A Quick Letter to Brett Favre

Speaking as someone who considers himself a fan of the Green Bay Packers and has been watching the team since his youth, it has been a joy to watch you play for the team. Thank you.

I hope you get to enjoy doing 'nothing' for a very long time.

Just stopping by

Nothing complicated to say today. I realize I've been slacking of late, been busier than normal, sick, blah, blah, blah excuses all of them. This is my practice/play/express area and will only improve my skills if I use it as such.

Anyway.

I've never really considered myself popular because I wasn't that guy in school. I wasn't the guy that was going to be voted 'best' or 'top' anything at the end of my senior year of high school because I wasn't known by everyone in that way. That lack of status always pleased me because I never sought it. I am who I am. Sure I 'jellyfish' a bit by not being very forceful about my opinions at times (I am willing to let other people be right if it's not worth the argument) but that's still me being me. For what that's worth.

Occasionally I run into other people I know when I'm out with one set of friends ('crossing the streams' as it were) but not often. That's generally the role my other friends with me play. 'Oh this is such-and-such from work' or 'that's the guy I was telling you about that I know through my brother' or whatever.

Last night George and I went to the car show and it was my turn to be that guy. Senor popular. Ran into a couple sets of friends from work and a group via brother, all within the space of 10-15 minutes or so. It was kinda fun.

It unnerves me a little as well. After that I crossed the paths of the Compound Geeks and the Point Crew. People I work with have been really nice to me the past week or so. Am I sick and no one's told me yet? I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I should really just enjoy it while it lasts but I guess I'm a little paranoid as well.

Just me being me.

Just a Thought

One of the best ways to maintain rulership over a people is to keep them divided and distracted. In this way, they cannot unite and remove rulership that they find oppressive or unworthy. (The best way to maintain rulership would be to keep everyone happy but that's not really an option.) We see that today. After 9/11 Americans were briefly allowed to unite against a common foe. Once it was realized that there wasn't a clear, obvious foe to face, a 'bad guy' like in the movies, we were quickly resplintered. Certainly, there was a target we were given, a specific face to put on the enemy but that face couldn't be tracked down and there was no proof that said individual had anything to do with the specific event that he was being blamed for and now he's not being officially sought for that event. Not that anybody really knows that.

Builds up fast

The other week I noticed that the debut album of one of my favourite bands was not in my iTunes. This led me to go through my CDs and see what else may have gotten missed over the years. I figured it wouldn't take long since I'd been good at getting all my music on the hard drive.

I was wrong.

My folder size has jumped about, oh, 10GB in the past couple weeks. And I'm not even close to being done.

The best part about it is that I've been getting to hear some music that I haven't heard in years. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed hearing some of these bands. Good stuff.

Regarding the Super Bowl

*points at the Patriots*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

18-1! According to what you said earlier in the season, it wouldn't be worth it without winning the Super Bowl. And you didn't! Ha! You suck!

(See past rant regarding the suckiness of Boston, repeat)

That... that was fun...

If the thin quality of my wallet is anything to go by, I'm doing my part to stimulate the economy. I guess it's a pity that I'm stimulating other countries as well and not keeping it all at home.

I need to stop stimulating economies and start stimulating women. It's not likely but it's worth a shot. I guess.

The problem with...

The problem with doing things is that it doesn't leave you any time with which to get anything done.

Nothing Like...

There is nothing quite like conversing with a young lady so pretty that she makes you feel older, balder, fatter and scruffier each second that she smiles at you for fixing her printer.

Not sure

Not quite sure which is more odd: the fact that someone is planning to make a movie based on the video game 'Gauntlet' or the fact that I know someone auditioning for a role in it.

And she's not going for the role of Blue Valkyre. Pity.

The problem with...

The problem with getting a little exercise is that it shows you how little exercise you get.

The Adventure Ended - Aftermath

If every good adventure has a backstory, I guess it should have an aftermath as well.

George, perhaps not for the first time, has vowed to never return to that state. I’d love to say something like that but I know it wouldn’t stick. I tend to have business there in that place.

