What a great america

This Saturday, we celebrated dead military men and women by going to an amusement park, namely Great America. I thought the name was appropriate for the occasion.

We lucked out on pretty much every aspect of the trip, the weather was warm, but not hot. The rain didn't start until we were on the last coaster of the day.

Here's a shot of us on Batman with Leigh (left) and Kim (far left).

The last amusement park I went to was Cedar Point. It was really nice not to have to drive three hours each way to get to Great America.

Can't you see the excitement on their faces? Marisa, Meg and Matt

We left at about 5:30 or so and had enough time to BBQ at one of the new condo buildings in Evanston. The BBQ was a good time, even though we got kicked out of the patio for being too loud at 11:30 PM. Even so, we moved everything into the apartment and continued for a while.

Jen and some friends post-grilling.

On Sunday, we saw Jamie and Evan at the Sullivan Estate. It was hot. Real hot. The little girl to hot girl ratio at the pool was not what some of us would have wanted. But we made it through and managed to only steal one item from someone else's pool things (when do you want the sun tan oil, Jamie?)

Overall, it was a good weekend to remember those fallen in combat.

last day of freedom

Sunday was my last real day of freedom for 10 weeks. I have this big orange schedule from the folks at BarBri that tells me exactly what I need to be studying every day for the next 10 weeks except for Memorial Day and the 4th of July. No weekends off, nothing. GAH. I'm going to be a pasty, poor excuse for a human at the end of this, but at least I'll finally know all the stuff they were trying to teach me in law school.
Anyway, instead of going to my graduation ceremony, I decided that I would rather do this:







Run (well, walk) the Bay to Breakers in my cap and gown (well, a cap and gown anyway -- it was my cap and gown from high school). El Frijole, some other friends and I joined the tortilla flinging masses at the start and headed across the city early on Sunday morning. There were so many people that the professionals finished the 7 mile race before we had even made it across the start line.

So, here are some of the sights from the race:

The rooftop Elvi.














Julia cooling off around mile 3.5.












The walking kiddie pool.









A superhero doing a keg stand in a thong. I think I saw more keg stands during the race than I did in my entire time at NU.










The obligatory protesters. Loook carefully at what they are protesting. They had some great signs.








And finally, this is where we veered off course and left for breakfast...

Spring for a day

This Saturday was too good to pass up being outside.
While Liz was getting graduated, we were on the lakefill, kicking the cobwebs off of our bikes.

It was a great day to be out, and there were definitely a lot of people out. Do you guys remember this scene?

You can see all the people (little colored specs) walking, running, biking, jogging, skating and galavanting down the lakeshore.

And speaking of things I hadn't seen in a while, I was able to go paparazzi-style and capture this shot of a certain Mr. A. Moses, hours before the alleged drinking-enduced text messaging fiasco. He's in the green sweatshirt.
Too bad the weather didn't hold up all weekend. Sunday was down-right frigid. We were at Clark St. beach for a BBQ from 5-7 PM. Other than being visited by a Park Ranger who threatened us with a $750 fine for two coolers full of beer, we were also visited by a consistent wind and cloud cover. It took Jen's feet three hours to get back up to normal temperature.

Outside Context 172nd Post Celebration!

I hoped that would get everyone's attention. Can you believe we've had almost 172 posts?

I'm back from a whirlwind weekend back home in Texas. My stepsister graduated from Trinity University with her masters degree in elementary bilingual special education, which makes her an extremely lucrative commodity in the state of Texas. The day she graduated, she was also hired by the San Antonio Independent School District, so she'll be staying in the Alamo City for the foreseeable.

My weekend began with a night of crazy drinking with coworkers on Thursday. It started out as "happy hour," and ended when someone looked at his watch and realized it was almost 10:00pm and we all had work the next day. I spent Friday morning crawling around my apartment, alternating between vomiting, moaning, trying to pack for my trip, attempting to drink Gatorade, and vomiting again. This was a Force Ten hangover, the likes of which I have seriously not seen since college.

Eventually I went to work, then to O'Hare, then to Texas. I landed at 5pm, and at 9pm we left to drive to San Antonio, where we arrived at 2am the following day. Ever driven 250 miles with a raging hangover while your mother and younger sister sang along to the music on the radio?

San Antonio was really nice though - lots of sun and quality family time. I managed to get thoroughly broiled at the hotel pool, so I've spent the last two days smearing cocoa butter on myself. Now I smell like the crowd at a Luther Vandross concert, but at least I won't peel.

The Derby

Last weekend, we went to the Derby in Louisville with some friends from Kellogg. We stayed with our friend Amit, who also went to NU undergrad. It was a crazy weekend! We left Evanston on Friday early afternoon and caravaned to Louisville. We got to Louisville and spent the night hanging out at Fourth Street Live. It's this two or three block stretch of 4th St in downtown Louisville that has clubs, bars and general mayhem. It all spills out onto the street and there were drunk people milling around everywhere! Neon lights and the bars open until 6 am. It was like Kentucky Vegas.















Saturday we got up after very little sleep to head to the Derby. Before the Derby, Amit's
sister made us a great breakfast, complete with Juleps and Mimosas. Then we headed to Churchill Downs, which looks just like it does on TV :)















Turns out the Derby is the 10th of 12 races held on Derby Day. We hung out and drank, Lollapalooza style, in the infield. The infield is a raucous party inside the actual race track. We were encircled by the horses racing. It was fantastic. During the 8th race, I got up the nerve to bet on a couple of horse races. I picked the winner of race 9, winning 15 bucks. For the big race, Andrik put down two small bets and I put down three bets (one split with Yeh). The biggest bet, the one with Yeh, was for the winner! We pulled in 60 big ones for that one. Almost definitely a stroke of beginners luck, but it felt fantastic! Andrik got some good pictures of the derby horses racing, like this one.
















The trip was exhausting, but well worth it! I don't think I'd go back to the Derby, but it's something everyone should do once :)

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana

Or: It's about damn time, v2.0

As of approximately 4:30 PDT this afternoon, you will all know one less law student.

Be happy about this. I sure as hell am. :)

Wildflower weekend

There was no derby-ing for us this weekend, but we did go to the races... we went here, to the second largest triathlon in the US. We camped with my tri club at the Lake San Antonio campground, the most ginormous campground I have ever seen. There was a half-iron man race on Saturday, and I did the Olympic distance race on Sunday.


This is my swim wave starting the race. I'm way over on the left somewhere in the wetsuit and yellow cap.






This is the start of the bike, right before "Lynch Hill" - one mile, straight up. We were lucky to get such great conditions for the races: perfect blue skies and sun, but not too hot. And the hills are all still green from the torrential rains this year.


The run course goes through the campground on trails and roads. Stunning, but super hard. On the backside of the course, there is a 2.5 mile hill that kills.



Wildflower is the collegiate national championship race, so tons of college students treat it like a weekend long Dillo Day. In addition to the topless water stop on the Half-Ironman run, the Cal Poly students traditionally take a nice jog around the campground in support of the athletes.

playing the ponies

so, we're headed to the derby for the weekend. yes, the kentucky derby. someone else do something fun this weekend and we'll compare notes when we return :)