Belated entry on Chicago

First, a background recap. My immediate family went to Florida for Thanksgiving this year, so I didn't think I'd be able to have a Thanksgiving dinner. I decided to go to Chicago over Thanksgiving Break. When I let this be known on Livejournal, desdenova generously offered to be my host and guide. When I told my mother, she said I ought to go visit her cousins (my second cousins) in the Chicago area as well.

So I got Thanksgiving dinner after all, with my mother's cousins. It was a lot of fun. There were two turkeys, one conventionally baked and one deep fried, as well as a turkey-shaped loaf of bread, among other tasty things. I decided it wouldn't be a good time to bother people about my organic meat snobbery and just ate what I was offered.¹

My cousins have a standard poodle named Rocky. I mention Rocky because he does a really cute dog trick. When they hold hands and dance around in a circle singing "Hava Nagila," the dog dances too, running around the circle and leaping like an excited puppy. desdenova said that my cousins should film this and put it on YouTube.

Speaking of desdenova, I got to see her on the day after Thanksgiving. I met her at Union Station and gave her a gift I'd brought along from U-con - that gaming convention I went to a couple of weeks before. The present was a chainmail gaming dice pouch. desdenova said one of the most gratifying things I've ever heard someone say on receiving a gift from me - that the pouch would make her the coolest kid in her D&D group.

We went sightseeing around downtown Chicago for a while that evening. If you ever go to Millennium Park in Chicago, make sure you see the giant reflective bean sculpture. Walk under it and look up to see the Awesome Shiny Bean Vortex, because it's awesome. The city has some interesting stuff going on at Christmas, like the Christmas Market (based on similar markets in Germany) and the decorations in the shopping district. We were lucky enough to get seats at the bar in a popular pizza restaurant and get some honest-to-goodness Chicago deep-dish pizza. Ann Arbor pizza tends to be adequate at best, so having good deep-dish pizza was a big thing for me.

The next day we went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. Unfortunately the Oceanarium at Shedd was closed (so no dolphins, whales or penguins for us), but there were still a lot of cool fish to see. There was also a great jade exhibit at the Field Museum - as well as the famous Sue, the most complete fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex in the world. We ended the day with really good Thai food at a restaurant near desdenova's apartment.

I would like to once again thank desdenova for being my host and Chicago tour guide, and also for introducing me to Jade Empire. I haven't beat it yet but I would like to discuss it with you when I do!


¹ I don't bother about the organic meat thing when it would present an extreme annoyance/inconvenience to my hosts. For instance, I don't bother about it with any of my grandparents, who would have a hard time making accommodations for it. In this case, my visit was on somewhat short notice and my cousins were taking me along to dinner at someone else's house, so it really wouldn't have been appropriate.