In an effort to figure out where we went wrong in missing the connection to 23, George did some investigating online. Turns out that, while 90 and 23 do cross paths, they don’t connect in any way. The directions he’d gotten were wrong. It wasn’t our fault.

Was it all worth it?

Sure. As tiring as the experience was, there were some interesting things to see and experience. Again, while not a fan, the ‘Star Wars’ stuff was neat to see and I’m glad I got to see it.

Writing through this has also let me ponder the museum itself. Right after we got back from the trip, I wanted to go back, feeling that my impression of the museum would be different on a less crowded weekday and without the need to monitor small children as I went through it. As I’ve reconsidered it, I’ve decided that, on the whole, the Museum of Science and Industry was a disappointment. In my opinion, there was too much of it incomplete, messy or pointless.

Let me explain what I mean by using the word ‘pointless’. As we first started down the ‘Yesterday’s Main Street’ exhibit, George and Amy reacted very positively. It’s similar to the ‘Streets of Old Milwaukee’ exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum insomuch that both show what a main street would look like around 1900 or so. The difference is that the ‘Streets’ exhibit in Milwaukee has depth, corners, levels. ‘Yesterday’ is a brief street in comparison. The only advantages are that the street is wider, has the ice cream store and had a couple young ladies in period dress near the movie theatre that was actually operating.

Another problem is that ‘Yesterday’ doesn’t fit into the theme of the museum. There is no context to the exhibit, no comments on the technology of the day and how it’s led to what we have today. It’s just a collection of store fronts that belongs in a natural history museum not in a science and industry museum.

While I’ve not been to the revamped ‘Discovery World’ museum in Milwaukee and hadn’t been in the version 2 setup since it opened, it has generally been more focused than what I saw in Chicago. Don’t get me wrong; the Museum of Science and Industry has some really excellent and unique things in it. There’s a submarine, the trains and planes; it has stuff that draws the interest. I just don’t feel there’s enough interest to make a two and a half hour drive down there on any kind of regular basis.

Or maybe even ever again.

(Post #150 = Hooray!)

The Adventure Concludes... Where Faquowe?

Immediately upon exiting the underground parking structure we were faced with a decision: Should we turn right and go back the way we came or go left? The highway sign pointing to the left indicated that highway 90 was that way and that was the first number on our directions. George chose left.

Later on, this moment would be referred to as mistake number one.

We drove through some unattractive city streets and George immediately began second guessing his decision. We were still seeing 90 signs and considered this a good thing. A few blocks later we were directed onto the skyway for 90. There were no direction options at this point; we could either get on the skyway or not. We did.

Turned around as I was, I wasn’t sure which direction we were now headed in. It didn’t feel right but I put it down to the tollway structure that I’d long found confusing in Illinois. We soon paid the $3 skyway toll (robbery!) and were off.

It didn’t take long before we passed a sign that read ‘Welcome to Indiana’. Wha?

Evidently Indiana has a tollway as well as we were soon encouraged to pay fifty cents for the privilege of using their roads. At that booth we double checked our math. ‘This may be a dumb question but is this Indiana?’ It was. We were heading East instead of West. Easily fixed, we’d just turn around at the next exit and head back.

One of the problems that I have with the Illinois tollway is that it doesn’t like to have ‘matching’ ramps. By that I mean that the ratio between entrance and exit ramps is not 1:1. Through most of Wisconsin it is a 1:1 ratio so you know that, if you exit the freeway, you can easily get back on it, even in the opposite direction if you like. Illinois is not like that. Neither is the chunk of Indiana that we got to see. All exit ramps but no on ramps to be seen. We kept driving.

George was now noticeably uncomfortable. Part of this was us being turned around but most of it was because Amy was now very late for her fun. We’d stayed at the museum longer than expected and now we were lost in Indiana. Amy should already be there relaxing!

After another aborted attempt to exit the highway, George pulled onto the shoulder, eyeing a gap in the barrier between the Eastbound and Westbound lanes. ‘What are you going to do?’ Amy asked, concern in her voice. I knew that tone, polite as it was delivered. It is not an actual request for information. Amy knew exactly what he planned to do, as I did. That tone is meant to question the action that everybody knows is to be taken.

