more later, after I type in more entries.

the hotel near the Field Museum: http://www.hotelgrantparkchicago.com/

Chicago Blues Festival: http://chicagobluesfestival.org/

Chicago White Sox: http://whitesox.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/index.jsp?c_id=cws

Eleven City Diner: http://centerstage.net/restaurants/elevencity.html

fireworks over the Lake: http://www.navypier.com/

 

work is making me sick again

Yesterday, on my first day back from vacation, I had to start work early because of short staffing. Tonight that midnight person who continually calls in called in for both tonight and tomorrow. It was bad. It was really bad. We were already short for afternoons and that (along with the computers unexpectedly crashing) just took the cake. Thank God that this is her last week on the schedule to work midnights. The supervisors are pulling her. She will have six months to prove she can come in regularly to earn her midnight shift back. I honestly do not think that she can do it, if tonight is any example. So, two nights back, two nights I had to work overtime, and tonight I got no breaks and no lunch, and did not have time to use the bathroom until I had already worked my entire shift and half an hour of overtime. That is just pathetic.

At least the guy whose life I supposedly saved back in April is doing very well now. He had to have dialysis for a few weeks, but his kidneys have recovered well enough  to not require any for a week now. He is on a regular diet, and doing well with it. He is awake and alert most of the time. He is getting some intensive physical therapy and occupational therapy to build up his strength so he can start walking soon!