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Maybe you've been wondering where we've been lately. The entries have been pretty sparce. In short, we took a trip to Chicago! It was fun. On Friday March 17th, I flew up to Chicago for the annual meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) to present a poster. And since she didn't have too much going on during that weekend, Erika came too. Check out all the pictures we took, there are over 200. I've put several entries below as a daily breakdown of our trip.
I checked out of the Allerton hotel, rode the bus to the conference and checked my luggage so I could walk around. This was the combined ORS/AAOS day, so the convention center was really hopping. The ORS conference is pretty big, but AAOS really dwarfs it by comparison. One cool thing about AAOS is they have companies come in to put together fancy booths for what's basically a trade show. I walked around and saw new versions of hip and knee implants, lots of operations on video, tons of medical products, full clinical MRI and fluoroscopy machines, and even some decorative doctors' office sculptures for sale. There were a -lot- of companies there, and many of them must have spent a mint to put together their booths and displays. I think things like this are one reason hospital operations are so expensive. Just imagine what it costs to truck an MRI machine all across the country.
I left the conference and walked a few blocks west to Chinatown for lunch. On the way I saw two men working with a small white remote control blimp. I think they may have been using it to take aerial pictures around a construction site.
Chinatown was pretty cool. There were lots of little shops and places to eat. After making a smal loop, I settled on a place to eat and the food and service were great. I picked up a couple things for Erika and headed back to the conference.
Soon it was time to leave, so I picked up my bags and took a taxi to the airport. Midway looks small compared to O'Hare, but both of them are much larger than RDU in Raleigh. So I flew on Southwest airlines, a short note on them. They don't assign specific seats like most airlines do. Instead, they give you a letter code: A,, B or C. Once you get to the gate, make sure to line up next to your letter code. The sooner you print your boarding pass online, the better letter code you get. Code A passengers get to board first, so they can pick out the best seats. Poor folks in C who are travelling together might have to sit apart. Luckily I'd printed my pass soon enough to get an A boarding pass and I grabbed an exit row seat. Overall it was a great trip. Check out Chicago if you ever get a chance.
Tuesday was windy and bitter cold. The news said the wind chill made it feel like negative 15. I was cold. Apparently it was also a municipal election day, and the media was concerned the cold would reduce voter turn-out. I thought Chicago natives would be used to the weather! I spent most of the day at the ORS conference, then I met up with my professor, Elizabeth Loboa, and her friend Elise for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. When we got there we met with Al Banes and his wife Beth. Dinner was good, but we had a wait a while to get a table. The AAOS conference was starting the next day and so there were orthopaedic surgeons everywhere.
Monday I spent nearly all day at the ORS conference in meeting sessions. Lots of interesting talks. I had lunch at the Mall from yesterday and I had dinner with prof. Peter Mente and a friend at Gino's Pizzeria. This was an old favorite of the pair when they both lived in Chicago. The pizza was good, lots of sauce. An interesting thing about the restaurant is they ask people to write on the walls. So there were names and phrases written pretty much everywhere people could reach.
Sunday morning I spent at the ORS conference in the McCormick Place while Erika explored the city a bit. We met up back at the hotel and then crossed Michgan Ave to the "Mall" which was pretty interesting. Since real estate is at such a premium in the city, the designers created an 8-story vertical mall, with a food court on top. We ate at a Japanese fast food place, then I had to head back to the conference.
A little later, Erika caught the bus to the conference and we met up for the poster reception. We ran into a few friends including my old professor from UTK, Mehran Kasra. Then I stood by my poster answering questions for a while and Erika headed to the airport to fly home. After the poster session I took the bus back to the hotel and crashed.
We got up and checked out of the Best Western - I'd be in a different hotel for the rest of the trip. I had to run over to UIC on the west side of town for a morning biomedical symposium. To get there, I walked a few blocks north and caught the Blue Line subway train, then walked a bit south. While I was in the meetings, Erika got to explore the city a bit. She braved the wind chill on the lake front and took a few pictures like this lighthouse.
Next Erika and I met up for lunch and sight-seeing. We grabbed a quick bite at Potbelly Sandwiches and walked up to the Chicago Public Library. It was beautiful - inside and out. I was very impressed, and Erika loves all libraries.
From the CPL, we walked a few blocks to the Sears Tower. This was something I had to see while in Chicago. It's one of the only things I knew about the city before getting there, and I love tall buildings. It was something like $13 each to wait in line for a long time, then see a 12-minute History Channel film before riding an elevator to the "skydeck" atop the building.
After the Sears Tower, I had to go hang my poster at the McCormick Place convention center. I chose to walk there and it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected. After being asked for money from people on the street two or three times, I got there and hung the poster and registered with the conference. On the way back I took a taxi and we moved our bags to the Allerton Crowne Plaza hotel and checked in. While we were in the room, we saw a parade of police and other city vehicles driving south on Michigan Ave. Later we learned this was part of an anti-war march.
Then we met up with two good friends who'd driven up from Urbana-Champaign to see us. We walked around the city a bit, looking for a good place to eat. Finally we came to Pizzeria Due, just down the street from Pizzeria Uno. Two places so close must be pretty good, right? The food was great. We split a large barbeque chicken deep-dish pizza. Then, after a few drinks we said goodbye to our friends and called it a day.
We flew into Midway airport around 5pm and took the Orange Line elevated train to the Roosevelt station close to the Best Western hotel we'd stay in that night. After checking in, we walked around to explore a bit and find dinner. The Sears Tower's white antennae were lit with green lights for St Patrick's Day - unfortunately I hadn't taken the camera on the walk. Erika really wanted to get a green beer in celebration of the holiday, but we couldn't find a bar that wasn't scary. Eventually we found Ronny's Original Steakhouse, near the corner of Randolph and Clark, and stopped in for some thick "Chicago Style" pizza. The food was great - I'd recommend it. Tired and getting late, we called it a day.
Hooray! This is the aforementioned microwave we ordered. I picked it up from Lowes yesterday evening - which was an experience in itself, and installed it last night. While waiting about 25 minutes for someone to bring the microwave to me, I noticed Lowes has a "customer service" sign in 5 languages: English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Russian. I'm guessing on those last two, since I'm not a linguist. So finally, "John the loader" was able to wheel the microwave up to the front, and I sign my name and I'm off.
The old microwave was a pain in the butt to remove. It has an interesting/annoying design. There were no markings or manuals to help, but apparently I had to remove certain key screws from around and under the old microwave to let it slide forward and out of its mounting cage - which was also the outer shell of the unit. Once this was out, I was able to remove the screws from the inside of the cage and remove it from the cabniet. It was a mess. when it was finally out I saw some really old wallpaper.
Installing the new one was much easier. First you draw a vertical centerline on the wall in the opening, then attach the mounting plate to the back wall. Luckily the studs were easy to access. Next drill two holes in the upper cabinet and lift the new microwave into place. The mounting plate holds most of the weight of the microwave, and the top screws keep it in place.
I think it looks great.
So one of our goals for the house has been to update several of the kitchen appliances. The old ones were original to the house, circa 1980s. The old oven still worked, but we've never been happy with it. We both liked the flat-top style, and Erika loves the new stainless steel finish that's pretty popular now. So we found a pretty good deal on this one last weekend at Best Buy. They delivered it Monday morning as promised, and they made the top level at Erika's request. However, the delivery guys didn't raise it up to the counter height, and they didn't position the power cord to let it be pushed back all the way. Thankfully, all that's pretty easy to do and I was able to take care of it myself. There's a screw leg on each corner to adjust the height. So far we like it, and it passes the cookie-baking test. We also ordered a matching microwave from Lowes and it should be here later in the week.
I saw this little guy running across the floor at night, so I caught him long enough to take a picture. I found a pretty cool spider image website with pictures people have sent in from all over the place. So apparently, this is a Wolf spider. They like to come out at night to prowl around and catch insects, but they usually don't build webs. They're not supposed to be dangerous to people and are considered beneficial. After the photo shoot I turned him loose in the back yard.
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