‘Let’s not question it,’ I noted as George grumbled a ‘Nevermind’. ‘The worst thing that can happen is that we get caught and, at this point, I’ll help pay the ticket.’ One illegal U-turn later and we were finally Westbound and down. Of course, that also meant we had to pay the tolls again so our getting turned around cost us $7 in funds and about a half-hour of time.

The boys were distracted with the movie playing through the DVD player and the toys they’d gotten in the gift shop. They expressed their concerns briefly over the situation but left us alone when we said everything would be okay. Kara had fallen asleep before we’d even made the skyway, a fact made known to us after George had quoted Simpsons with a loud ‘So long stink town!’ as we got on the skyway and gotten yelled at for it. Kara had been far over tired and needed the sleep. Good for her.

90 took us through Downtown Chicago and the idiots that drive there. George grumbled at many of them and I joined his quiet chorus. Halfway through downtown, Kara awoke screaming, evidently from a bad dream. She refused to be calmed down but did stop screaming. Eventually. She would cry for a half-hour before she completely calmed down. George’s visible tension grew.

By the time she relaxed, we’d already followed the split of the highway to continue on 90. We could have still taken 94 and headed directly home but George was still expecting to deliver Amy to her fun. With Kara now out of sorts, Amy no longer had an interest in leaving us, considering it abandoning her daughter. We reasoned that (1), we’d already made the split and (2) we had lots of time yet before we reached that area. Kara should be asleep again by that time and we could make a final decision then. I don’t believe Amy had any intention of taking the opportunity if it did present itself but, since we were already on that road, there was no point in arguing.

90 was taking us to Rockford, a city that I’m unfortunately familiar with to a slight degree. I find it an unpleasant place but it was a familiar landmark. Of course, our directions had us intersecting with a highway 23 before we’d reach Rockford. The problem was that we didn’t know when that would happen. So onward we drove.

Another thing I dislike about the Illinesian tollway is the lack of quality signage. If you are on a major highway in Wisconsin, you get regular updates as to where you are and what’s near you. For instance, if you are on 94 heading west to Madison, every few miles will be a sign with an update listing the next couple exits, the distance to them and the distance remaining to Madison. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment and progress. You know you’re on the right road. Beyond knowing this was 90 to Rockford, we knew nothing. There were no ‘Rockford – so many miles left’ signs to give us a hint. There would be ‘highway whatever – 5 miles’ hints but that was the extent of it. On we drove.

Two issues started to present themselves. The van was getting low on gas. Not impossibly low on gas, not ‘about to run out’ low on gas, just ‘getting uncomfortable’ low on gas. It was also well after 19:00 and the children politely began to ask when dinner would be. Not clear on how far we had to drive before we reached the junction for 23, we tried to delay dinner until we were back in Wisconsin, or at least on 23. A number of the exits we passed weren’t promising on ramps to reenter the tollway anyway. On we drove.

We reached the junction to 20 and decided enough was enough. It was closing in on 20:00, we needed a break and food. George took the dare and pulled off the tollway. Thankfully, a gas station and a McDonalds were less than a block away, sitting right next to each other. I’m not a fan of McDonalds but, as I was suddenly very hungry, I decided to not care.

While George added gas to the tank, I visited the bathroom. Before I could leave, George met me at the door, noting it would be wise to check on our current location. Duh. We asked the very nice lady for some information in that regard and she was only too helpful, pointing at a map of Illinois to note where we were and where 23 was in relation. According to her, it was about ten minutes down the road. We discussed a few other routes to Wisconsin but all were back roads and that way led to truly being lost. We fueled up at the McDonalds and were off again.

Knowing we didn’t have far to go, George and I kept our eyes peeled for the sign to 23 but it was not forthcoming. We had to stop at yet another tollbooth which noted there was one more tollbooth between us at the state line. This seemed ominous to me. Amy began to question where 23 was but it had to be ahead of us yet as we’d seen no signs. Still, something didn’t feel right. On we drove.

