The Reality Tour

Remember Kramer's "J. Peterman Reality Tour" where he loaded people on a bus and drove them around Manhattan (and eventually much further to try to dump a couple bags of muffin "stumps")? I was recently back in Chicago for a brief visit and went to two places I think would wind up on the "David Reality Tour."

Maybe sometime soon I will try to come up with an exhaustive list and include a map, so that if anyone is so entirely devoid of things to do they could run around the North side of Chicago and breathe the air that I used to breathe. Places like Apple Tree, HPHS, Wilmette Beach... Might not be the most boring day of anyone's life.

The two places that occurred to me to add this time are Berland's House of Tools and Orphans of the Storm.

Berlands is like a museum experience combined with a shopping experience. Imagine the two aisles at Home Depot devoted to tools. Now imagine an entire store, about 8 times that volume, but devoted to the same range of applications. You can go and kill an hour or two just browsing and have a perfectly wonderful experience. Or, on the off chance you actually need something they are pretty nearly guaranteed to have it. Five stars, two thumbs up, highest recommendation.

Orphans of the Storm is an animal shelter. When I lived in Chicago my girlfriend and I adopted Kaylar there. It is the coolest shelter I have ever been to. Very nice people and lots and lots of cats. When you go in, you go through the dog section, and have to work your way back to the cats. In the front of the cat section there are a few cages, mostly for new arrivals, kittens, or ornery individuals. They let you open any of the cages to interact with the cats. The cool part though is the rook in the back. There's this room you can look into through a big picture window, and inside there could be between 20 and 200 cats at any given time. They have this big structure to climb on, and a separate room to go into with a pad on the floor for sleeping, and then a screened in patio where they can get some air. You can have the big fun going into the cat room and just sitting down on the floor. Within 5 minutes you are pretty much sure to be the heating pad for 4 or 5 cats. They are very friendly, somehow I think they know you might bust them out.

Kaylar

Anyway. Two very cool places in metro Chicago you might want to check out - even without the institution of the David Reality Tour.