Visiting the old farm

Things were a little, let's say, hectic around Ben's birthday. The previous Saturday, Ben's friend Larry had a pool party. The party was at 1:00, so I assumed there would be no lunch, and it would last a few hours. The kids had a terrific time splashing around in the pool, and I didn't know that Ben was such a good swimmer. He can swim around, take a breath, and swim some more. He's much more confident when he can touch the bottom, but he did really well. Anna swims well with her floaties. They rented a big moon walk bouncy thing and it amazes me how much time the kids can spend in there. There was a pinata and they served food around 5:00. I hadn't realized it was that late. Suzette arrived (she had been buying Ben's birthday presents) and I left to pick up our new babysitter. She is the 14-year old daughter of a friend of a good friend and doesn't live nearby. So I picked her up and brought her back. She was very friendly and could converse like an adult, which always surprises me with teenagers. I was glad to hear that she has 3 younger brothers. We've had good luck with babysitters who are the oldest.

We had dinner with Kim and Dennis at a restaurant in Aurora called Andrew's Open Pit, which had been Jimmy's Charhouse and still had the same management, I think. I guess Jimmy's was pricey, and this new incarnation was very inexpensive. There were things on the menu like 1 lb. of pork chops for 6.99. I had a sirloin steak for 9.99 and it was very good. We didn't have reservations, and I couldn't believe that a decent restaurant in the Naperville/Aurora area (it's just west of Route 59) was half empty on a Saturday night. At least 1/2 of the patrons were families with kids.

My sister was in town and we hadn't seen her yet, although we had just seen her the previous week in Boston. My mom was having us over for a BBQ, and Debi wanted to bring her boyfriend David to the farm where we grew up. Mom dropped Debi and David off at the farm, and we met them there. We have visited the farm about twice in the last 15 years. It's a horse farm with about 50-60 stalls; they have about 30 horses on the farm now. The owners raise reining horses and rent out 1/2 the stalls. It's neat to show the kids, pet the horses, and smell the smells. It's amazing how powerful memories can be triggered by scent. Memories came flooding in with the smells of the horses, wood shavings, manure, lime, hay, and leather. Some horses made funny faces while we tickled their noses. We also pet some cute Australian Cattle Dogs.


The best part is that we stopped by the house, and Gwendy, the owner, let us take a look around. We hadn't been in the house for 23 years. They built an addition on the back for a nice laundry/mud room, and did a terrific job remodeling the house and decorating everything in a very horsey theme. It was amazing to see what a small house it was. The kitchen and bedrooms were tiny. They knocked out the upper part of the walls between the kitchen and dining room and living room, which made it much more open. They replaced many of the doors with beautiful doors with images of horses carved in them. They really completely redid the house. It was probably built in 1970 but looked really new. It turns out that they are putting it up for sale and semi-retiring.

Then we drove around the hills of Bull Valley. As a kid, I rode my bike up and down these huge hills to go to friends' houses. Fortunately, those friends had swimming pools, which was a good incentive for the hard work. Then we went back and had dinner at Mom's, plus a birthday cake and presents for Ben (and Anna too - Mom and Debi are good about giving something to the sibling when it's someone's birthday).

- schneid

Police concert at Wrigley Field

We dropped the kids off at my mom's and drove to Barrington to take the Metra. I hadn't taken the train in years, but it was exactly as I remembered. Some kids (could've been anywhere from 18 to 22 years old) were sitting near us, and the 4 of them polished off a case of beer in the 45 minutes we were on the train. Drinking alcohol on the train is against Metra rules, but it's fairly common, and the conductors didn't seem to care. It was the Taste of Chicago that week, and the train was full of people heading into the city.

We got off at the Clybourn stop rather than go all the way downtown. Clybourn is near Ashland and Armitage, maybe 2.5 miles from Wrigley. We looked for a cab, but there were none to be found. So we started walking and would grab the first available cab that we saw...but we never saw one. We walked through some nice neighborhoods, which I forget that Chicago has. After about 2 miles, we could see Wrigley but had enough walking, so we stopped for dinner. I had wanted to go to Goose Island, which is near Wrigley, but we didn't feel like walking a few extra blocks to get there.

We ate dinner at Pompei, which is on Sheffield. We both had a yummy ravioli with tomato-vodka-cream sauce that was excellent, and tiramisu for dessert. The focaccia wasn't that great, kind of chewy. But that didn't stop me from mopping up all the extra sauce with it. Yum!

After dinner, we headed to Wrigley, and the closer we got, the more crowded it was. I hadn't been to Wrigley since the Reality reunion which I think was in 1995. I may have been there with Tellabs summer interns once after that. Needless to say, it had been a long time. It's a beautiful park. We arrived around 6:00 with the concert scheduled to begin at 7:00.

We got right into the park and didn't have trouble finding our seats, which were on the field. I'd say we were about 45 degrees and 150 feet from the center of the stage. A friend of mine who was in the stands said that the sound wasn't good, but from where we were, it was great. We had a great view.

The outfield was covered with something like a Sport Court, a hard, plastic, interlocking flooring, and there were (cheap) chairs. So it wasn't lawn seating. The chairs were not wide and they were all tied together with plastic ties, so there wasn't much room for a big person. The infield was uncovered and had a rail around it, so you could actually see the infield.

