Chicago '08

July 15th to the 21st was spent in West Chicago, visiting my parents. It was good seeing them again after nearly a year of being away in Pennsylvania doing my own thing. Most of the time was spent unpacking and repacking my stuff that had arrived from Japan, as well as showing my mom many cool features of her 15inch aluminum Powerbook G4 and setting up my dad's email on his new laptop. Other highlights included going to Mitsuwa to purchase cheap, authentic Japanese cuisine and groceries, which I hadn't had since January.




My dad and I also had the opportunity to go to a farm team baseball game courtesy of a local pastor and his wife. It had been ages since I had been to a ballgame, much less one that involved delicious pork chop sandwiches and roasted corn. The game featured the Kane County Cougars against the Lansing Lugnuts and was really more about the fans, between-inning activities, and promotion of local businesses than it was about baseball, which was fine by me. The "Lugs" hitting two homers in the first inning in the eventual 8-2 win only let us focus in the other goings-on sooner rather than later, and contributed to the the evening being less about baseball.


The evening ended with an attempt at the worlds largest pillow fight to be held in the outfield. They were hoping to get 4,000 participants, though I think they fell short. Whatever the total number, it was nonetheless an impressive quantity of people intent on beating the snot out of one another armed with sleeping accessories .

I managed to capture video of the fight it via my poor-resolution cellular device. Enjoy.

...And off to St. Paul, Minnesota, I go!