[Continued from "Chicago: June 17, 2010."]

The hotel room had very effective shades so it was easy to sleep well into the day.  I am slow to get up on the best day, and without the cue of sunlight I moved very slowly.  By the time we made our way to our breakfast spot, it was lunch.

It was Friday afternoon in a part of town with a lot of office workers; our chosen restaurant, Xoco, had a long line.  The line provided us plenty of opportunity to choose which of the several tortas we wanted.  When the Viking and I eat out together we always choose something different from each other so we can taste more things.  We got a torta with chorizo and another with short ribs.  They were both tasty.

We walked to Millennium Park.  The landscaping was lovely with plenty of trees and flowers.  We rushed past some sort of family friendly area to the outdoor concert venue.  It looked damn cool.  The Viking told me there are free concerts on most days.  On that day a symphony was practicing.  Well, a symphony plus a chorus, plus four “opera” singers.  I don’t know a lot about classical music, but I do know what sounds pleasant.  We sat down in the shade that fell on some of the affixed chairs facing the stage.

We decided it’d be a lot of fun to go back for a concert in the park and have a picnic on the lawn.  The sound is good all across the lawn due to the design of the venue.  A picnic with a good soundtrack?  Sign me up.  I love picnics.

After a leisurely walk over the freeway via the park’s sinuous walkway, we made our way to the Art Instiute of Chicago.  It is huge.  The breadth of the collection is overwhelming.  The collection includes pieces from ancient Southeast Asia, Greece, Northern Africa, and the Middle East; mid-century Europe; and modern America.  I get overwhelmed at huge art museums.  Given the opportunity, I’d take in a museum’s collection one era at a time, one gallery at a time.

My favorite things tend to be furniture.  I really loved this mirror frame and desk combo.  I loved that they weren’t symmetrical, that they had Moorish influences.  I think they were Italian in origin.

Because of the huge variety of work at the Art Institute of Chicago we didn’t get a chance to see everything before the museum closed at 5pm.  We left through the old part of the building, onto Michigan Avenue.  The lions in front of the entrance were wearing Chicago Blackhawks helmets in honor of their Stanley Cup win.  Apparently this is a tradition in sports-crazed Chicago.

By the time we left the museum it was raining.  I’ve lived my whole life in California, where it does not rain in the late spring or summer; this year was an anomaly because it rained in late May.  My whole life rain was associated with winter and cold.  So rain in mid-June when it’s not cold was a novelty.

We didn’t have umbrellas but figured we didn’t have far to go and it wasn’t cold anyway.  We walked back to Millennium Park.  By the time we got to the park it was no longer sprinkling, it was raining.  It still wasn’t cold, but my soaked-through clothes combined with the breeze made my nipples hard.

We happened upon a very cool fountain that was meant for people to splash around in.  There were children and teens, and even some staid adult-types doing just that, though considering it was raining they needn’t have bothered.  The Viking and I really liked the fountain, but weren’t about to get even wetter.

The rain continued.  I remembered the Bean and wondered if it was close.  Thanks to the wonder that is the iPhone and GPS, we figured out that we had passed it before but amazingly hadn’t seen it.  The rain continued.  We made our way to the Bean, which was serving as a shelter from the rain for a number of people.  It’s pretty damn cool, and looked lovely with rain dripping down its shiny surface.

It kept raining.  Soaked through, we went to the hotel and got ready for dinner.  Dinner was decent.  Our waiter had just taken the LSAT and said he wanted to go to law school in California, preferably at Berkeley.  Yeah, I wanted to go to Boalt, too.

The Viking and I were smart enough to bring umbrellas so when it was again raining when we left the restaurant we were prepared.  It was raining even harder than it had earlier in the evening.  We stopped in a nice restaurant/bar for a drink, thinking we’d be able to wait out the storm.

We found a spot at the bar and ordered drinks.  I ordered some sort of fortified wine, which I proceeded to spill on the chick sitting next to me after just one sip.  Oops.  I immediately apologized and offered to pay for her dry cleaning.  She wanted to know what it was I spilled.  Uh, some sort of fortified wine.  I’m really sorry.

She ran off to try to get the wine – which was not of the red, staining variety – out of her skirt.  Her ugly, ruffled, patterned, tiered, mini skirt.  It looked like it had been hiding out since the 80s.  She was not happy.  She was the opposite of happy.  I told her date I was very sorry and that I had offered to pay for her dry cleaning, but that she seemed inconsolable.  I felt for the guy because it was clear that uptight chick would not be giving it up to him.  My clumsiness probably didn’t help to that end.

The bartender had refilled my glass by the time I turned to the Viking to tell him that we needed to get the fuck out of there.  The chick in the ugly skirt was really pissed and I had no interest in dealing with her further.  We downed our drinks, the Viking threw some money down, and walked out – very quickly.  Maybe I should have left my email address with her date ….

Up again went our umbrellas, but they weren’t doing us much good; the rain was coming down very hard.  We ran toward our hotel.  The wind kept blowing our umbrellas inside out, and it was impossible to miss major puddles.  The Viking’s umbrella sacrificed itself in the storm.  The Viking’s jeans were so heavy with water he had trouble keeping them on (his belt had broken before we went to dinner) as we ran.

Once back in our room we got out of our wet clothes and into bed.  The fucking was fun.  The fucking with the Viking is always fun.  We went to bed pretty early because we planned to get up early to go to a farmers market.

[To be continued.]

I swear.  True story.

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