Melissa and I have been in Chicago for a year now and have so far lived in Oak Park, which is just west of the city. As nice a community as it is, we’ve sort of felt like we’ve just been visiting this whole year while all the action was going on in the city. Well all of that’s about to change tomorrow when we move to the west loop (western edge of downtown). And in strict accordance with our established streak of luck, out of the blue they are expecting up to 8 inches of snow! Great! Luckily Chicago doesn’t seem to slow down much for any sort of weather. But in between the time we really should have been packing I somehow managed to have a few pleasant distractions.
On a train in the early morning I spotted a post it note reminding the world what we should be working towards.
Our good friend Archie introduced us to Gustav and Sara who are getting married in May. They were so easy to talk to that we all forgot to even talk about weddings until after dinner. We are super excited to cover their day!
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Chicago is a big deal. And the parade itself is always preceded by the “greening of the river.” Now the Chicago river is always green anyhow, but in order to make it the bright emerald green they use some sort of orange vegetable dye concoction. I guess originally the dye was oil based and used to detect leaks. Apparently when they decided to use the dye in celebration of St. Patrick’s day for the first time they used 100 pounds of dye and the river stayed that bright green for over a week. There has been some trial and error over the years, and some environmental concerns (which caused them to switch to the vegetable dye), but now it dissipates within a few hours. After which of course there is a mad scramble to get over to the parade route for a spot.
And boy do they ever parade… the amount of participants in the parade is staggering! Eventually we had to call it quits and go get something to eat and I’m fairly certain we had only seen one half of the thing.
And finally I thought I’d make mention of my friend Melanie, who I had a little photo session with in the middle of last week. I’m still getting the hang of the new D3, but I am thrilled with the results it’s producing!
- Josh
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