We came to a city and passed through it. Something triggered in my head and I began scanning for landmarks. ‘I know where we are,’ I noted. ‘This is Rockford. I think we missed it.’ George argued against this; we’d both been searching and seen nothing for 23 so we couldn’t have missed it. Somehow, I knew we had. In fifteen minutes we’d be at the last tollbooth and about ten minutes after that we’d finally be back in Wisconsin.

And I was right.

I cheered gently as we returned to the ‘Motherland’ at 20:30ish. George quickly hopped onto 41 which would take us past Delavan and Lake Geneva. ‘How much longer until home?’ asked the boys. When I noted we had about an hour left, George grunted and muttered an expression that indicated he would be taking action to reduce that time significantly.

That’s when the fog rolled in. Deep thick heavy fog that forced George to slow down. A lesser man may have been forced to tears. George grumbled further and kept driving.

At this point, George was ever more focused on delivering Amy to her fun night out. Amy had been texting her friends, updating them with our situation, and had already told them not to expect her. George is not the sort to give up on a quest, especially when he feels like it owes someone but Kara was still awake. When asked if she’d be upset if mommy left, she replied in the affirmative. Grudgingly, George kept on driving.

We made it back to Compound 1.5 at 21:30. The ride had been three and a half hours, not really longer than the ride down to Chicago that morning when you think of it, but it felt longer. We stopped for longer periods of time on the way down so it didn’t feel like we were just in the van like we did on the way back.

It should be noted that Kara was still not tired. I made the mistake of stretching out on the floor and she starting climbing onto my chest and jumping off, landing far too close to my head for my own comfort. She giggled the whole time. She’s like that.

Anyway, the adventure was finally over, thirteen and a half hours after it began.

The Adventure Continues... Jump to Lightspeed

After a bit of investigating we found out that the ride lasted six minutes and that the area could hold seven people at a time. Seeing the length of the line in front of us, it didn’t seem that this would take all that long.

Ah, but just because they could fit seven people in there, it didn’t mean that every group ahead of us was made up of seven people. Afterall, we were only six. Once again, we were waiting in line.

It was late, we had been at the museum for hours now and the children’s ability to wait was now extremely curtailed. While they did their best not to complain, they were honest about not really wanting to be in line. They wanted to do the Ride; they just didn’t want to line up for it. Kara kept wandering around outside the line and, eventually, we stopped fighting her over this so long as she stayed near us.

Finally we were next. We entered the ride at 17:28. The museum was scheduled to close two minutes later. Overtime!

Again, I’m not a Star Wars fan, but I had been looking forward to being ‘on’ the spaceship. The cockpit of the Falcon did not disappoint in this regard. We were encouraged to flip any and all the switches we could find, bar one that would shut the ride off. George and Jason took one front row seat and Niko and myself crammed into the other. Amy and Kara sat behind us but just to the side so they too could see. The little room darkened as we fiddled with the switches and, suddenly, the ‘windscreen’ in front of us lit up. We were in space!

X-Wings and Tie Fighters flew past us in a dog fight!

It was a beautiful thing.

Rather quickly they started whipping the education on us again. Anthony Daniels came over the ship’s com system (identifying himself as the voice of C3PO and then doing the voice, Niko did not react to this moment of ‘reality’) and took us to lightspeed to our real universe. In the Falcon, we flew past Earth and our Moon, visited the reaches of the solar system, observed the radiosphere and saw what the edge of the universe might look like before returning, again via lightspeed, to the Star Wars universe and X-Wings. The situation was totally immersive, not unlike the reaction my brain has to an IMAX movie but on a much smaller scale.

As we exited the ride we expressed our glee for it. There was no question that it had been worth the wait. George felt ten again.

The lights were being turned off. The museum was closing. Finally it was time to go. By the time we collected our coats, visited the bathroom one last time and I paid for the parking it was 17:47. We had been at the museum for seven hours. No wonder we were all so tired!

Still, George is an expert driver and we had directions that would take us more directly to the Delavan/Lake Geneva area that Amy was headed for so this wouldn’t take long.

Right?

The Adventure Continues... Spinning Our Wheels

As we passed through the ‘Yesterday’s Main Street’ exhibit earlier in the day, we saw the ice cream parlour within. Now became the time to visit it. I got a sundae that turned out to be larger than I expected. I’ve grown a bit lactoic intolerant as I’ve gotten older so this was not the wisest choice I could have made.

