Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Liz and I spent last weekend in Chicago, at my friend Carol's wedding. Chicago was a fun place to visit, but it was too damn cold all weekend. It shouldn't be freezing anywhere in April, and with the cold wind off the lake, Chicago is ridiculously cold. On top of the nearly unbearable temperatures, on Friday we had icy cold thunderstorms to deal with. By Sunday afternoon the sun was out, but we'd had enough; we were happy to be on our way home. We did have a great time at the wedding and associated festivities (me: bar hopping on Friday night with the groom and his friends, Liz: drag show on Friday night with the bride and her friends). We also went to a few museums, the Art Institute and the Field Museum. At the former, we saw Seurat's Sunday on Le Grand Jatte, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, a few Pollocks and Warhols, and the armaments hall with jeweled swords and suits of armor. The Field Museum has a few dinosaur skeletons and a temporary exhibit on baseball featuring items from the Baseball Hall of Fame. The guy taking tickets for the baseball exhibit asked us if Liz was a fan, or just along for the ride. She answered "along for the ride" but ended up enjoying the exhibit anyway. In the culinary department, we went to Lincoln Park for Bacino's deep-dish pizza which was amazing. We stayed in Evanston, across the street from Nevin's Pub, where we had a delicious Irish pub-style lunch with Carol's extended family on Friday afternoon. And to close the wedding festivities, there was a brunch at a kosher restaurant in Skokie where we had blintzes for the first time in years. So it was a great trip overall, even if the weather sucked.

I got a new laptop at work today. I traded in my faithful IBM T22 ThinkPad for a T30, which gives me a faster processor, bigger hard drive, and built-in wireless networking. The tradeoff is that the screen resolution only goes up to 1024x768, whereas the T22 ran at 1400x1050. While my eyes will eventually appreciate the difference, I had gotten used to the extra screen real estate even at the expense of font size. I get a touchpad instead of the dreaded pointing stick, so that's an improvement. Why am I complaining? It's a laptop given to me by my office. Free hardware is always appreciated.

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