The past 3 weeks are a bit of a blur, but I'll try to summarize as best I can. Be warned, this is a long entry :)

My parents and brother arrived in Chicago on April 16th. The following day I put together the new Weber barbeque grill (we got that earlier in the week) with my dad, and we stoked it up and had ourselves a barbie :) Unfortunately the cooking process still needs some fine tuning!

We went into Chicago on the Monday and did a boat tour of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. It was perfect weather for it, and we managed to take some nice photos. We ate lunch at the original Pizzeria Uno, followed by a trip to the top of Sears Tower. We caught the train to and from Chicago, so we didn't have to worry about traffic, parking, etc.

Carrie's parents drove in from Michigan later that week, and took my parents to see our old apartment in Rockford and some nearby state parks. Meanwhile we went into work each day, anxiously awaiting the weekend. That weekend we all went to the Museum of Science and Industry, where we saw the Bodyworlds exhibition of plastinated bodies (strange, yet fascinating) while my parents and brother toured the rest of the museum. We met up with them for lunch, followed by an OmniMax movie (dome-shaped IMAX theatre) also in the museum, then had a good look around the rest of the museum.

That evening we watched Shanghai Knights, which was rather amusing. After breakfast out on Sunday morning, we had a wander through Long Grove village and did some shopping and browsing. They have a lot of antique and bric-a-brac stores there, as well as all manner of delicious food.

It was back to work again for both us, as well as for Carrie's parents who drove back to Michigan on Monday. My parents spent much of the week catching the train to Chicago to see museums and so forth with their CityPass.

We'd planned a weekend getaway to Springfield for the following weekend, staying for two nights at a hotel there. Despite living here in Illinois for several years, we hadn't ventured so far south until that weekend. I had the Friday off, during which time I did plenty of yard work with my dad. On the Saturday we drove to Springfield, which took us about 4 hours.

While in Springfield, we toured all manner of things Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln's home, the Lincoln tomb, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential museum. The museum was brilliant, and quite possibly the best museum I've ever been to. It was just so well laid out, and the slice-of-life displays added an extra dimension. The holographic presentation they have there is mindbogglingly realistic, and had us wondering how the heck they did it--things we swore were real disappeared or turned to smoke. A must-see if you're down that way :)

In addition to the Lincoln stuff, we visited the war memorials, the Old State Capitol, the Adams Wildlife Sanctuary, and had a wander around Springfield itself. There was also an airshow on all weekend, so the air was frequently torn asunder by jet-fighters swooping past overhead. We would've liked to have gone to that too, but there wasn't enough time in our busy schedule. We did get to watch some of it from atop the Lincoln tomb, however. The sad thing was, the spectacle overshadowed the visit to the tomb somewhat.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and we drove back last Monday. The drive back was interminable, but it was made a little more interesting by our observations of the huge urban sprawl overtaking farmland in Chicago's far outer suburbs. That's a perfect illustration of the still ongoing housing boom around these parts.

It was back to work for rest of the week, although I did have the Friday off. I spent the day working on the place with my dad, taking care of fertilizing the lawn and hopefully killing off all those dandelions that seemed to come from nowhere over the last few weeks. The weed-killing agent in the fertilizer seems to be working already--either that, or all the dandelions have gone to seed!

Mostly it was a restful weekend, and we caught up with a few movies on the TiVo, including The Sum of All Fears (not bad), and Escape from Alcatraz (great!), starring Clint Eastwood.

We saw my parents and brother off at the airport bright and early on Sunday. It was sad saying goodbye after spending the past few weeks with them. It'll probably be a year or more before we get a chance to see them again, and we wished, as they did, that they could've stayed longer. Even the cats seem a bit depressed by their absence.

On the way back from the airport, Carrie and I went out to breakfast at a place we saw along the way, in Barrington. The restaurant had crepes on the menu, so naturally I had to order some. The last time I had crepes was when we visited New Orleans last year, and they were a gastronomic delight. These were too :)

The house seemed oddly empty and silent when we got home, so I thought it would be a good idea to get out of the house and go and see a movie, and visit the bookstore. We went to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was fairly good, although I didn't get quite as many laughs as I'd expected. It'll be interesting to see if they end up filming the rest of the books in the series.

On the way home, we stopped off at B&N, where I picked up two new books I'd heard about recently: Weird Illinois, and Weird Wisconsin. I had a quick flick through them, and I reckon I'm going to have a ball reading through it all. They should also provide some leads for some fun weekend roadtrips :) They talked about the House on the Rock in the Wisconsin book, which we're planning on visiting on our way to Madison for the Wiscon SF convention. That house sounds even weirder and more interesting than I'd thought :) We also visited a scrapbooking place soon to be relocating, so Carrie picked up some supplies there.

I was planning to talk about my writing efforts and observations of late, but this entry is long enough as it is! That is all for now :)