the local bison

I'm about halfway through my last week of classes, and things are starting to pile up pretty well. I was working on a paper about the book of Daniel earlier this evening at the library, but we're supposed to be having a "floor meeting" about clearing out our rooms and stuff. So, I'm just sitting around waiting for this here floor meeting to commence. Since I'm so busy, I've reasoned that the best way to use my time would be to spend it writing a blog update for all you bored family members.

Vicky came out and visited a week or so ago. As always, when she visits, I get to put on my tourist hat and go do rather touristy things around Chicago. I'm not actually sure if that's more for her sake or for mine. Anyway, we spent an afternoon at the Fermilab National Particle Accelerator. Sadly, I never got to see the actually accelerator. They buried it so no one could look at it. In the end, I just had to be content looking at some bison that they transplanted into a nearby field in an attempt to distract the visitors from all the national secrets hidden deep within the facility's complex. Actually, the truth is that I have no idea why there was a herd of bison napping around in the field. Fermilab has a lot of land (thousands of acres), so I guess they're just trying to share the land a little bit.


For all you doubters out there, ever suspicious that I simply nabbed this award-winning photograph from the internet somewhere, I have other indisputable proof that I visited Fermilab. There's only one or two buildings that visitors are allowed into. One is the rather boring-looking visitors center (not even worth taking a picture of). The other is a tall building (compared to the cathedrals of France in the little visitor's guide) that houses most of the offices for the engineers and physicists. It's a weird looking building that reminds me vaguely of a nuclear powerplant. The inside is actually interesting, as it's hollow in the middle, all the way to the top. In other words, offices that lack a window outside get a window that looks out into the middle of the building. Sadly I did not take a picture of this. I just took a picture of the tour de concrete from a distance.

Vicky and I also checked out some of Frank Lloyd Wright's stuff in the nearby town of Oak Park. We paid a whopping $6 each to walk around a church that he designed. I later decided that it would have been much cheaper to go to the chuch Sunday morning disguished as a parishioner. I could have even put a healthy $5 in the offering plate and still come out ahead. Anyway, it's a pretty small church and probably couldn't seat more than 100 people. It seemed cozy enough inside. Speaking of cozy, it actually had a couple fireplaces elsewhere in the building. Imagine, this was only built for $60,000. Calvary paid well over $3 million for their new building and I don't see anyone willing to fork over $6 to walk around the rotunda taking pictures.