Monday, October 21, 2013

Fun Things I Saw This Weekend

A good week, followed by a great weekend.

First I went to Evanston for a Chicago Humanities Festival talk, the first of four I'll be going to. They had a lot of appealing stuff this year.

Walking from the train to the campus, I saw a new piece of sculpture on a rooftop.


It was a gorgeous day to walk around campus, and I saw this piece of art on my stroll.


I don't know the actual title, but I refer to it as Han Unfreezing. I sent a snapshot to Ben for his amusement.

The CHF talk was entitled, "A Neuroscientist and a Medievalist Walk Into a Bar . . .", which entailed two Northwestern professors of the above disciplines talking about what their work had in common. The highlight was a Powerpoint of Shakespeare submitting Hamlet as a grant proposal and the resulting critique. Very funny and smart. The next program I'm going to see is the founder of Redmoon Theater talking about his goal of somehow staging Moby Dick, possibly with puppets.

In the middle of the week I went to the Illinois Library Association annual conference, held at Navy Pier this year. It was a grey, cool, slightly menacing day, perfect to spot ZOMBIES ON THE ROOFTOP:



Every time I walked by that window I twitched a little.  I was only at the conference for one day; my boss and I were part of a panel discussion in the afternoon. I caught a great morning program about reorganizing spaces and staffing from the directors of the Arlington Heights and the Palatine libraries. Not everyone will agree, I know, but I admire some of these large changes libraries are making. I think if you base them on data, get your staff involved, and make them in a few stages (not in one terrifying upheaval), they are laudable. Balance in all things.

That presentation and a board meeting and wrapping up a six page nomination for a library award made for a full week! On Saturday I met Heidi and Pam for this:

Oh, it was so ROMANTIC and DREAMY and FABULOUS. And Harry Groener was just marvelous in the title role. Then we went to Riva and had beautiful delicious food and talked about where we want to go on vacation. Since we couldn't come to any consensus on a European trip, we happily alighted on Canada! Technically another country! So we're discussing Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City, which I am totally up for. Yay!

On Sunday I drove out to visit a friend and her new-ish baby (five months old) and got to chat with her, her husband, her older child (so adorable) and snuggle the baby for an hour or more.  Lovely, lovely Charlie. No pictures of them because they are not MY children. I do hope that Ben reproduces.

I ran around so much on the weekend that I feel like I need another one. 


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