(It’s also possible that after the ice cream is when we visited the balcony but I don’t think so. My memory is fuzzy on this set of events for some reason. Normally it’s just fuzzy.)

We returned to the main rotunda with far too much time yet to spare. While George started hunting for the Christmas tree decorated for Greece, Kara decided it was time to play with me. We directed each other into a National Geographic exhibit just down the hall. After meddling in there for a few minutes, it occurred to me that the rest of the gang had yet to follow us. Before my concern could turn into something more, in they came.

Either due to the placement of this exhibit (just off the main aisles) or due to the increasing lateness of the hour, this exhibit was pretty empty. This gave us a chance to relax and play a bit. Once Kara was distracted with map related blocks, George started watching her again, mostly so he could sit down. I tagged over to Jason and we caused some trouble.

There was a display set up like a meteorological map with a camera pointed at it and everything. Perhaps proving that the lad believes in climate change, he found every hurricane symbol in the set and spread them across the US. Then again, he could be into whole-sale destruction as well.

There was a raft that you could fit half a dozen kids on that you were supposed to point towards the North Star. Or, if you pulled on the rudder fast enough, it would slam back and forth on its moorings. This was more entertaining to Jason thereby feeding into my ‘destruction’ theory of before. We visited a nearby tropical jungle tent where he grabbed all the toy food he could, especially the soda. I quickly grabbed a fruit medley and was happy with that. We built a pyramid out of foam and then he climbed it. There was a cutaway of a plane cockpit and we joined up with the others as we played with that. Again, no real learning on my part but it was relaxing after everything else.

Finally it was closing in on 17:00 and we returned to the transportation exhibit and the Falcon ride. We were only five minutes early (or so) but they wouldn’t let us enter the line until 17:00. This led to me following Kara into the back parts of the exhibit, watching her climb onto a cable car and trying to keep her from escaping the building through the massive doors on this side of the building. I succeeded in this at least.

Then it was 17:00 and we could get in line. It wasn’t a long line so this should go pretty quickly, right?

The Adventure Continues... In a Galaxy far, far away...

After some more waiting in line, our tickets were checked and we were waved inside. The first item of business was a picture taken in front of a Star Wars backdrop. This was an official type museum picture as opposed to a ‘pause with the digital camera’ type picture. George was handed a ticket to identify which picture was ours and we were off.

It was cool.

While the exhibit did bother to try to make things educational, such as comparing the ‘science’ of a landspeeder to the science of a hovercraft, it was too much fun to be bogged down by the educational experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that to decry the educational experience in general as the whole concept of this museum is to distract you with the entertainment while you learn something. I’m all for that. There are just certain circumstances where the educational part of the process can feel very deliberately grafted on and this one walked that line on a lot of occasions. It was also the exhibit that I could most easily see the educational part of the process ignored the easiest. ‘Do I look at the costumes or read this panel about ‘real’ spaceships? Hello costumes!’

I spent a lot of time with the spaceship models as I like that sort of thing. I even looked at the educational real spaceships part. They were all theoretical designs for future ships. Oddly enough the ‘reel’ spaceships look more real than these did. Give it time.

Next door to this was the droid theatre. In a small stage was a mock-up of the interior of the Jawa Sandcrawler. Referencing that moment early in the original movie, C3PO laments all the trouble his buddy R2D2 gets him into. The ‘story’ then breaks away to a discussion between the slightly animatronic droid on stage and a video screen just off of it with a real robot designer. They go back and forth, we get introduced to the other real robots on stage (despite the fact that these are probably animatronic versions of the real things as well) and learn how far actual robot designs have gotten. Very interesting. Even if I hadn’t wanted to stay and watch, I had to as Jason wanted to stay and someone needed to stay with him. So I did. We arrived just at the start of the show and stayed the ten minutes or so through the whole thing.

While that happened, the rest of our group pretty much saw the rest of the exhibit! The theatre was the third of four sections of the room. George had taken his pictures and we were about ready to go. I looked at a few costumes, we walked past Vader and exited into the gift shop.

