Saturday in the Windy City

Yesterday Kaia and I did a novel thing. We boarded an Amtrak train and headed north to the Windy City. It's roughly two and a half hours to Chicago by train from our Champaign and there are three trains per day that go through here. We can leave on the City of New Orleans early in the morning, take the Illini later in the morning, or the Saluki in the evening. It's a comfortable ride and we can actually get work done on the train, which is exactly what we did yesterday. I brought along some articles and some scores and a book and worked for the entire train ride to Chicago. Consequently I had to lug around my backpack all yesterday, but it was small price to pay really.


We met up with Chris and Kerstin and a couple of her swimming friends in Millennium Park at a giant sculpture nicknamed "The Bean" (actually called Cloud Gate as I found out later on). It's an amazing piece of art that basically reflects the entire city, the sky, and everything that surrounds it with it's mirror-like surface. It's a great place to meet up with folks since its is such an iconic structure in the park. From there we walked through Millennium Park to the Pritzker Pavilion and the Crown Fountain. From there we headed to the Art Institute and spent some time looking at the collections. I love the Impressionists and the Chicago museum does not disappoint. I was particularly blown away by the Monet paintings in the Impressionist gallery. We also managed to see "American Gothic" and Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" among many other things. It was a great visit.


Once we left the museum we headed to a restaurant inside the Loop called Miller's for some drinks and desserts. It was nice to sit down at this point - my feet always get tired in art museums - and take a bit of a rest. While we were there we made some dinner plans. Chris knew of a pizza place somewhere in downtown that he had been to a couple of times. It's called Lou Malnati's, just one block North of Merchandise Mart so we headed there for dinner on the "L". OMG it was amazing pizza. They have a trademark "butter crust" for their deep dish pizzas and the sausage is not just cut up and arranged on the pizza so much as it is a slab that covers the entirety of the pizza above the layer of cheese. It was truly a remarkable feat of pizza engineering to say the least.


After getting over full on pizza, Chris and Kerstin escorted us back down to Union Station and we went to a place for one last drink before we had to catch our bus. Our trip back to Champaign was on Megabus, the dirt cheap double decker tour bus mode of transportation that leaves four times per day from Union Station back to our town. It was a quick two hour trip from downtown to downtown and then we caught a city bus back to our apartment. Not bad. The thing I enjoyed about this experience was the fact that we didn't have to drive anywhere. We just got on a bus here, got on the train, rode the trains around Chicago, and then took buses back home. We didn't have to worry about parking, gas, directions, traffic, falling asleep on the way home, or any of the typical things that we have always associated with our going out of town trips. It was a great way to spend the day.

We had a great time in Chicago and it was awesome to see our friends. Plus we have a whole new city in which to hang out. Yesterday was a great day.

Labor Day Weekend

When we left Eau Claire in July we took an entire house worth of stuff to Illinois with us. After coming back from Europe and unpacking our boxes we realized that, with no basement storage space in our apartment, we were not going to have enough room for everything. As a result we had a number of boxes filled with various items, from childhood keepsakes to a belt sander, for which we had no space. This was the whirlwind weekend to take care of all of this.

On Friday we piled ourselves and our boxes in the car and headed up to Eau Claire for the weekend. We left at 6 PM and arrived around 1 AM. Luckily Nobu was nice enough to let us crash at his place. This was great for two reasons: he stays up late so arriving at one in the morning was not a problem and we hadn't seen him for several months. Upon arriving at Nobu's we stayed up until 3 AM talking and drinking wine. It was great to catch up.


The next morning we went out for breakfast and then hung out during the day. Nobu left for the Twin Cities around 5 PM for a party and Kaia and I went to her mom's house to drop off some stuff and pick up our house plants. We both felt like 19 year old college kids again and we piled all of our boxes in the basement. After dinner with Carole and Randy we headed to the Joynt where we met up with Chris Hahn and Mike Renneke. It was great to catch up with those guys and we even went to Burrito Express at El Patio as a treat afterward.

Sunday morning we woke up at Nobu's house, then had lunch with Kaia's dad and Gail, and then headed to La Crosse to visit my parents. They took us out for dinner and we spent the night there. Today we awoke in La Crosse and returned to Champaign with our car loaded with plants, apples, beer, maple syrup and clean laundry. Yes, I brought my dirty laundry to parents' house and washed it there. Like I said, we are 19 again.


It felt like a whirlwind this weekend but it was great to see everyone. The next time we are back in Wisconsin it will be Thanksgiving. I can almost taste the turkey now...

Two Weeks of School

It's hard to believe that by Labor Day weekend this year we've already had two weeks of school. Typically we are gearing up for the first day of school and maybe have had one or two days with students by now so it's hard to believe that we're already been through two full weeks of classes. One thing about graduate school is that there are no orientations or convocations so you just kind of slip into the school year and before you know it you are doing piles of research.

We did miss the Minnesota State Fair this weekend, something we've been doing with Nicole and Dan for the past several years. In order to get our summer festival fix we went to the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival with Peter and Ena (my colleagues in the conducting studio) and their significant others. While this was no Minnesota State Fair, there was delicious sweetcorn (albeit slightly expensive), some live musical acts (including Soul Asylum), and lots of food. It basically takes up two blocks of Urbana's downtown area. All in all not too bad.


We are beginning to fall into the rhythm of the school year. My class schedule allows for a lot of downtime and time for study. Things will pick up later in the semester when I am traveling to do my observations but right now I have basically two full days per week to study. Conducting seminar has been great and it is exactly what I need from an educational standpoint. It's wonderful to get specific instruction on my needs as a conductor three times per week. Right now I'm focusing on making my gesture more compact and succinct which will allow for more fluid nonverbal communication with the orchestra. Economy of gesture is important, especially for yours truly with my ape-length arms.

I spent a good deal of time last week working on Beethoven 1st and 9th Symphonies. This week I will be spending some time with the Overture to Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss. All the while I need to begin to look ahead to next month when we tackle the Enigma Variations and a pair of Mozart Symphonies. It's nice to be focusing on this literature and to have a chance to really get in depth with the music. This really is the perfect learning environment for me right now.