Day 11: Whales and Apes!

Day 11 was chock full of activities! I consider it to be the first day where I took full advantage of my sabbatical.

10:30am: My friend Damian taught me how to bench press. I wasn't my first time since I'd weight-trained for high school track but it's been a while and I wanted proper guidance before diving back in. Safety first! He and his roommates rent a house in Hyde Park and their basement is filled with weight-training equipment. They even used to have a "one ton rule" where everyone who lived in the house had to lift one ton of weight before bedtime every single night. 

We found out that my maximum for bench pressing is somewhere between 65 and 70 lbs. After benching, he showed me how to do squats and then hanging clean and jerks. My main objectives for weight-training are running fast and looking pretty. Even though we only did three exercises, I could feel the impact across my entire body and was cripplingly sore the next day. We lift again next week! 

1pm: Lunch at Piccolo Sogno. While walking through Wicker Park Fest this year, I spotted a deal on one of those a la card decks where each card is a $10 gift certificate to a different restaurant. Since they're only good for a year and we were already half way through, I snagged the deck for $20 (it's normally $30). I used my first card for lunch outdoors at Piccolo Sogno. Their patio is an urban oasis. 

There were a lot of moneyed people dining there.

We got: the beet salad, not good and not Italian; fava beans and pecorino with arugala; clam and pancetta pizza; and fresh pasta made from farro flour with truffle oil, asparagus and wild mushrooms. I liked the pasta and pizza the most.

Clams in their shells on pizza!

The crust on the pizza was some of the best I've had in the city. The toppings were a little intense so I think I'll go with a simpler pizza next time.

3pm: Whale exhibit at the Field Museum. Honestly, I was hoping that the horse exhibit was still on, but it closed earlier this month, so whales it was! The exhibit showed awesome whale skeletons.

The inflated whale in the museum lobby.

I learned a lot about whales: 

• Whales evolved from land-dwelling mammals that looked a lot like rats. In fact, if you compare the bones inside of a whale's flipper and the bones of a human hand, you'll find them to be quite similar.
• Whales have phonic lips inside their heads called "monkey lips" that they use to create sounds for echolocation and communication with other whales. They transmit these sounds through a specialized round of fat in their heads called the melon.
• Whales were hunted so we could use their blubber for lamp oil, their bones for corsets and their baleen for plastics applications. They are still hunted today for their meat and blubber.
• Beaching is more common than I thought. A medium sized beaching is anywhere from 10 to 100 whales. We gained most of the knowledge we have about whales from beachings.

Good exhibit and way more fun on a weekday when there aren't as many people. Before I left, I got one of those instant plastic toys in the shape of a whale. Perfect souvenir and desk toy to keep at my new job. 

Me and the whale.

6:15pm: Rise of the Planet of the Apes at AMC City North on Western Ave. I love sci-fi movies and this one got 83% on Rotton Tomatoes. It was very engaging and had a pretty good plot despite having some eye-rolling summer blockbuster moments of ridiculousness. Example: a gorilla leapt onto a helicopter while the man inside of it shot him with a hand gun. Spoiler alert: the gorilla takes down the chopper.

At the movie, there were three fat pre-teenage boys sitting behind me, supervised by one of their fathers. They all had popcorn, soda, pizza and I think one of them even had nachos. They sat down right before the movie started and it was a lot of ... smells. After finishing their food, they proceeded to belch and made disgusting post-prandial sounds for the rest of the movie. The worst of it all -- they left all of their garbage on the floor upon exiting the theatre. I guess this blog post wouldn't have been complete without one of my 'I hate people wtf do I need to reraise you?!' moments. 

9pm: Dinner of Vietnamese noodle salad. 

I hope to have more of these jam-packed days. Turning the day into a game where I try to fit as much as I can into it is really fun!