This is also where our pictures had printed out. I thought it odd that they printed all the pictures. Surely a lot of them went to waste as not everyone would want their picture. If memory serves, the package was 3 ‘big’ pictures, 4 wallet sized, a cardboard frame and a key chain for $20. Not a bad deal. It didn’t hurt that the picture turned out looking nice, even with my bald fat self in it. I almost look human! ;)

As it was the second to last day of the exhibit, the merchandise in the gift shop was on sale. George got himself a t-shirt and the children picked out toys. Even after all this, it still wasn’t even 16:00. We had chosen later tickets to the Falcon since we expected to be in there for awhile. Now what would we do?

The Adventure Continues... Post Lunch Disappointments

As we were on the ground floor and we still had a couple hours to spend before it was our turn for the Star Wars glee, we wandered around that floor for awhile.

The Colleen Moore Fairy House is the finest doll house perhaps in the history of everything. It’s a highly detailed castle that’s about as big as a person, certainly as big as a child that might have played with it. Sections are cut away to reveal the decorated interior. It was much more interesting than I expected. With that said, I wasn’t quite sure how it fit into the museum. It wasn’t scientific and hadn’t been mass produced so I’m not sure where the industry might have been for it. There was an entry room with information regarding the house so I suppose I missed it there.

We briefly passed through ‘Yesterday’s Firefighters’ which had old fire engines in it. Unfortunately there wasn’t much to look at as the room was under construction.

Next door was a large room with all sorts of exhibits about energy. Lots of buttons to push, things to spin and levers to fiddle with to be found here. Can’t say I learned much of anything but it was a fun room to play in. The children seemed to agree.

We then gravitated to a room with a pair of covered wagons in it. Interesting and the comic style artwork on the walls was nice but that’s all the room had in it.

As mentioned there was a Circus room. It was rubbish. The entryway held the worse big cat sculptures I’ve yet seen. The model circus was okay but what was the point of it? How does it fit into the concept of the museum? It didn’t. Oh, there were some fun house mirrors along the one wall in a failing attempt to add a little education to the room but it didn’t work. There was also a video screen near them that functioned similarly to a display I’ve seen in the mall. The one in the mall works better.

We also visited the ‘Eye Spy’ exhibit which felt like less of an exhibit and more of a hallway with windows. I understand that really that’s all most museum exhibits are but most of them tend to hide this better than ‘Eye Spy’ did. There was more foot traffic flowing through the exhibit than stopping in it so maybe that’s why it seemed more like a hallway than anything else? The window displays were evidently meant to be little puzzlers and be politely clever. The hallway was too crowded to really examine them. Half of the exhibit was missing anyway, removed for reasons not provided in the display.

We abandoned this section to head for a section I vaguely remembered from my youth that read ‘Racing Cars’ on the map. We passed through ‘Ships Through the Ages’ to get there. This was mostly models of ships in cases, very nice, and a mock ship’s deck which we had to climb onto. While we didn’t linger, this was on of the nicer rooms we’d been in since lunch and it was relaxing in that regard. The design of the room was pleasant, the room was clean, the exhibit was intact and it didn’t take effort to understand how it fit into the motif of the museum.

The Racing Cars were a bit of a disappointment again. Behind the glass, some were wrapped in plastic. Many were very dusty; inches thick dust. By this time I’d started to wonder if the museum had experienced a water leak but the rooms we were in that were ‘incomplete’ were spread out enough that this seemed unlikely. It’s possible that they were just remodeling a number of things at once but, you know, it really didn’t look good.

Growing slightly annoyed with all this, we headed back upstairs and then visited the balcony where we could walk through one of the planes hanging from the ceiling. The balcony ended up being less busy than anywhere else we’d been in awhile so we could let Kara run around a little, hopefully to burn off some energy. It kinda worked.

Finally, it was almost ‘that’ time. We headed back downstairs, some of us visited the bathroom one more time and we were in line. ‘Star Wars’ here we come!

The Adventure Continues... Lunchie Munchies

When the museum was designed, those designers seem to have understood that they would have crowds. The walkways are large and easy to traverse. There is plenty of seating spread out for the Food Court. The Food Court itself… well, there’s a Circus exhibit down the hall that must have been based on the Food Court.

