Chicago Metra comuter train schedule stuff

I’ve written a little web app to find the next four trains running between two stations on the Chicago Metra comuter train line.  I also loaded CalTrain, a little Blackberry application, with the lines I and a friend usually take (the application can’t handle a large set of data for some reason).

Cirque du Soleil’s Delirium

Here’s a link to the page from Cirque du Soleil in case you want to learn more about this show and to get tickets.

Aviva and I braved the cold (its just now getting above freezing here) to see the show last night. It was similar but different from the other shows we’ve seen.

This is touted as a multimedia event, and it is – it reminds me of what I’ve read and been told about (and experienced in later incarnations) for a multimedia event might be like in the 60’s, without the drugs (in our case at least). There was no tent this time (good thing since we had at least 8 inches of snow), the performance was held inside the United Center. There were large screens flanking the main stage, which cut the center in half – seating was only on one half, divided long-ways, of the Center.

We had our noses bleeding up in section 317 – we could see everything but it was small and way way up there! It was like sitting at an American football game high up in the stands – it was disorienting for Aviva and I because we don’t usually walk up and sit at such an incline.

The music was interesting, but at least two slow numbers sounded like bad French ballads; the uptempo rythmic tunes were very interesting and snappy. There were acrobats, but I would guess 4 – 5 performances, and they weren’t over the top or scary; these were mostly acts that had performed in other shows (or did the same act at least).

We were both glad we saw the show – I told Aviva I thought it was a Cirque du Soleil live music video!

As usual, here’s the ticket stub (we did ours on-line this time – worked great, no lines at will-call).

We had a good Saturday – new glasses and good Italian

I had my eyes checked a week ago Friday, so we started looking for new frames. I wanted smaller round frames because the lenses get too wide if the frames aren’t round, and the ones I have now hit my eye brows.

We went to Eye Want on Milwaukee and found just what I wanted – they have a great selection of frames, from conservative to radical.

Then, we ate dinner at Francesca’s Forno, a nice little Italian restaurant a short walk down the street – I highly recommend it, the wait staff was helpful and friendly but unobtrusive and the food was quite good.

Aviva’s brother came to visit

We had a great time I think. Friday I met up with Aviva and Brian at Room and Board, an upscale furniture shop. We had dinner at Opera , a really nice Chinese restaurant. We took Brian to Uncle Fun on Saturday – that’s a really
interesting shop that sells strange toys.

We went to the King Tut show after that, then decided to head south to show Brian Hyde Park.

But, we ran out of gas as we passed the Museum of Science and Industry. Eventually a cab stopped and took us to a nearby gas station where we could get a can and a gallon, put it in the car, filled up at the same station and just went to dinner at Luna Caprese , an Italian restaurant Aviva and I favor right now.

Went to see the new Cirque du Soleil show last night!

Aviva and I try to make the new Cirque du Soleil shows when they come to Chicago; we got hooked over six years
ago.

Corteo was a bit different – the acrobatics were a little less over the top, there was more dancing, the usual helping of
comedy (but perhaps a little less going out into the audience), and more music and show. There was a modern dance segment that had just enough physicality to fit in, and there was a playing of a Mozart piece on mouth whistle, violin and glass orchestra – the glass orchestra consisted of large glass bowls that could be struck or made to sing with wood mallets run around the rim, and a fellow that played crystal glasses filled with water, the water level setting the pitch (this reminded me of my youth – my father and I would occasionally test the crystal at a restaurant by wetting our fingers and running them lightly around the rim of the glass, the friction making the glass “sing” much like a violin
bow causes the string to vibrate – my mother hated when we did that!). The second half opened with a trampoline /
net that crossed the stage and people bouncing / walking across it – very neat.  That led into my favorite scene – above the stage, people were tossed between platforms as if it was a trapeze act, without the trapeze – very cool!

I’m glad we went – it was lots of fun as all their shows are. You can click here to go to the official web site for
Corteo.

My 47th birthday!

Yes, I’m a yankee doodle dandy, born on the 4th of July.

Had a quiet day yesterday, mostly finishing up and posting my travelogue for our Spanish trip. Then, we went out to dinner at a very nice Mexican restaurant, Salpicon. The food was really good and it was really loud and busy for a holiday.

Flowers in our garden

I wanted to post a couple of pictures from our garden. We planted a dogwood a while back – I’m from Virginia and its the state tree, you see them everywhere in Virginia. Anyway, its finally taking good root and bloomed:

And I made lots of trips to Amsterdam over the last year and a half and of course bought tulip bulbs. I really like the pointed tipped flowers with narrow base – these are closer to the original tulips found in central asia near the Caspian Sea. Anyway, here are some of the ones we grew:

Nathan’s visit and Spamalot

Nathan came in this weekend – he got here Friday night. Aviva was going to drive out with me to pick him up but she had saved a stray dog, she was in heat and in our yard, Basil was going nuts (even “fixed” (why do we say a dog is fixed when they’ve been neutered?) he still tried to hump the other dog), so she stayed home and waited for a friend that adopts out animals to come over and take the little dog away (we’re going to pay the dog’s vet bills and hopefully someone will adopt her (maybe we will after she’s fixed and done with her hormone thing)).

I picked Nathan up and we went to Woodfield Mall in Schaumberg, but amazingly we didn’t buy anything! Dinner was at a big restaurant named Ram – the food was very good. Then it was back home.

Saturday we got up and went shopping – I needed to return a KVM switch to Microcenter, so Nathan tagged along and we bought a few things. We ended up at Uncle Fun, one of our favorite places in Chicago. We went home, played video games (Nathan also showed me Half Life 2 – that’s a very cool game!), changed clothes and went out to dinner at
Ben Pao. The food there is good (a little sweeter than most Chinese I’ve had). Then Aviva dropped us by the Palace Theatre so we could see Spamalot. Spamalot is a musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The play was lots of fun!

Unfortunately, all fun things end and I took Nathan back to his mom Sunday morning so they could drive home.

Workplace mentoring

I’ve been helping students from Tilton Elementary School to read better for three years, participating in the WITS program via LaSalle Bank’s Workplace Mentoring program.  Here’s Davion:

Davion is a student at Tilton Elementary here in Chicago. The school is located on the west side in an economically
depressed part of town.

Davion is a good reader, and I’m glad I get to help him read better. I’m also glad that LaSalle Bank supports the Chicago Public School system, which includes programs like this. When I grew up, I was quite lucky – my school district, outside Washington, D.C., was one of the best in the country at the time. All school districts should be that good.

Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption

Aviva and I went to the “Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption” exhibit at the Field Museum. This was a very good exhibit (even if visting it on the Saturday after Thanksgiving may not have been good timing). It was very very busy – there was some crowd control but not too much, and the staff only spoke up if someone did something wrong, not giving much in the way of instructions.The exhibit itself was very interesting – there were two full rooms of frescoes and some smaller fragments included. There were at least three full sculptures, on in bronze the rest marbles. And there was the obligatory “volcanoes are dangerous, could this happen again” displays.