Thursday, July 24, 2008

Summer Fun

I had a fabulous 4th of July weekend and I neglected to write about it. So here we go …

On the 3rd me, my BF, and some friends went to see the Fireworks on the lakefront. I’m not sure what possessed me to make another appearance at the Taste of Chicago. It’s ridiculously crowded and a huge pain and the fireworks were pathetically short. Plus, they left the lights in the park on during the fireworks. And we had a group of drunk people in front of us. And I had to use the port-a-potty! It was rough. I did enjoy the walk back to the train station with thousands of other people walking right down the middle of the street. I thought there might be a riot, but luckily things stayed calm.


At one point before the firewords, the drunk girl in front of us turned around and very drunkenly asked what setting she needed to put her camera on to take pictures of the fireworks. We didn’t really bother helping her because I don’t think she would have been able to hold the camera still enough to get a decent picture no matter what setting it was on. Shortly after that, one of her drunk male friends stumbled through the crowd to get back to their spot and then announced that it was impossible to get through and he, “stepped on like 18 people’s feet” in the process.

Moving on … on Friday (the 4th) we went up to Michigan with some other friends. They rent a pretty fancy house with a private beach. It was a lovely day of just hanging out on the beach. A good chunk of our time was spent staging this photo:


I’m not sure I want to explain. In the evening we had a fabulous bonfire on the beach and shot off some fireworks.




The next day we headed down to scenic Kouts, IN, my roommate’s home town, for a service project. We painted her parents’ neighbors’ house. When I say neighbors, I mean the house half a mile down the road, past the cornfield. It took forever to paint the house and I wasn’t sure we were going to get it done, but we finally finished just as the sun was going down. Afterwards we enjoyed a hayride which involved my roommate’s dad on a four-wheeler pulling a group of us on a trailer which, incidentally, had no hay. It’s just not that time of year. Nevertheless, it was excellent.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Stevie Wonder

I saw Stevie Wonder in concert on Saturday at the Taste of Chicago. Stevie was amazing. The Taste was kind of like hell.

We got there early to get a decent spot on the lawn in Grant Park. We put our blanket down and hung out in the sun most of the day. An hour or so before the show started, I walked over to the food area to get some dinner and I almost didn't make it back. The street was packed and people could hardly move. About a half hour before the show, approximately 2 million people showed up in Grant Park and it didn't really matter where we were at on the lawn anymore. There were people everywhere.

Stevie sang for almost 3 hours which was awesome. I didn't know many of the songs he sang in the first half and then Jesse Jackson showed up and we got a short sermon. We really couldn't understand much of what he was saying anyway. Then Stevie started singing his big hits and things really took off. Everyone was singing and dancing and it was way fun. I'm ready to see him again! Here are some photos ... and a video: