The Tornado Hits

So the day started out very well. Sunshine, a nice breeze, still hundreds of degrees but hey, we take what we can get. I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in the morning. It was quite nice, and quite free, bonus. The lions were going nuts, growling louder than I've ever heard:

I know Joe likes giraffes:

My favourite animal right now is the meer cat:

Check out the one at the very bottom, just legs and a tail. How does he breathe?

I saw this pitcher plant in the BBC documentary Planet Earth. They keep sugar water in the bottom of their basins, then when the bugs come in to drink they coat the walls with stuff so the bugs can't get out, then ingest them. Cool.

Afterward I went to Millennium Park and watched the kids splash in the water. There's this cool fountain there that spits on people:

I noticed this one dad there who was wearing white shorts and no underwear. He was hung like a Mexican gorilla so I followed him around for a while trying to take pictures:
and not be noticed. There were a lot of little kids there too so I had to make it seem like I wasn't trying to take loads of pictures of them too. Life is complicated.
Then I went to the Buckingham Fountain. Look at the beautiful day.

Well that changed in five minutes.

So it started to rain, then it was the hardest rain I've ever seen, waves of water crashing on me, I couldn't see, I started to run to shelter, the wind blew the glasses off my face. I kept running, the water hurt, I couldn't see where I was going, I ran under a tree. Here's me under the tree:
Then the branches started blowing off the tree so I kept moving around it at the base as the wind kept changing direction. About five minutes later, I was on my hands and knees for about an hour in the rain and thunder and lightning looking for my glasses. I caught another 50 cases of pneumonia. I think that's the record. The whole point of going there was to see the fountain erupt 150 feet in the air. Here it is (not worth it!):

So now I can't see very far and my shoes are wet. It's not really safe to go outside. There was an article about it in the paper here. Best vacation ever!