Yesterday the college chum and I went down to the Shedd Aquarium to look at some dolphins and lizards and other such things. This was, lucky for us, free due to the boyfriend's being employed at the aquarium. We got off at the Roosevelt red line stop and walked the two or three blocks to the museum campus. A muggy day indeed.
There is a special lizard exhibit at the aquarium right now and so these sad sacks had to stand in line inside the gizzard of a lizard. We, on the other hand, had will call and things went much faster (kind of...except they didn't have our name so then we had to find the boyfriend and have him vouch for us).
In the main lobby they have these great light fixtures, complete with nautical illustrations.
Once we found the boyfriend and got our tickets we then had a quick lunch with the boyfriend. Lunch was served c/o the nearby hot dog stand.
The boyfriend showed us the community garden and its outstanding looking kale...or was it Swiss Chard?
The college chum and I watched the dolphin show. It's pretty damn hard to take a photograph of dolphins jumping out of the water...since, you know, they start under water so you don't know they're going to jump until they're already in the air.


For the last few days, everywhere in the city, fighter planes have been making dives into buildings and loud noises. This is because there's an airshow this weekend (today probably) and they've been practicing. I can't help but have a very teenagery thought about this. Mainly that: it's kind of messed up that the only time we, the American people, see fighter planes going overhead we're supposed to clap and ooh and ahh. Whereas most other places in the world when people see fighter planes overhead they scream and run for cover. They are really freakin' loud.

Shedd Aquarium

As a human being I am amazed by the wonders of the sea...how evolution has ended up with neon colored fish and crabs roughly the size of Cyprus. Whenever I go to an aquarium I go first as a human being and second as a fish eater...and that second role I play allows me-rather paradoxically-to think about how good many of the fish displayed would be, in my belly. For example these huge crabs.
I don't think I made it clear how big these crabs are...they're really friggin big, like the size of small televisions...with legs and claws and tiny little eyeballs.
Pretty.
These turtles were cute. Here's why. One of these two small turtles kept swimming after one of the larger ones, trying to hug it and love it and say hello (personification obviously) but the big one would have none of it, sweeping its large claw through the water and batting the smaller guy away. Then another small one came up and they started doing this dance, front legs batting each other lightly while their heads bobbed in front of each other. God knows what this was really about but it was cute.