Oprah: The Day of the Show

We wake up at 4 to primp and preen. Caught the hotel shuttle at 5 a.m. We take the blue line hop off and walk, take the number 20 Madison bus, and then walk some more. And finally we arrive. Oh yea. We did it! Oprah is just as kind and genuine in person as she is on tv. We watch a show about dogs! We were selected because I wrote in when they asked for dog lovers. We saw dogs. A dog that could count (everyone in America is going to be talking about Maggie), dogs that danced, jumped rope, did handstands on their people's hands, the littlest dog in the world (little Boo Boo was scared to death), and a little Italian Greyhound with only two legs. The show was actually a follow up to last season's most highly rated show about puppy mills. A man from Pennsylvania talked about legislative initiatives.

This is one of about 50 pictures we took of every sign on the block. When we were done cheesing it up. We hit the new Oprah store. We carefully selected all sorts of things tshirts, mugs, key chains, note cards, even socks.

Then it was off to see the sites. We packed it all in to a 8 hour spree through the city. We ate Chicago style pizza, saw the Art Institute, ESPN Zone, Crate and Barrel, the Millennium Park, that big bean thing that we didn't know the name of, and the American Girl Doll Store. We must have walked 20 miles. No kidding.

Luckily Chicago has all sorts of beautiful spots to sit and rest.

Deb bought Erin her very own Bitty Baby and clothes and all sorts of goodies.

We visited a farmers market and saw the weirdest site of all. A lady was just carrying one (1) ear of corn. Who ever heard of just buying one corn. This summer Mom bought me a bushel of 30 ears of corn. And here's this lady just walking around with one! And I do believe that every homeless person in Chicago asked us for money. One lady asked me to give her the bus money so that she could go to a battered women's shelter. We saw a homeless lady and her baby struggling under a heavy load and then when she got closer we realized um there's not a baby in that bucket. Everyone in Chicago was super friendly though to two country gals with bad sense of direction.