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OKAY KIDS. WHO WANTS TO GO TO ELMHURST?

They have a Lapidary Museum!

Today's adventur is a trip on the Metra to do some touristing and also because I like trains. I will be seeing all the cultural sights that Elmhurst, Illinois has to offer, which should get me home in time for tea. At any rate it will get me out of the city while Pitchfork is happening. I've seen enough skinny jeans this year already to last me a lifetime.

While I'm gone your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to check out a pair of polls Clue has posted on Kickstarter incentives -- you can read more about why she's doing it here, and there are links to two polls. Voting is awesome, but I think the results will also be useful to people interested in running their own kickstarters. I know I'm interested.

I promise to take many interesting photographs and do my utmost not to break any limbs.

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I'M BACK.

The Lapidary Museum was way more awesome than I expected, not that my expectations were very high. There were also other people there, which I didn't expect given it's a museum of lapidary, but I guess it's a big draw in Elmhurst. While I was paying admission I mentioned to the octogenarian behind the counter that I'd come up from Chicago to see the museum, and she got all smiley and took me under her wing and gave me an informal tour. I tried my patented new "Actually listen to strangers when they want to tell you something" technique and learned quite a lot about German figurine carving.

After she left me to explore the rest of the museum on my own, I wandered around staring at a shit-ton of carved rock and taking pictures and generally enjoying myself and only very occasionally pretending to case the place for a heist.

One of the things I took a photo of was the Ivory Puzzle Ball, an intricate carving of 24 spheres, each inside the next, carved from a single piece of ivory (you can see some examples here). About twenty minutes later I was looking at some other shiny rocks when a woman came up to me and said, "I noticed you taking a picture of the puzzle ball."

Which, I'm not really sure how to respond to that, but she continued, "Going to try carving that at home?"

And I LOLed and shook my head, thinking she must have some reason to be talking to me about puzzle balls, and also unwilling to explain to her that I was taking a picture to share with The Internet. She said something about visiting as a kid and always being fascinated by it, and I mumbled something about yes, it's very interesting, and then she went off to look at something else.

I'm pretty sure she wasn't trying to make a pass because A) I think she was there with her husband and B) who picks up dates at a Lapidary Museum? Though I suppose it's not a bad idea, really, because at least you know the person is interested in esoteric things (and/or shiny rocks). I think I fell victim once more to "People inexplicably talk to me" syndrome, inherited from my mother.

I was going to go to the art museum, but I wouldn't have had enough time to really dig into it before the train came, and the next train after that was two hours later, so I ended up exploring a little bit of downtown -- they have a shop called It's Good To Be King which proclaims itself a store for those interested in "Chess, History, And Toy Soldiers" -- and then I caught the train back to Chicago. After which I found the Chicago French Market, which I knew in theory existed but had never seen, and will revisit because it's like a teeny tiny version of Reading Terminal Market in Philly and St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, both of which I love.

And then I got on a train with approximately two million hipsters and at least three million Cubs fans and came home.