August was a fun month! We took two trips, one to Chicago, to attend the opening of a tapestry exhibit that included a work by Jackie’s tapestry instructor. There’s a post about that below, and a couple more about other things we did in Chicago. And I still have a couple more posts about the Chicago trip coming up!
The other trip was to Amherst to visit my brother and my mom. That was similarly a great trip. We spent a lot of time hanging out on my brother’s patio, where we chatted, did the Jumble, watched Cardinals baseball (and anime), and worked on our laptops. We also visited a boxer dog (and Steven’s elder son) pretty much every day. And we got to eat a yummy breakfast every day at the B&B we stayed at.
Tapestry exhibit and a hotel workout
Jackie and I are in Chicago for the weekend, staying in the Palmer House. We came to attend the opening of a tapestry exhibit at an art center in the West Loop, put on by the American Tapestry Association. The exhibit includes a piece by one of Jackie’s teachers, So Jackie particularly wanted to see it.
After a period where I was being a bit casual about them, for the past few months I’ve been doing pretty well at getting my workouts in, and I didn’t want to let that go, so I went to the fitness center here at the Palmer House. It’s pretty good!
I cranked through a slightly reduced version of my usual morning exercises, then went to the main room of the fitness center for the workout proper. They had an adequate set of kettlebells, so I did two exercises with those:
- With a 35 lb (16 kg) kettlebell I did 10 x 20 swings emom
- With a 20 lb (9 kg) kettlebell I did 4 x 5/5 clean&press reverse ladder
Then I found a barbell and loaded it up with a pair of 45 lb plates and did 2 x 5 deadlifts. I’m super out-of-practice with deadlifts, and would not have wanted to do more weight or more reps, but that much was okay.
Having done the tapestry thing, we’re looking to do some other Chicago stuff. Probably the Art Institute. Maybe one of the boat tours where they talk about the architecture. Maybe the Field Museum. Maybe something else! We’ll just see.
Unexpected Lollapalooza
We scheduled this trip to be here for the opening of the tapestry exhibit that includes work by Jackie’s teacher. We were completely unaware that Lollapalooza would be here this weekend as well.
I must say though, I’ve really enjoyed the sidewalk views of girls barely wearing party dresses and glitter. Particularly amusing are the girls unaccustomed to wearing such short skirts and shorts—detectable because they keep trying to tug the garment down, in a vain effort to cover their butt.
Five stars. Would attend again.
Personifications of allegorical figures
I have long been a big fan of allegorical figures, such as these two outside the Chicago Board of Trade.
My education in such things was slightly deficient. I mean, every educated person ought to be able to look at such a figure and identify it by the signifiers, the way nearly everybody can recognize Liberty and Justice. These two are only slightly more obscure, so I was able to identify them. (Especially in context—they are particularly appropriate for the Chicago Board of Trade, where commodities are traded.)
There are many more that I can’t reliably recognize—Fame, Victory, Hope, Time, etc. I’ve looked from time to time to find a nice compact reference with pictures and descriptions, and haven’t found exactly what I was looking for.
In any case, it was fun to see these two, just across the street from the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, where we had gone to visit the Money Museum—about which I hope to write a post soon.