There’s plenty of variety, which is nice, at prices that are not unexpected for a location like this (my sandwich, bag of chips, brownie and juice ran me almost $11) but it’s all about standing in lines again. We scouted the location, found tables at which to sit, George took orders from his family and scurried off to stand in line.

Now, the first problem was that we grabbed two smaller tables next to each other as there were no large tables available. Amy was set to take Kara to the bathroom so I would stay behind with the boys. In order to hold both tables we needed to have someone sitting at both. Since there were three of us, one of us would be ‘alone’. From the way we happened to sit down, Jason took on this duty and immediately wanted to dismiss it. I couldn’t blame him as all he wanted to do was sit with us and not be stranded off to the side. Before I could suggest he just sit at the other table but closer to myself and Niko, there was some yelling and tears. We survived.

Soon enough Amy and Kara were back. Somehow we sort of distracted the children while we waited for George. And waited. And waited. It wasn’t his fault as the place was busy but it felt like he was gone forever. Niko entertained us with Pretzel Wars, naming his miniature pretzel as if they were wrestlers, having them fight and then eating the loser.

George appeared with most of the lunch and went back to get into different lines to wait some more. I dove in with him. I walked around for a moment, found that there was an area in the center of the room with pre-made sandwiches and thought ‘to heck with these lines’. The down side to all this was that I didn’t grab the sandwich I wanted. Somehow I must have picked from the wrong pile. The upside was that I saved George from standing in one line as they had the sandwich Jason wanted available in pre-made form. The sandwich wasn’t bad. Actually, for not being what I wanted, it was quite good. Not sure if it was worth $6 though.

After all the fighting to get lunch, actually eating it was anti-climatic in comparison.

The Adventure Starts to Stand Around...

The main lobby that we’d seen primarily existed to hold three things: the Burlington Zephyr (a train, a huge real train!), the gift shop and the ticket counter. Since we already had tickets for the museum, we didn’t need to stand in any of these lines. We could line up for the entrance to the museum proper, an entrance that was two floors up. So, we dropped two floors exiting the parking structure and climbed them back up again to get inside. Weird but, what are you going to do?

After riding the elevator up, we lined up briefly to have our tickets looked at to prove we’d paid. To prove we’d been checked, one employee ripped my printed ticket ever so slightly. I thought this weird, especially since I then had to stop at a nearby desk to have it date stamped. I think this was due to our entry into the special exhibit but the reasons weren’t explained and it just seemed confused. Luckily the process didn’t take long and we were finally inside!

We headed up yet another level and were in the large rotunda area on the main floor. It was decorated with Christmas trees of the world and was all bright and shiny. As we wandered into the centre of the area the Star Wars exhibit quickly came into view on the right. To our left was the transportation area with another real train, model trains and real planes hanging from the ceiling. This was also the location of the ‘Millennium Falcon’ ride. We lined up for this. I quickly decided that sitting for the better part of three hours and then standing for a prolonged period of time was not a good choice. Luckily I was asked to check on the length of the line and any cost associated with the ride so I got to take a little stroll. As it turns out, the ride was free but we were lining up to get tickets for the ride, not actually ride it. We scheduled our trip for 17:00, far later than we expected to stay but, as we didn’t know how long it would take us to go through the exhibit, we scheduled it to give us as much time as possible.

Finally we were freed from the lines and only had to deal with the crowds. The transportation exhibit was investigated before heading through Enterprise, ToyMaker 3000 and Petroleum Planet. Finally freed of all the sitting and standing, the children started to run wild. I couldn’t blame them really as I wanted to stretch my legs a bit as well but this meant we really didn’t look at anything. We looked and chased and played a bit.

Exiting Petroleum Planet we passed the Coal Mine ride. The boys were instantly interested. Even after a visit to Yesterday’s Main Street they were interested in the Coal Mine. The announced wait for the Coal Mine was a half-hour. This didn’t dismiss their interest. While it felt like we’d barely started walking, we were apparently ready to line up again.

