On August 26, 2000, I departed for a week-long business trip in Chicago.  While in Chicago, I stayed at the Palmer House Hilton, a very old, very famous, very nice hotel right downtown, within 15 minutes of where I was working for the week.  Mom had called it luxurious, and I suppose it was, but in a very old-fashioned way.  I had a small room with one full-sized bed, very clean and comfortable, definitely with the feel of an older building.  Very comfortable, actually.

I got to the hotel about 4:30, after getting up very early to catch a 9 AM plane out of SFO, so I got settled and went in search of dinner.  I noticed a lot of rib places, which I never really thought of as Chicago cuisine, but I guess with all the stockyards, it makes sense.  Anyhow, that night I was in the mood for just plain old basic American food, so I found a little coffee shop type place, with a rather pretentious name but a modest front--B&B, Beef and Brandy--where I had a French dip sandwich.  Lots of locals and a few tourists.  The food was inexpensive, generous portions, not fabulous but perfectly edible, and it hit the spot.  Then I went back to the hotel and watched the end of Miss Teen USA.

Sunday I met Mary, one of my co-workers in Chicago for an Architecture River Cruise.  It was really interesting, but I can’t begin to remember everything about it.  Mostly we saw buildings by the famous members of the Chicago School of Architecture like Daniel Birnham, who had this whole Chicago plan including lots of open promenades and “pocket parks” by the river and Milo Van Dross (whose name I think I just completely butchered).  A lot of the architecture was modern, which I really don’t like, although some modern style buildings, such as the Bank of America Building in SF and the PPG building in Pittsburgh, are kind of cool (of course, the PPG building is cool because yes, it’s a steel and glass monstrosity, but PPG is all about steel and glass.  Glass at least).  There were a couple of modern apartment buildings that were cylindrical and scalloped that were kind of cool.  And I really love the Chicago Tribune building, which is neoclassical.  I like that style, I’ve decided.

After the cruise we walked down to Navy Pier, which used to be a Navy training ground, but now is kind of like a cross between Faneuil Hall in Boston and one of the boardwalks on the Jersey shore.  They had a nifty stained glass exhibit, which included some modern pieces by Chicago artists as well as some 18th and 19th century pieces.  Navy Pier is also the site of the Chicago Children’s Museum, which Mary and I decided to visit.

The very first thing you notice when you go into the Children’s Museum is a plaster cow, painted, and with castle walls erected on top, with paper flowers in the turrets.  This is apparently a remnant of a project from the previous summer, when someone of some influence went abroad and noticed these white plaster cows, painted and decorated, all over the place.  So 300 cows were donated to prominent Chicago businesses and institutions, decorated, and displayed.  Bank of America got one, but apparently they were very boring and just depicted Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.  You’d think they could have made a Piggy Cow out of it at least.  The Tribune turned theirs into a working newspaper dispenser.  And I guess the Children’s Museum made a combination castle/planter out of theirs.

The feature exhibit at the Children’s Museum was Mr. Rogers.  They had a pair of shoes, some sweaters, a King Friday puppet, an alphabet wall with things like “H is for Henrietta (the cat puppet—my favorite!)”, and a timeline of Mr. Rogers through the years.  It was really neat.  Other exhibits I particularly remember include a water room where you got to experiment with various means of moving water—there was a water wheel, and a pump, and model locks you can fill and open which were just too cool.  The other really cool exhibit was a fossil exhibit of a reptile-like critter that had been recently found, and I guess the Children’s museum had the rights to it.  The exhibit was really impressive.  They had a model of the skeleton, a comparison of the prehistoric critter with a crocodilian (because it was essentially a prehistoric crocodilian), an exhibit showing all the types of food and equipment you’d need on a dig, and a model dig where you could go unearth mock fossils (okay, that part wasn’t very realistic—just kids grubbing in sand, but a lot of fun!).

