Well, apparently Blogger isn't going to let me type in a title for this post. Don't know what that's about... Anyway... we've had a couple busy days here in Chicago... we had the opportunity to go out with a realtor yesterday morning to look at a few condos. We wanted to get an idea of what's available, in the event we do have a chance to move here soon. We saw a few really nice places, but not too many had elevators -- which meant we were not only running all over Lincoln Park (our neighborhood of interest), but we were walking up and down quite a few flights of stairs. Couple that with the fact that Chicago has been in the middle of a 90-plus-degree heat wave, and we were pretty much exhausted by lunchtime.

But after lunch we decided to check out a couple more condos that were having open houses, even if we WERE slightly tired of all the stair climbing (hey, it's great exercise). Afterwards, we wandered around Home Depot and Bed, Bath and Beyond to help Eric outfit his new condo. And while his "computer desk" still consists of the floor next to his TV, and he's still in need of a dining room table and chairs, he IS the proud owner of several new pairs of curtains, AND a real, practical, kitchen garbage can (as opposed to the plastic bag he usually hangs on one of his cupboards...).

It's funny, because of all the places we've seen this weekend, our absolute favorite so far has been a condo in Eric's building. We saw it today when the agent happened to be in the building at an open house for another condo. We really loved it -- lots of windows and light, a great view of the city, modern appliances... we were really impressed. It's only a couple doors down from Eric... so it'll be interesting to see what we end up doing... :)

Some pictures from the last few days:

Eric wanted to show us "the bean" in one of the parks near the hotel -- it's this big shiny metal sculpture that reflects the city skyline (and everything else around it) on its surface. It has an official name -- something about a cloud?? -- but I can't remember what it was. And apparently everyone just calls it "the bean."

My picture-taking reflection in the bean...

While we were in the park, we saw a guy juggling on top of this spool -- walking on it like a log roller. As he passed by, Eric jokingly remarked, "show off." And the guy actually HEARD him... so he invited Eric over so he could REALLY show off...

He had Eric lay on the hot sidewalk (seriously -- it was hot out there...) so he could roll over him and juggle over his head. It was pretty funny...


Tonight after dinner (at Morton's steakhouse... yum...) we walked out to find ourselves on a movie set -- they're filming the new Batman movie downtown (notice the "GPD" police car -- Gotham Police Department). We hung out with a big crowd of people on the sidewalk to watch some of the filming -- which, to be honest, turned out to be awfully boring. It's no wonder movies cost so much to make -- there's a whole group of people pretty much standing around doing nothing for 45 minutes, until they're finally ready to film for a few seconds. While we were there, we saw them film a scene where a police officer walked around his car, opened the door, and got in. That was the whole thing. They filmed it about six times. How many takes can you possibly need when the scene is so uncomplicated?? (I guess quite a few...) Supposedly they'll be filming all night, so Rick went out to see if he could catch another scene. I think he's hoping to see the Batmobile... if he takes any better pictures, I'll be sure to post them later... :)