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Moses!

Posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006

Dave!My last day in Chicago was spent working, which is such a bummer given the beautiful weather and all the nifty things to do in the city. As I type this, fireworks are being shot off of Navy Pier just down the road from my hotel. I don't think that it's a holiday, so I'm not sure what's going on. Perhaps the fact that it's another glorious day in The Windy City is reason enough to celebrate?

I'm too tired to write comprehensive sentences, so it's time for bullet points!

  • BAD: The internet at my hotel is terrible. Many sites (including several blogs I read) are unreachable, and I have no idea why. At first I thought it was some kind of censorship deal, but a quick Google search for porn shows that this isn't the case. WORSE: They don't have wireless so I can't surf in bed, but instead am chained to a desk whenever I want internet access. TRAGIC: I am paying $11.95 +tax PER DAY for this crap. How is it that a prestigious hotel at $279 a night gets you this shabby treatment, and yet a cheap-o $79 a night hotel usually comes with free wireless?
  • I saw a woman crying outside of Walgreen's this afternoon. She had just finished talking on her mobile phone and seemed very upset. After thinking about it for a second, I realized that I seem to see a lot of people crying on their mobile phones lately. Remember the good old days when bad news couldn't find you everywhere you went?
  • I just tried a jug of Hershey's Milkshake for the first time (the "Cookies 'n' Cream" version). I don't know how they do it, but the stuff really does taste like an ice cream milkshake... well, probably more like "thick milk", but it sure is tasty (it had better be for 22% of my daily allotment of saturated fat).
  • Chicago has a city-wide 10:30pm curfew for anybody under 18 years old. This isn't anything earth-shattering but they seem very serious about enforcing it, which is kind of surprising. Even more shocking? Parents are being held responsible, and can be fined up to $500 if their kids are caught out. I don't know whether to be happy that parents are being forced to keep track of their kids... or sad that it takes a threat of a $500 fine to make them do it.

Oh yeah... on the way back from lunch I finally remembered to take a photo of this cool mural that's a 3-D image of Michelangelo's sculpture masterpiece "Moses"...

Moses Chicago

A brilliant likeness of the original, which is located in "San Pietro in Vincoli" basilica in Rome.

Argh. Time to pack my suitcase so I don't have to worry about it in the morning.

Goodbye Chicago.


Categories: Travel 2006Click To It: Permalink
   

Comments

  1. Mooselet says:

    That’s a great mural – I love how they do stuff like that.

    About time parents were held responsible for what their spawn do. Yes, sad they have to be hit where it obviously hurts them the most, the wallet, and not merely for the well-being of their children, but it’s overdue. You bring them into the world and so you’re responsible for them until they’re 18 – deal with it.

  2. ms. sizzle says:

    that mural is awesome! thanks for the pic.

    the downside of cell phones is, yes, bad news can find you everywhere. and unlucky us, we all get to hear waaay too much personal info about people we don’t know. when did we all get SO much to talk about?!

  3. The internet may be crappy, but at least at the 279.00 hotel you are almost guaranteed to get clean sheets. Thats the trade off.

  4. The Ref, LGC, England says:

    Glad you had a good time in the Windy City. Chelsea are playing there in August. Now only if I had a few quid spare…..

    Hopefully (for me!) you will get a work assigment to Europe soon. I still owe you a chocolate shake and veggie burger……

  5. SJ says:

    To help you put things in perspective: I don’t even HAVE a laptop (it’s a financial thing). So if I want to use my computer at all, I have to be AT HOME AND AT MY DESK. Count your blessings, hon.

    Ever an optimist, I prefer to hope those people were crying because they just ran out of prepaid minutes.

  6. ~jtm says:

    Wow! That mural is amazing. I went to Chicago a few years back. The buildings are amazing there, I was touching everything.

  7. Arwen says:

    The charge you for the internet because you can pay $279 a night. It makes no sense to me either. I always to negotiate the rate to include the internet but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Maybe they had blocked those sites because they had said something nasty about the internet access the hotel you were staying in.

  8. Bre says:

    Bad news can certainly find you anywhere, but so can good news! I have been told about a lot of really great opportunities because of my cell phone… not that I wouldn’t find that out otherwise, but…

  9. Kevin says:

    We will miss you, Dave. Let us know when you’re back in town. Hopefully we can spend more time down there with you the next time. Museums, the lakefront, and whatnot.

  10. Jeff says:

    I’ve always been blown away by people who can draw or paint in 3D. Actually, people who can draw or paint anything for that matter. This guy, however, takes the cake!

  11. adena says:

    THAT is an awesome mural!

    Glad you managed to survive the rest of your time in Chicago w/o once again being run down by a bitch in a silver car…IN THE STREET!!

  12. ChillyWilly says:

    While I don’t travel much anymore, I do have a suggestion for adding wireless to a non-wireless hotel.

    Airport Express. This cool little device is a bit pricey ($130), but all you do is plug ethernet into the jack, it gets an IP address via DHCP and provides wireless within 100ft or so.

    You can even restrict wireless so only you can get on (if you don’t care to share with the rest of the rooms on the floor)

    Granted, it can’t make a crappy connection work better, but in the future if you are at a hotel that does have a good connection but no wireless, it’s a cool thing to have.

  13. lizriz says:

    My question on curfew – what if you’re coming home from work? I can remember many, many nights I was driving home from work after 10:30 on a weeknight while in high school. Maybe you have to carry around some sort of paperwork or a paycheck stub or something.

    Or perhaps the KFC uniform would have given me a pass.

  14. Deb_LA says:

    That is a very cool mural.

  15. delmer says:

    I paid $53.00 for a Ramada Inn Express (Ramada Inn Bugdet, whatever the entry-level Ramada’s are called) in Clarksville, TN.

    We had free wireless.

    I was pleasantly surprised.

  16. jsy says:

    hi! Navy Pier always has a fireworks show every Wednesday and Saturday night. 🙂 Just an fyi.

  17. RW says:

    Let me echo kapgar and also say how grand it was to meet you and yes to the next meet-up already!

  18. That 3D image looks stunning!

    I hope you don’t mind me asking. How do you show different avatars on your posts?

  19. sandra says:

    Cut to me, going to buy a Hershey’s Milkshake. Oreos — and anything related — are my favorite processed food.

  20. Eve says:

    While bad news can find you anywhere, at least you don’t have to sit home and wait by the phone for it.

    The curfew thing is interesting. Is it for weekend nights too? In my teens, I went out to metal clubs and didn’t get home til 4am, not that that was a great thing for a 15 year old to be doing, but still, there were tons of kids there my age. If there had been a ban here, I would have missed some of the greatest shows, including 2 nights of Slayer on the South of Heaven tour!

    And Chilly had a great idea about the Airport. I’ll have to try mine out the next time I go away.

    Safe trip home, buddy!

  21. Susan says:

    Except for being run down by the bitch in the silver car, it sounds like Chicago treated you pretty well. In fact, you’ve been a great advertisement for the city. I should definitely get off my duff and get downtown more often.

    And did I mention how cool your site is?

  22. Belinda says:

    I’ve BEEN crying on my mobile phone a lot lately, but not because of hearing bad news; in my case, it’s usually just me bawling to someone about something that’s happening to me that they might not know about…or whatever. But not in Chicago.

  23. Hannah says:

    Where was the mural? I don’t remember ever seeing it and I was downtown as recently as a month ago?? Also, very glad you had a nice time in Chicago. It is a fun place.

  24. john says:

    I like the horns on his head. Should be bigger.

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