Taste of CU, summer school, and bangs

Many of you know that food is a major source of entertainment for Mike and me. Luckily for us, the Champaign City Park district sponsors a yearly festival that fits our main interest. We attended Taste of CU last night, and for twenty bucks we tried some of the best food Chambana has to offer and rode our bikes home with very full stomachs. We had:

• pad thai and basil chicken,
• a reuben sandwich,
• humus,
• baklava,
• pizza,
• a meatball sandwich,
• kettle corn,
• peach pie,
• and ice cream!

(Don't worry -- these were mostly just "tastes" and not full servings. But still . . . we ate a lot.) Everything we tried was very delicious and it was in a really fun atmosphere -- a downtown park with two music tents and lots of art booths. We had beautiful weather -- as I mentioned, we were able to ride our bikes to and from the festival.

We've been riding our bikes to and from school/work most days for the past two weeks. $4 gas is a big motivator! I'm taking two classes this summer, and they're very fast paced, but going well.

• Web design and construction for organizations: I'm already learning a lot in this class. Our major project for the summer is to redesign a university website -- bring it up to date, make it accessible, usable, and easy to maintain. My group has taken on Student Legal Services and we're hoping to bring the site into the 21st century. (It currently resides in 1999.) I'll post the redesign here when we're done.
  
• Administration and management: I want to recommend one of the books I read for this class, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Blurb about the book: "When we make decisions we think we're in control, making rational choices. But are we? Entertaining and surprising, Ariely unmasks the subtle but powerful tricks that our minds play on us." This class is focusing on understanding human behavior (particularly our own behavior) and learning to manage ourselves. Good stuff.

And the last bit of news is that I have a slightly altered hairstyle. I got a haircut last week after soliciting salon recommendations from friends on Facebook. I wanted it to look like Reese Witherspoon's hair and unfortunately I still don't look just like her, but I am pleased with the results.





















I went in to Michael's place of work right after the haircut and he said, "Wow. Your hair was really . . . big . . . before." He's right. It was.

Chicago!

No, I'm not referring to the musical, but the city! By the way, this is Mike using Melissa's Blogger log-in name. Here's the story. Last Saturday (May 31) Melissa flew back to Illinois from Idaho, and I drove up to Chicago to pick her up. Since her flight was scheduled to arrive at 2:00pm, we decided it would be fun to spend the afternoon and evening in Chicago, so we did.

The first thing we did was check out the Art Institute of Chicago ( http://www.artic.edu/aic/), something we've been talking about doing for a long time. Below are some of the major works of art we had the great privilege of seeing at the Art Institute. They are, from top to bottom, The Bedroom by Vincent Van Gogh, American Gothic by Grant Wood, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884 by Georges Seurat, Haystacks by Claude Monet, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, and Sky Above Clouds IV by Georgia O'Keefe








After our visit to the Art Institute, we starting walking around downtown Chicago. It was the perfect day for a walk downtown. It was sunny, the sky was blue, and the temperature was around the mid-to-high 70s. We wandered around Millennium Park and found this really cool amphitheater where the Chicago Gospel Music Festival was happening.


Also in Millennium Park was this really cool bean-shaped sculpture. In the photo at the top of the post, you can see how the sculpture reflects the Chicago skyline.

On our way to Maggiano's Little Italy, where we ate dinner, we passed by lots of interesting buildings and monuments. The most intriguing was the WGN building, which had random pieces of brick and stone stuck in the brick of the building. Included with the random chunks of building material were inscriptions about where those bricks and stones were (supposedly) from. Melissa and I became pretty doubtful about the authenticity of origins of the bricks and stones when we saw a piece that was supposed to be from the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City and another from the Taj Mahal. There were also stones that were supposedly from the Great Wall of China and the old city hall of Aachen, Germany, among many, many others. We didn't have our camera with us that day, so we don't have any pictures of the odd building. We'll have to take some pictures the next time we're in Chicago.

After dinner, we walked down to Navy Pier to check it out. The view of the city skyline from the lake front was spectacular. We estimated that we walked about 3 miles in downtown Chicago that day, and we only saw a small fraction of the city. It's a good thing we plan to take a few more trips to the big city in the coming months. We'll keep you posted on what we see.

Cache Valley Visit

Mike and I traveled to Cache Valley for my brother Nick's graduation and for some fabulous family time. Mike was there from May 20-26 and I stayed until May 31. Here are some of the highlights.

We attended Preston High School graduation in the PHS gymnasium:


It was pretty hot and stuffy in the gym, but the ceremony was short and sweet. We loved being there, as you can tell from our grins.

We got to celebrate my birthday at home in Fairview with my family and grandparents (and Mom's Boston cream cake):
(Yes, there really are 26 candles on that cake. And I blew them all out in one breath. Whew!)

I finished up the last slice -- right off the platter. And it was delicious.
Cache Valley is one of the most beautiful places in the world -- but the moment captured above was a rare moment of sunshine. During the 10 days that I spent in Cache Valley, there were only two days that it didn't rain -- truly unusual for that climate, but a very welcome rain for the farmers there.

Despite the rain, after Mike went back to work in Champaign, Illinois, Mom and I spent three days camping in Maple Grove up the Oneida Narrows (north of Preston, Idaho).

We had a great time camping out with Mom's friends, Joyce and Jan. We also had visits at camp from my aunt Roxane and cousin Emily and Emily's two little boys, Kaden and Dalton. The boys (ages 2 and 4) had the BEST time throwing rocks into the lake and exploring the "happy houses" (camp trailers). Dad and Nick and Garth (Jan's husband) also joined us for dinner one night. It rained, the wind blew, and it was pretty cool while we were camping, but it was still a fantastic trip. We rode bikes, read, watched movies at night in Joyce's trailer, and talked and talked and talked around the fire.

It was hard for me to leave home to come back to Champaign-Urbana. Hopefully we can visit again soon. Thanks, family, for hosting us and being so kind!