Crosswalks to Nowhere

We decided to spend a gloomy, rainy Labor Day at Putting Edge Glow-in-the-Dark Mini Golf in Hoffman Estates.

That's Lisa in her pink Chicago Bulls hat-- the logo was glowing eeeerily, much like everything else there.

Here's Emma with an octopus. Or a squid.

Man, blacklights really cheese off digital cameras-- especially the camera in my phone, which is what I used to take this. And you should have seen what these photos looked like when Photoshop tried to "auto-correct" them.

Details of our visit to Putting Edge are covered in our September 9 episode of The Cheap Date Show.

As I was walking to my car yesterday afternoon, I saw this little fall display standing at the ready behind the Vail Street Jewel.

I'm always a little amused by the fact that many of my fellow suburban co-dwellers actually pay for dead corn stalks, but hey-- if there's a market for it... :-)

And inside those neatly stacked big boxes we find...

A sure sign that Fall is here.

Summer certainly screamed by this year: the kids' (and Lisa's brother's) graduations seem like only a couple weeks ago, and it's tough to fathom all the time that passed between then and last week's reunion weekend for my parents' 55th anniversary with my siblings and nieces and nephews.

We covered a lot of ground, that's for sure. On to the next season. :-)

I had some time to spare at lunchtime today, so I decided to check out the State Street Marshall Field's Macy's store.

(You may remember my thoughts on the name change, which I covered in this blog entry last year.)

My verdict after spending about an hour in the store: it's the same store it's always been.

Look above: the clock is still there-- so are the "Marshall Field and Company" nameplates. And hey-- the green awnings are still there, only now they say "Macy's." (Sorry about the poor photo quality-- a Motorola phone isn't the best camera.)

Look below: OMG, it's the Walnut Room, filled with people eating lunch! I thought they were supposed to close it and use it for storing New York Yankees jerseys or something.

I spoke to a couple of people who work there, and they both told me that the traffic they've seen has been about the same as before the switch, if not a little busier. And the funny thing about my conversations was that the people actually sounded like they came from Chicago-- weren't they all supposed to be displaced by people with Brooklyn accents?

And why was the store crowded and the cash registers ringing? Wasn't this place supposed to be quieter than a museum?

I bought a box of Frango Mints (curiously, with the Marshall Field's name on it) and nowhere did I see a guy who looked like Ralph Kramden with a pushcart selling hawt dawgs.

I did see this neato Motorola cellphone vending machine:

And this awesome iPod vending machine:

(Side note: You can get an iPod Shuffle-- the now-old-style 1 GB version-- in this machine for something like $50. That's a deal.)

The quality of the merchandise seemed pretty much the same. The furniture and higher-end home stuff all seemed the same to me. I didn't go through the clothing closely because there wasn't enough time.

So, to sum it all up, the store on State Street is pretty much the same as the one that was there two weeks ago. Only the name has changed.