I've seen a lot of cool things in my life...

But that....was...AWESOME! (That was a Chris Farley reference...)

Okay, so yesterday I was working in my tiny summer cubicle next to a window on the 3rd floor of our building when I heard what I thought was a drum line on the street (BA-DA-DA-DA-DA, BA-DA-DA-DA). I looked out the window and just saw a semi-truck going by, so I figured it was just stopping hard or something. I see a lot of interesting things out this window...maybe I'll blog about that next; but anyway...

Then, in the distance, maybe a mile to the east, I saw these two, huge, black, mushroom-shaped clouds going into the sky. My first thought was, "Whoa. I get to see a lot of interesting things out this window." Then I felt kind of concerned because the two clouds obviously meant two explosions. There were 4 helicopters circling the rising black smoke within moments. It was pretty cool. I hoped no one was hurt. I kind of wanted to jump in my car to go see what was happening up-close, but I didn't.

I got home at the end of the day and did a little research, only to find out that Batman was responsible.

I'm not talking nonsense here...They are actually filming the next Batman movie here in Chicago this summer, and it turns out they used the old Brach's Candy factory (not too far from where I work) as Gotham Hospital.

(Plot spoiler alert...) When you go to see the new Batman movie next summer, and there's a scene with Gotham Hospital on a nice, sunny day, it's going to get blown up.

And I got to see it live. You gotta love Chicago.

I actually found video of it on youtube, so I'm posting it here. The people shooting the footage use some colorful language, but I'd say it's worth listening to the audio to hear the, uh, "drumline."

New Chimney

We got a new chimney a week or so ago. It's probably not too exciting for those of you who are reading this, but I am just giddy about it. Okay, so I'm not giddy, but I am tremendously thankful that the job is done, that we got (or at least hope we got) a fair price, that nobody fell off our roof, and that the old one never fell on the building next door. Here are some before, during, and after pics...I don't think you can see it here, but before the work was done, you could literally see through the old one: