Saturday July 8, 2000

Today was a day spent with Susan, Secretary from ASFAR. Havens and I got up, had breakfast, showered and got on the road by noon or so. It was a short, mostly uneventful drive up. Thought it got a bit hectic when we got close to Chicago. I forgot how long it took us, but it was under two hours I believe.

I finally got to see Susan, she is an interesting person. Although she says she wasn’t a hippie she seemed like an aging hippie to me. 40 something and pretty radical. She has long graying hair and is extremely short and small. She never married but lives with a boyfriend, Paul who does radio voice overs. He has a very deep voice, and it is perfect for saying “Channel 8 Action News at 11″ and that is what he does.

Since they didn’t have plans for us we went downtown to the taste of Chicago and then wandered around downtown, we walked for many hours, going to the Navy Pier, Taste of Chicago, Shedd Aquarium, Museum of Science & Industry, and all sorts of stuff downtown.

I was surprized by what a homebody Susan seems to be, she has living in Chicago for over 10 years and often I knew more places in the city than she did. I guess she doesn’t do much besides go to work. Susan is a rather timid, cautious person it seems. Also kinda lazy, she said she hates the job she is in, but doesn’t feel like looking for another.

She talks about how mad she was when she was younger about how she was robbed of her freedom by her parents, but it seems she wouldn’t really do anything with that freedom anyways.

She is a far cry from a leader, but as a secretary she works fine, she can follow through fairly well with intrsuctions she is given but doesn’t like to think up stuff on her own. This and her reserve makes a strange combination with her political radicalism.

We walked around the city for many hours, and my feet are still sore. Chicago is a great place, Matthew says he doesn’t like any cities bigger than Sheldon. Iv’e been to Chi-town a few times and I really like it, I don’t think I’d want to live here, but it is cool to visit.

We ran out of ideas so walked over to the museum to see Sue, the new T-Rex they have which is the most complete skeleton in the world. We got there a bit after it closed so could only stand in the entry way and look in at it.

Then we walked over to the aquarium which is one of the places that I haven’t been in Chicago. We were able to sneak past he ticket office and avoid the $15 charge. Either I snuck past or they just didn’t care since it was ten minutes to close. We walked around their Amazon exhibit and then got booted out.

Then we went in search of something to eat. We wanted one of the novel restaurants in Chicago that were unique to the city and we decided to eat at the House of Blues. Unfortunately we had no idea where it was. We asked a few people and everyone have us different directions. We got tired of walking and then just ducked in the first decently priced restaurant we found. Amazingly I had actually been there before. A few years ago with my family, incredible in a city that big I found my way to the same place to eat. I don’t even remember the name but they had autographed pics up on the wall.

After dinner we went back to THABOAT and drove to Susan’s place again. We sat and talked a bit then we worked on making buttons for ASFAR. Susan bought a button machine and Hew designed a new button and we cranked off a few. I had been getting along great with Susan so far, but at one point when we were making buttons I asked her to join NYRA and she refused. That really irked me. Here I was, President of NYRA, sitting here making ASFAR buttons and she wouldn’t even join!! Grrr so much for trying to work together.

Susan has this book that has a lot of records about grants and she said she didn’t want it and would give it to me, she said it didn’t help her any but I think I can use it to get NYRA some money.

It is the end of the third day and the trip is going really well so far. Doing lots of things meeting lots of people. I’m just easing in though, because affter I leave Jackie I’ll be on my own a lot. Ahhh Jackie….

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