Friday, 22 June 2012
I never ever heard of the suburb of Schaumburg until a few months ago when I signed up for the class that I completed there today. But, now I can say I’ve been – because I am only now leaving the city (village, actually) after having spent just over 48 hours here. I thought a visual diary would do best. I took some of these photos yesterday, and some today.
Here’s the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel where I stayed. It kind of has that “outside courtyard in the evening” look. Notice some of the rooms overlook this lobby. Another bunch of rooms overlook a real outside courtyard, and another bunch overlook the pool. Not mine; my room overlooked the wonderful parking lot.
Here’s the inside of my room, as seen from the couch right in front of the window. Hey – look! Those are my shoes! Cool.
Okay, here is the coolest thing about my room: a bathroom counter made of rocks. Look at that! And the counter is so smooth. Look at the lower left corner of the sink, and you can see how they even cut into a rock to get the sink to fit right. Amazing! How did they do that? I don’t know.
Here’s the weirdest thing about my room – the shower stall has a fixed pane of glass that extends midway from the wall. The other half of the stall has nothing; no door, no curtain – nothing. I got lots of water on the bathroom floor both mornings. Oh well.
And here’s the most disgusting thing about my room. This is an air vent near the window. Notice all the chunks of dust. I point out that this is after I wiped the vents once with my sock (that I had just taken off for the day). This would take, like, 30 seconds to clean. Maybe somebody should get on that before a guest posts pictures like this on the WWW.
I snapped this photo near the hotel’s secondary entrance. The sign on this rock says “Fresh 1800 Herb Garden.” That’s because the restaurant at the hotel is called “Fresh 1800,” so I guess they’re not kidding: they really do use fresh ingredients. I’ll never know, ’cause the only thing I ever bought from that restaurant was a Long Island iced tea.
During the afternoon session on Wednesday and Thursday (yesterday), the hotel staff brought in some snacks for us. Yesterday, they set out this spread: mixed nuts, dried fruit, M&Ms, chocolate chips….mmmmm! All the toppings you could ever want for your ice cream. Except…they didn’t bring any ice cream. How odd. It was especially odd, too, that today, during lunch, they brought out vanilla ice cream and offered absolutely zero toppings. Everyone else set all of those above toppings on the little plates provided (see top left). I grabbed a glass and dumped my snacks in that. Everyone thought I was so smart for thinking of that. Yeah, about once a week, I really nail this whole “living on planet Earth with the humans” thing.
I took an aimless wander though the hotel yesterday evening. (Man, it’s hard to avoid eye contact while doing that.) Here’s a skyway I stumbled upon. It connects the hotel with the office building you can see in the background there. I decided to walk through it, which was a dumb idea, because the skyway is not climate controlled, and so it was about 110 degrees inside this thing.
I decided to temporarily kick the antisocial binge I was on, and meet up with some classmates for dinner. About seven of us met in the hotel lobby, but only three of us ended up going out to eat (I’m not sure how that happened). We ate at Weber Grill, a restaurant you can spot from some distance due to this enormous grill on their property. They cook everything on grills. Weber brand, I bet.
I thought I was going to stand out like a weirdo by not ordering any red meat at a place called “Weber Grill,” but guess what? The one lady I was with got the shrimp salad, and the other lady got the tilapia. Me, I got the veggie burger. It was good. They also served pretzel buns. I never had those before, but I saw them again today during lunch, and then later at the airport. Must be a Chicago thing. I like them. I’m gonna see about getting me some more.
Okay, so I was at the airport earlier today, and I noticed the guy walking in front of me. He was a pilot. Or, at least, he was dressed like one. He was pulling three bags behind him, and there was this one suitcase he had that I just had to take a picture of. There’s a fancy metal plate on the top that says “In memory of Jesus.” I fucking kid you not. The side of the bag had one of those fish on it that says “ixoye,” which, of course, is Latin for “I believe in zombies.” I was a little concerned that he walked right up to the very same gate that I was going to. On the good side, it allowed me to take this picture. The down side was, I started freaking out that this guy was going to be my pilot. I don’t think a guy like this should be a pilot. I mean, what if the rapture occurs mid-flight? Before I get my beer and pretzels? Alas, he was just hitching a ride on the plane. Maybe to get closer to Jesus one more time before going to bed. Oh crap, I just realized something: if he was hitching a ride on the plane, that probably means he lives in Minnesota.
And here’s the view over Lake Michigan at approximately 6:30 this evening. Have I mentioned I hate flying? Here I am, on the 32nd plane ride of my life. And look at what an idiot I am: I picked the seat that overlooks the wing. It’s like I thought, “How can I increase my anxiety even more on this flight? Oh, I know, I’ll select the seat that looks out over the wobbly wing. Yes, that will be splendid.”