Category: Excursions

Gallery of Ghoulish Homes

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Gallery of Ghoulish Homes Tour

We took the Gallery of Ghoulish Homes Tour in St. Charles again this year and made it a point to visit all our favorites from last year. They are the most fun because they feature live actors. They are getting pretty ballsy too – one guy got into someone’s van to scare the people who hadn’t come out! And another guy kept following me. I tried to take a self-portrait of the two of us but it didn’t come out, see?

Self Portrait with Scary Stalker

* I told him he doesn’t photograph because he’s dead. ;)

The same guy later followed us, and K in particular, back to the SUV, even going so far as to run alongside the SUV as we pulled away, while threatening us with his (fake) knife. K and I got a serious case of giggles from that. I took a video but it’s so dark you can’t see anything so there’s no point in posting it.

There’s not enough time to ever see all the houses on the tour, but it was easier locating them with my iPhone’s GPS than putting together maps like I did last year. Interestingly enough, we didn’t visit most of the homes that the judges liked best, so we’re going to have to make a point to check those out before Halloween.

Gallery of Ghoulish Homes Tour Flickr set

Busy weekend

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Every weekend seems to fly by, but this one felt even shorter than usual because I didn’t get home from work until 7 pm Friday evening after a 12-hour work day, then worked another two hours Saturday morning. This huge project we’ve been working on for months is finally coming to an end, thank god, because it’s killing me. I have no problem working my butt off during my regular 8-hour day, but I’m not keen on working extra hours. Sure, I get paid for it now that I’m hourly, but I’d still rather be at home.

Saturday night we went out with a group of friends to see Robert Schimmel perform at a Comedy Club near where I work. The service there was horrible, but Robert was great! What was funny was he was walking around the audience before the show and no one seemed to recognize him. The second time he walked past our table, Joe said, “Hi Robert, good to see you” as if he knew him. LOL! To his credit, Robert said hello back and put his arm on Joe’s shoulder. :) I did try and get a photo of Robert on stage near the end of the show but the iPhone’s camera sucks and you can’t even tell who is in the photo. I don’t know why everyone loves the iPhone camera – it pretty much blows unless you’re bathed in natural light. In any case, I posted a full review of our night over on Yelp if you’re so inclined.

Today we finally purchased a sink for the master bath!!! Once Joe finishes fixing some issues with the wall, he’ll be able to install the sink and mirror. We still need a faucet but haven’t found one we like yet. We take forever to pick things out sometimes. We did find a kickass ceiling fan for the master bedroom, though. We had briefly discussed replacing the ugly white one that’s in there now and since we were on a roll with the sink, figured we’d check out the fans. We found a beautiful one at Lowes. I will post pictures once it’s been installed. Now I want to replace the ceiling fan in the living room too, as well as the ugly gold chandelier in the foyer. The ceilings are so high we’d need to pay an electrician to do those, however, which is why we haven’t bothered before.

Now it’s time to make nachos for the Bears game!

Update: We actually got the fan at Home Depot. Usually we like Lowe’s selection but not this time around.

Indiana Beach

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Yesterday was our annual visit to Indiana Beach. We mixed things up this year by choosing a weekday which was a good move since even though they waived the admission (normally $2.50), they raised the wristband prices from $23 to $27, but we had a BOGO (buy one get one free) coupon valid Mon-Thur for the combo ride/waterpark pass which is $30. The coupon was only valid for one wristband, but they also have the same BOGO promotion if you bring in any Coke product so we only paid for two wristbands but got four. We didn’t use the waterpark portion of the wristband but overall between the free parking and admission, it was still cheaper than last year.

We got there around 2 pm and the free parking lot was pretty dead. I guess Mondays are good days as it was less crowded than when we’ve gotten there first thing on a Saturday. Plus the weather was beautiful – only 78 and a bit cloudy so we weren’t sitting in the sun all day.

Amazingly, E went on three roller coasters with Joe. He’s become quite the adrenaline junkie. I think his recent visit to Great America with his school’s band might have started that. And they say peer pressure is a bad thing. ;)

He even went on the Falling Star which used to be my favorite ride when I was a kid. Alas, my stomach hurt yesterday so I barely went on any rides at all. But I got my tacos that I talk about every year (and who even have an entry over at Yelp!), so I can’t complain. And if you follow me on Twitter you’ll see that I was posting tweets while the kids were on the rides. I think they went on the swings at least eight times each. It’s by far their favorite ride.

We left the park a little after 8 pm and got home around 9:30 pm our time (the park is in the Eastern time zone). Everyone had a sandwich and then retired to their respective rooms to watch tv. I managed to get in an episode of my new favorite show, The Big Bang Theory, before passing out on the couch. All in all, a pretty good day.

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During the ride to the park we were Googling info on Indiana Beach and I found out why they painted the skyride last year and raised prices – they are under new management as of February 2008. It’s kind of sad – the same family owned and operated the park since its inception in 1926. Luckily the management change hasn’t affected the quality of the park. In fact, it seems less run-down than before. I also noticed the ride operators seem more attentive to everyone’s safety, so as far as I’m concerned the increase in prices is worth it.

We’ll definitely be going again on a weekday to save money and not have to wait in long lines. We might only have a few years left before the kids would rather go to Great America anyway.

Lincoln Park Zoo

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Caiman

Today we visited Lincoln Park Zoo. I didn’t realize until we arrived home that it’s been four years since our last visit. I guess that’s a testament to how much we stay away from the city. When I was younger I loved the city and spending as much time as possible in it, but now it just gets under my skin. It’s crowded and makes me feel claustrophobic. And parking is a nightmare. We couldn’t find any empty spots along Cannon Dr. which runs along the zoo, but did find metered spots along Clark St. It required a trip back to the car to feed the meter halfway through our visit, but it was worth it. Our total parking cost was $4 instead of $20+ in the zoo lot.

We would have preferred to visit the zoo during the week when it would have been less crowded, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. Today was the first non-rainy day we were free. It got crowded quite quickly and as a result we weren’t able to see everything even though we visited all the animal houses. Guess we’ll have to visit again soon instead of waiting another four years!

I must say, I’m actually quite fond of the photo at the beginning of this entry. I think it’s the best one I took today of the over 230 photos I ended up with.

My other favorites from today:
Baby Chick
Piglet
Gorilla

Check out all the Lincoln Park Zoo photos @ Perfect Pixels

Indiana Beach is getting expensive

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I saw an advertisement recently for Indiana Beach where they were boasting about free admission so I went to their website to check it out. At first I was all excited because they said they are waiving the $2.50 per person admission fee to the park for the first time since 1972. That was until I saw that they raised the price of the ride wristbands from $23 to $27. Uh, thanks? So now it’s going to cost more than last year even with the so called free admission. Not only that, but they have special events every single weekend we have the kids in June and July, so the only possible “slow” Saturday would be in late August unless we take time off during the week to go.

If it was up to me and me only, we wouldn’t go at all. But I know the kids love it there, so we’ll go and I’ll try to focus on the tacos I’ll get to eat since that’s the only thing I look forward to regarding that place these days. Their prices are getting to the point it hardly seems worth the 2 hour drive each way to deal with a bunch of people crammed on a boardwalk. Great America is a hell of a lot closer but they want $55 per person just to get in the park. Are there even enough rides there to entertain two kids who do not like rollercoasters? I looked at their website but it didn’t look promising.