Fewer than 10% of the seats were filled with an hour to go before the opening band. We walked around, checked out the vendors, and bought two cool t-shirts. They were $35 apiece, which seemed like a good deal since I paid that much for Eagles shirts 12 years ago. The beer selection was pitiful...they only had Budweiser products (blech) and Old Style (BLECH!) on the field, so we walked around inside the stands in search of decent drinks. It was cool that there were beer vendors on the field, so you could get a beer and still watch the concert. You could also stand in some areas that were much closer to the stage.

Inside, there were plenty of food vendors with the usual baseball game food, and a lot of beer vendors. We were able to find wine, frozen drinks (daquiris and margaritas), and a couple semi-drinkable beers (Heineken and Amstel light, I think). Oh well. You'd think that they could have a good Chicago beer, like Goose Island, at Wrigley Field.

Fiction Plane, the opening band, started playing. They were led by Sting's son, Joe Sumner, who also plays bass. He sounds just like Sting, and looks quite a bit like him too. The band had good technique and a decent sound, which reminded me of Coldplay and U2. They played for about 45 minutes, until 8:00.

The crowd filled out while Fiction Plane was playing. I didn't see a single person that I knew, until the seat immediately next to me was taken by Brendan, a guy I had just met at work. That was a pretty amazing coincidence. The rooftop seats of the buildings across the street from Wrigley were filled too; I wondered what the sound was like up there, since all speakers were pointed toward the infield.

The Police opened with Message in a Bottle and it was fantastic. It is really a fun song and the crowd enjoyed it. Quite a few of the songs had new arrangements, mostly slower in my opinion. Sting also slightly changed the arrangement of some of the lyrics, so occasionally it was hard to sing along. I wasn't crazy about all of the arrangements, but it didn't detract from the concert for me.

Andy Summers, the guitarist, looked terrible. Honestly, I thought he would keel over at any minute. Stewart Copeland, the drummer, looked old but kept pace with his frenetic drumming. They both played great and looked more comfortable as the show went on. Sting looked older but is still in terrific shape. And his voice, possibly the band's most vital instrument, was fantastic. (The next day, I heard Sting sing on Live Earth on TV, and he was hoarse from our concert.) There were no backup singers or musicians.

I would guess that 90% of the crowd was over 30. I really like older concert crowds, because it's not too crazy or noisy. It was a very well-mannered crowd. Unfortunately, a 6'5" guy sat in front of us. Fortunately, he didn't stand for the entire show. I meant to thank him afterwards.

The entire set list was:

Message in a Bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking On The Moon
Voices Inside My Head
When The World Is Running Down
Don't Stand So Close To Me
Driven To Tears
Truth Hits Everybody
Bed's Too Big Without You
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Walking In Your Footsteps
Can't Stand Losing You
Roxanne
King Of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
Next To You

My favorites were Walking on the Moon, Message in a Bottle, Synchronicity II, Can't Stand Losing You, King Of Pain, So Lonely, Every Breath You Take, Wrapped Around Your Finger, and De Do Do Do De Da Da Da. The band played for two hours straight without a break and played two encores.

The weather was great, too. It was about 76 degrees the entire time without a cloud in sight. Which is fortunate, because we were sitting on the field and umbrellas were not allowed.

Afterward, we were able to get out of Wrigley quickly since we were on the field. We immediately headed east, since I assumed that any cab near Wrigley would be full. After a few blocks of working our way through the crowd, we hailed a cab. We had 25 minutes to get to the Clybourn station and catch our train; the station was 2.5 miles away. Well, the traffic was so bad that we ended up begin 25 minutes late. We could've walked there faster! (Of course, after already walking 2.5 miles TO the concert, we were NOT going to walk back too.) Then we had to wait 30 minutes for the next train.

A lot of people from the Police concert and the Taste of Chicago were on the train and it was hard to find a seat. We chatted with a guy from Cary for the whole ride. We disembarked at Barrington, got our car, then drove home, arriving around 1:30 AM. Then we slept in late and picked up the kids around 11:00 AM.

- schneid

Concert tickets

Well, I learned a valuable lesson (at least $300 worth) when buying tickets for the Police concert at Wrigley Field. I tried to get tickets for the first (and only) night, but they sold out within an hour, and despite my multiple phones and multiple Internet Explorer windows, I didn't get through. I was trying to get some less expensive seats in the stands.

They immediately added another date. After looking over the seating chart, I realized that the Wrigley Field seats would be very far away from the stage, and decided that this one time, we would spend $$$ and get good seats on the field, which were $254 each. That's an outrageous amount to pay for a concert, but heck...this is The Police, a group that broke up 22 years ago, that I've always wanted to see in concert. I ended up buying 2 pairs of tickets for $550 per pair (includes service charges). I figured that I could sell the other pair to a friend or to anyone else, that matter, for at least face value.

I couldn't have been more mistaken. Many of the tickets on EBay and on ticket sites have gone unsold or way under face value. In fact, as of right this minute (27 hours before the show), you can actually buy tickets (albeit at face value) from tickets.com for very good seats - better than the seats I have. :( Of course, you could get tickets way under face value on EBay. Or if you were willing to risk not seeing the concert at all, you could go to Wrigley and offer the scalpers $100 for a pair of good tickets.

Needless to say, I won't be doing that again. Don't overestimate the popularity of a show, especially for the second night of the show. I was shocked that I couldn't sell the tickets for face value. I ended up selling them on EBay for $230.

- schneid