Baseball and Timeless Art

Brock has a goal of seeing a game in every baseball park in the United States...well, today he got one park closer to that goal. We saw the White Sox play the Angels at Cellular Field!

It was a great game with the perfect mix of longball and shortball. What is that, you ask? Ha! Allow me to explain, you baseball-illiterate person. (Don't feel bad! I'm only married to the biggest baseball fanatic on the planet, which is the only way I even know anything about the sport!) °Ü° Longball is what the Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox like to play...they stack their teams with a lot of power sluggers who can hit home run after home run. The Angels, on the other hand, play more shortball...a single here, a double there, a stolen base here, which adds up to run after run. Well, this game had it all! Home runs, stolen bases, the whole shebang. There was a great play where an Angels player (I forget who) got pickled trying to run home...whoever had hit the ball got tagged out at first, and the guy on third was like halfway home so he didn't know whether to go for it or get back on the bag. Well, he went for it...saw that the catcher had the ball...so he headed back towards third...the catcher threw the ball to the third baseman...and all this time the Angels player was side-stepping between the two of them, trying not to get tagged. He eventually tried to dive into third base, but was tagged out before he touched it. Shoot!

Not that it mattered. We beat the White Sox 9-5 :) Brock and I sat in front of the cutest family. They were, of course, all White Sox fans and it was a mom, a dad, and their four daughters (the oldest of which was probably 11). The dad was really funny and everytime the Angels would make a good play he'd lean in right between us and yell "BOOOO!!!" We had a good time messing around with them the whole game :) I love baseball!

After the game, we switched over to "chick-mode" and headed downtown to go to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is the art museum in town. We wandered through it for a little over an hour and saw beautiful paintings by Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Cassat, Hopper and more. I took tons of pictures, don't worry! I really need to update my Facebook photo album for you guys. Hrrmm. I'll do that once I'm at home in Colorado, so just hang on for one more week!

Here are some of my favorites...

Paris Street: Rainy Day

I'm not sure why I love this painting so much. Maybe it's because I love rain? There's nothing like the smell, feel, and sound of soft rain, and that's what this painting makes me imagine.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte

This painting is just absolutely mesmerizing. Not only is it huge (about 7'x10'), but it's painted with tiny dots, not brushstrokes. This method is called pointillism, and, obviously, not many artists other than Seurat ever attempted it because of how tedious the process is!

Nighthawks
This painting haunts me. Hopper began painting it immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Perhaps that's why utter melancholy washes over me when I look at it.

La Promenade Sur La Falaise
This is my favorite Monet. Can't you almost feel a silken breeze caressing your face? I can. This painting makes me want to close my eyes, inhale deeply, and slowly exhale throw my nostrils. Try it. Why spend an hour doing yoga at the gym when you can just look at this?

Anyway, after our trip to the Art Institute we grabbed some dinner at Corner Bakery Cafe, and headed over to Barnes and Noble where we read books for a little while. When it got dark, we biked to Navy Pier and rode the Ferris wheel! If you're going to ride a Ferris wheel, do it at night. We saw all of Chicago lit up and it was the next best thing to starlight (which, unfortunately, you don't get much of in the city!). And, of course, riding a Ferris wheel at night is so much more romantic :) Did you know that it's a rule that you have to kiss when your cart reaches the top? At least that's what Brock tells me ;)