Another half-hour or so of waiting was not easy on the children. They grew itchy. Kara especially grew bored by this standing around. Once we reached the ride, she was well and truly bored and wanted to play. None of us had ever been on the Coal Mine ride before so we no clue what to expect. As it turns out, it was less of a ride than a guided tour of an exhibit with some riding involved. Keeping Kara quiet proved impossible and keeping her contained slightly less impossible. Somehow, between us, she managed to entertain herself and stay somewhat non-disruptive.

The ride exited down on the Ground Floor, right by the Food Court. 13:00: time for lunch.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones with that idea.

The Adventure Continues... Arrival

Things started out well on Saturday morning. George wanted to get started at 8 in the morning. Like a fool I stayed up late knowing I had to get up early but made it to the Compound 1.5 right on time. A couple minutes later we were on the road, all the way up to the Krispy Kreme a couple blocks away. After fueling up on coffee and donuts, we were on our way.

Once we made it to Gurnee Mills (not all that far inside Illinois comparatively speaking), we stopped at the Toys ‘R Us. We needed pullups for the youngest, Kara, as well as needing a stretch of the legs and a trip to the bathroom. We had a look at the toys as well but nothing caught our eye. After this break stop, we were on our way again.

We didn’t stop again until we got to the museum. We didn’t get lost or anything. Our parking ticket stated that we arrived at 10:47. It was a long trip but it could have been worse. The traffic hadn’t been awful and the children had remained distracted. We were there!

The parking structure was three underground levels. We parked in-between the first and second levels. We walked up towards the entryway on the first level. When we entered the museum, we realized this was backwards. The primary entry area was on level three. So, by walking upstairs, we only made ourselves need to take an elevator downstairs again. As we figured this out, we saw Star Wars characters walking through the lobby.

Excitedly we hurried the elevator into getting us downstairs before they got away. George got the camera out and the boys lined up for pictures. C3PO was there and Darth Vadar, Boba Fett, Stormtroopers and Rebel Pilots. It was a nice turn-out of ‘professional’ fans; the sort of people that regularly dress up like this at conventions and such so that they have the costumes and experience to volunteer for things like this. They did a good job of staying in character, especially C3PO.

After getting to meet C3PO, Niko imparted a great truth to me. “They are real robots you know, C3PO and R2D2,” he said, his face completely serious. “I could really tell when I was standing next to him.” Now Niko is 8. He seems to have almost figured out the truth behind Santa Claus this recent Christmas and yet he believes in the droids. I couldn’t tell him otherwise. I started talking to him about droid maintenance. That seemed to work.

The Adventure Begins...

Every good adventure has a background. This is the background of Saturday’s adventure.

On the last Friday at work before Christmas, my phone buzzed with a text message. It was Amy, George’s wife. This was a rare but not impossible occasion so I was curious indeed. She wrote to mention that she’d just ordered tickets to go to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. They had a Star Wars exhibit that was running until early January and she’d gotten tickets for the last Saturday that the exhibit was open. A moment too late she’d considered that I might want to go along as well. Did I?

Despite the fact that I’m not a Star Wars fan, I wanted to go. Watching George’s reaction inside would be worth the trip. Besides, I hadn’t been to that Museum in… far too long. In general, the Museum would be fun.

It is not uncommon for me to go on otherwise family trips with the Gentekis clan. This is especially true now that there are three children. This way the children don’t outnumber the adults. That helps more than you’d think. It’s not a deliberate part of the decision making process when I’m invited to come along but it’s a good reason all the same.

One problem with this situation is that Amy had accidentally double-booked herself. She had plans to go to Delavan (a small town about an hour west of Milwaukee) that night. Since our tickets for the Star Wars exhibit were for 15:00, we would have to run from the Museum right to Delavan in order to get her there in time. George’s excellent driving skills would easily get her there.

Of course, the biggest problem with the whole concept of going to the Museum of Science and Industry is that it would involve going to Chicago. Nothing good comes from Illinois. Not literally of course but, you know, they suck. It’s a good-natured distaste of our Mid-West ‘brothers’. It’s good-natured until you go there anyway.

There’s nothing quite like going to Illinois to make you never want to go there again.