North Avenue Beach

Last Saturday we wanted to head to the beach on the north side for the Red Bull Flugtag. The event entails teams of people who build makeshift airplanes to fly off a pier over a body of water to see which team's plane can go the furthest. Unfortunately, we did not check the news in the morning, and the event was cancelled due to the strong rip currents in the water lately. I did snap a few pics of the beach though.

I also discovered what the tall building I had a picture of in a previous post. It is the Hancock building, which is the 4th tallest building in Chicago.

First Cubs Game

A friend called me up on Friday with a free extra ticket to the Cubs game Saturday. It turns out they were pretty good seats too, right behind home plate about 25 rows up. I have plans to go next weekend too, but this was a great day for baseball and to experience Wrigley Field. I do have to say that since the Cubs are doing so poor, many players in the game are from the minor league team, which happens to be in Des Moines.

View of the rooftop seating that is across the street from the stadium. 

Outside right field

"Wrigleyville" businesses

Main entrance behind home plate

Across the street there is a random noodle, for seemingly no purpose. 

Great seats, especially for free.

Although they did not have as many exotic food choices as Seattle, I did get some Chicago Italian beef. with hot peppers. 

Chicago Food

I am finding out that one of the best things about Chicago is the food. There is an incredible amount of great places to eat all around the city. We had extra visitors staying in the apartment for the last 2 weeks, so we have been eating out almost every night. We had Italian, Pakistani, Chicago-style pizza, and BBQ just to name a few. I also haven't been packing a lunch, so I have frequented several places by my office building downtown: Potbelly (famous Chicago deli chain), an Italian cafe, and a Mediterranean grill. 

Pakistani/Indian family-style dinner

Amazing ribs and pulled pork. The chef has won several competitions on the Food Network. 

Real Chicago-style deep dish pizza

 I went exploring after work on Friday and saw this outside the Chase Bank tower.

Exploring Chicago

Since I arrived, I have found some very good food and places to go. This picture is a view towards downtown just a few streets south of the apartment. I thought this was the Willis (Sears) Tower, but after walking around more, it is just a very similar building.

There are large depictions of the Puerto Rican flag over the street on both entrances to the neighborhood.

The apartment is just one block away from one of the larger parks in the city, Humboldt Park. The park spans over 200 acres and has a large lake in the middle.

Medco is right in downtown Chicago, and has a very different scene than Des Moines.

Willis (previously Sears) tower is just 2 blocks away

View from the 23rd floor of my building.

Another great part of the city is the food. This is a jibarito, which is a sandwich with a bun that is made out of flattened plantains. Very good.

I got done early on Friday due to the holiday weekend, so I went exploring downtown area. I heard about the "flagship" Walgreens store downtown, and went to go see that. It is one of the oldest Walgreens stores in the city, and was redesigned into a two-level store to display new Walgreens store features. One of the most interesting changes is the pharmacy design. They are looking to put walk-in clinics along with pharmacies to see if it will be useful.

Chicago Begins

I am currently in Chicago for 10 weeks (2 rotation blocks), until the first weekend of November. My first rotation here is at Medco Health Solutions, which is a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM). A PBM is hired by health insurance companies to do consulting and manage the pharmacy coverage on behalf of the insurance company. One way a PBM helps the insurer is when it looks at the patient demographics of an insurance plan to figure out if lowering the cost of a medication will encourage use of a generic instead of a brand medication that are identical. The approach is one that uses both economic and clinical data to get the best patient outcomes while finding opportunities to lower healthcare costs. It is a side of pharmacy that is not very common, but also interesting. The company has several different business minds and accountants, along with pharmacists. It is a Fortune 50 company, and was just bought out by another PBM, called Express Scripts.

I am living with one of my good friend's sister, just west of downtown Chicago, in the Puerto Rican neighborhood. It was one of the better options I had in the area, as the commute is rather short at about 40 minutes to my rotation each way. 

Front of the apartment

Living room

My "room"

Kitchen

Iowa State Fair

One of Iowa's favorite events is the State Fair in August. It is a huge event with lots to see every day. The big new food item at the fair this year was a bacon wrapped corn dog, so naturally I had to get one (well two). The bacon is wrapped around the hot dog and then it is battered and cooked.

The exhibit building had just about everything, two of the larger competitions were flower displays and bees wax sculptures.

Each year there are the famous ice and butter sculptures that everyone lines up to see.

Random assortment of ice sculptures

Each year a butter cow is on display, and the other display was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. All of the sculptures are completely made of butter, and stand about 4 to 5 feet high.

Besides the food, the fair also has the largest of everything in the state, some truly incredible feats.

That would be a nice trophy on my wall.

 There was also a model of a DeLorean car (from Back to the Future) made from random food products.