i've been on a bit of a whirlwind tour this past week.
i left the bay area last monday for NY, where i had a couple of days of meetings and was able to see ann for dinner (twice!) and andy for really fun cocktails at a place called elettaria (check out the cocktail menu here, and see if you can guess what i ordered).

i wasn't able to do much else before heading to chicago for more meetingsmeetingsmeetings. however, in chicago i got to have work-related fun, as a group of us went to a cubs game on wednesday night (cubs win!). it's so amazing to sit out in warm evening weather and watch the scene: crazypacked wrigley, rooftop parties adjacent to the park, and the green leafty neighborhoods all around the north side: heaven on a summer night!

thursday night i was lucky enough to see both some former co-workers and my brother-in-law kevin and his wife, whitney. we also hung out with them a bit on friday. i didn't realize that kevin & whitney hadn't been here together to visit us when we lived here. it was nice to just walk around with them: the city is so full of energy in the summer!

friday (as you know, if you read my last post), we drove up with kevin & whitney to madison. we went to celebrate silva & felipe's wedding (silva is kevin & steve's cousin) at the fabulous orpheum theatre, which is right downtown by the capitol. the event was pretty neat since the old theatre is full of ambiance, and silva & felipe had some really fun party ideas. they gave us all 3D glasses to wear and took group photos of us sporting them. they also staged a huge popcorn fight between their guests as another photo op (steve got me pretty good!). while i don't have those group photos (i'll try to remember to post a link when they are online), i did take quite a number of decent shots, which you can see on my flickr site, here.

on saturday we drove down to see my brother and his wife, who bought a house this spring in warrenville. their house is really nice and i can't believe how much decorating they've done. boy, steve and i are lazy! we hung out with them at an outdoor bar in naperville on saturday and then played wii (mario kart RULES!) and watched random things (mostly youtube!) on their mega-awesome media setup. sunday the four of us went to watch the horse races at arlington park. i am much better at picking winners than any of them, but i think everyone still had a pretty good time. it was gorgeous out, and we kept hearing people around us say "what a gorgeous day to be at the track" -- and we couldn't have agreed more.

sunday evening we stopped at hopleaf for beer and some snacks (yummy mussels and frites!) before parting ways with the newest mr. and mrs. pasky. the halls weren't quite ready to call it a night, so we took a nice long walk around downtown. we walked along the river, where they've put in a few more restaurants and bars, and then we walked down to millennium park, where we got a huge kick (as we always do) of watching kids play in the crown fountain. i'll admit that before it was finished, i thought the fountain was going to completely suck, but it's ridiculously awesome. there are always kids playing in it, going completely crazy when the fountain "spits". :)

today was workworkwork, but i had a nice dinner at an old favorite restaurant with a friend, while steve headed to las vegas. it sounds like he's partying up a storm tonight, going to see the musical love, and staying in a crazy-nice suite at the planet hollywood (cheesy, yes, but i guess the suite is awesome). i miss him, and i'm jealous of how fun that sounds, but i can't complain: i get another day in chicago tomorrow. hooray!

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on a completely different note, check this out: radiohead released a new video, made without cameras or lights. they used geometric informatics (which i *know* you're a huge fan of) and something called velodyne LIDAR. to quote from the site, "Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes." lasers! sweet!