After that, Mary gave me instructions on how to get to the building whre I'd be and went home, and I took a walk to check it out.  It’s located right across the street from the Chicago Board of Trade, on the site where a railroad convention over a hundred years ago decided to institute the standard time zone system in the US.  Apparently there wasn’t such a system before then, and it was a real mess trying to do schedules.  The Federal Government adopted the system from the railroads a few years later.  Fascinating.  And another famous building, the Rookery, which is a dark, brooding building, but kind of interesting, is right next door.  The building I was in is very handsome, lots of columns and everything.

For dinner I ate in the hotel restaurant the Big Downtown which had kind of a jazz theme in decoration and played Sinatra music, like most tourist places in Chicago (if it’s not a Sinatra song, then it’s a Sinatra sound-alike singing).  I met a woman from Louisiana in town for a health conference at the hotel, so we shared a table and chatted.  Like most hotel restaurants, it was outrageously expensive ($15 for soup and salad), but that’s the beauty of expense accounts.

Monday I went to work and got to meet the people who previously had been nothing more than voices on the phone.  At lunch Mary (yes, Mary took me under her wing) and I went to the observation deck of the Sears Tower.  It was a hazy day, so we couldn’t see that far, but we got to see Wrigley Field, and Soldier Field, and Chomsky field (which I just butchered—where the White Sox play, anyway).  And we got to hear the obligatory canned Sinatra music.  The elevator is cute—it’s got one of those narratives where it fakes a crash out of the system and you get an aerial view on its monitor as if you’re flying above the city.  And it’s impressive how quickly you can go up 100+ floors.

Monday Sue, my manager, and I went to dinner at Burghoff’s, which is a famous Chicago restaurant.  It’s German food, and I’m realizing more and more I’m just not that fond of German food.  I don’t tend to like the sauces.  Still, she’s interesting company.  She grew up around Chicago (pretty much all the folk I was working with did, which was really interesting to me—I mean, I’m close to home now, but I was a transplant for many years), and we chatted about her husband.

Tuesday at lunch Mary and I went to the Chicago Board of Trade and tried to figure out options trading.  Even with all the computers and stuff, it really is a chaotic blur.  You have these big display screens, like at a baseball field, listing trades and prices, and all these pits where different commodities are being traded, and sometime the pits are very quiet, but then an auction will get going and it will get really frenetic until it’s resolved, and then quiet down again.  And there really are scraps of paper all over the floor.  Apparently, when a deal is complete, they rip off the piece of paper and throw it down to signify the deal is done.  I don’t see how they keep track of it all.

What impressed me most is the color.  Traders represent different firms, and each firm is identified by a unique blazer.  So you start out with navy, and maroon, and red, and work your way through solid colors, but you’re still not anywhere near out of firms, so then you get things like blue and cream Hawaiian print.  Really.  So it’s just an intense visual experience to see, and neat even if, like me, you don’t understand any of it and are just letting it swirl in front of your eyes.

Tuesday night Peggy, Jim (two more people I worked with that week) and I went to an Italian restaurant where they’ve attached a Pullman car to the restaurant.  We got to eat in the Pullman car.  It was pretty cool.  Then, on the way back to my hotel, Peggy and Jim pointed out the prison and the library.  The library is a handsome brick building with what’s called the Winter Garden on the top, with a glass wall looking out.  Neat.

Wednesday Mary and I went to The Billy Goat for “cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers”.  The Billy Goat is another Chicago staple.  It was good.

Wednesday night we had a girls’ night and Mary, Darlene,  and Peggy from work and I went to a Mexican restaurant on the second or third floor of the Sears Tower.  We had these really good margaritas, and it was fun just to hang out and be silly.  We talked about Celtic music and Peggy’s upcoming trip to Ireland.  Jealousy.

Thursday night Jay (yet another co-worker), Peggy, Mary, Jim and I went to a bar and grill, which was loud, but fun.  I had a really good bruschetta and mozzarella sticks.  I hadn’t had mozzarella sticks in a while and was going through withdrawal.

Friday I worked until 4 and rode a train out to the airport (I’m not sure if you could really say I rode the El—it was elevated in parts, does that count?).  There were storms in San Francisco and things were delayed, and no one knew what was going on, so I’m running all over the airport trying to get on a plane.  But I ended up only about an hour delayed over all, and got home just in time to do it all over again.  But that’s another story.