The day was dark and damp as Anna and I, intrepid ADVENTURERS that we are, set out for "the big city". The trip to Chicago was essentially to join in the festivities of one Ms. Laura McClain as she celebrated her 24th birthday. It was to be a coming together of Madison people and Chicago people. Anna and I were eager to see what these windy-city-folk were all about. We're a new-age Lewis and Clark really, Anna and I. We go places to see what's there and what the people are like. Then we write about it.
Anyway, there is not much to be said for the drive down except that exceptional time was made and we listened to an unlistened-to mix CD given me by Mr. Brian Proball (what?). What, you ask, could possibly be on a CD made by BP for me? Excellent question. It was a query Anna and I were ready to explore. After the first 2 tracks, the general genre of the mix was abundantly clear. What we had was a bunch of that early 00's crappy dance music. Ya know the stuff with the canned beat and some breathy woman singing a cover of some song that was not supposed to be fast? That was infesting this disc. I guess this is the kind of music that stupid straights assume classy gays listen to. Not so. I can't recall them all but some highlights were, Boys of Summer, Dust in the Wind, and Unchained Melody. UM was by far our favorite because it was the absolute least expected song to hear remixed on a Brian Proball album. UM-dance remix was an instrumental selection in the "trance" tradition until the middle of the track when a breathy woman came in to say, "Un Chained Mel O Dee." We laughed.
Chicago was just as rainy as Wisconsin when we arrived and it stayed that way until we left. We met up with Laura and a couple of her high school friends as they finished dinner. We sat around her beautiful high-rise apartment for a little while catching up before piling into Matt's car for the drive to the bar. We meant to go to some classy wine bar but it was too packed so we spent the night in the adjoining sports-type place. We met all the windy-city-folk and laughed together at some rather unfortunate people. We also decided early on to name our nemeses so as to be ready for the all-too-eventual bar brawl. Anna picked an ugly woman whose hair had forgotten the progression of time. Her bangs, in the early 80's may not have seemed much but in '06, we thought they were the 8th wonder. How they stayed like that can not be known. We called her "waterfall-bangs" or something like that. I picked "Aspen Man" as my nemesis, mostly because I wanted to touch him and I figured that the easiest way was in the brawl. He had a white sweater on and white pants (I think). He had very chiseled features and looked flush from a day on the slopes. Bastard. There was also a very friendly guy who kept trying to touch our ladies. I had, at one point, to defend the honor of Laura's friend against gropey-man's advances. He understood us to be engaged so, he stopped touching her and then pinched my ass. He needed a beating! "We'll get him later in the brawl," we thought, but sadly the brawl was not to be. Instead we just continued talking and catching up with old friends (Nate and Nicole) and new (windy-city-folk) until the night was done.
I woke up the next morning and indeed woke Anna and Laura up as well by sneezing 231 times in quick succession. Such a feat has ne'er been done without the subsequent explosion of one's head. We proceeded on to brunch at a fantastic little place near Laura's place. I ate a lot, including some blueberry cheesecake flapjacks. Who knew such things even existed?
Post-brunch the day's real event started-a trip to the Field Museum. I had never been and the girls wanted to return so we walked over to gape at the treasures of yore. We looked at dinosaurs of course. We took a trip through the earth's history, complete with an in-depth look at the mass extinctions. I pumped a machine so we could hear the call of the brontosaurus. We looked at gems and jewels and at a recreated Egyptian tomb. 
There was a pond in there with some very suspicious tadpoles. We saw many stuffed animals (taxidermy like) and we sang a couple songs including an attempt at a barbershop version of The Bear Necessities while we looked at a bear exhibit. We learned about the benefits of sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual reproduction. We also made this movie which most of you probably already saw on Anna's blog: 
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