Ren
In the morning, I was meeting up with a friend that many of you may know... Ren of Renagerie! He was in town on a layover to an exotic destination, the exact location of which I've been instructed under threat of death to not divulge. In fact, I think he may have even been lying to me about it. Oh that Ren is a sneaky sneaky bastard!

Well, the stuff I can confirm is that he was waiting for me near the giant Picasso orangutan sculpture. From there, we headed north to the Hard Rock Cafe and then out to Michigan Avenue to check out the Apple Store and the new (albeit temporary) LEGO Store in Water Tower Place and then down to Pizzeria Due for a quick lunch.

This was the first opportunity I had to meet Ren and he's a really nice guy. I only wish I'd had more time to spend down there with him, but I had other stuff planned that you will soon read about.

Yes, Becky, that's a Pittsburgh Pirates hat being worn in the heart of Cubs country. I'm a daring soul.

If you ever have the chance to meet up with Ren, I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity. Katie and I really would like to get down to Texas sometime where I would not only have the chance to hang out with Ren some more, but we would both be able to meet Whall as well! Well, so long as Ren hasn't scared him off.

The only thing that could've made this experience better was if Sheila_CSR could've met up with us. There was talk between her and Ren that she would, but she punked out. Some garbage about not having an internet connection at home so she didn't know what was happening. Yeah, yeah, likely story.

Pitchfork
As for that "other stuff planned," I had tickets to go see day three of the Pitchfork Music Festival with my concert-going buddy, Eric. And oh was it a scorcher.

Being a three-stage affair, you kinda have to plan ahead how you want to see all the bands you want to see. We mostly had it figured out and checked out pretty much the entire set by Yuck, Superchunk, Cut Copy, and TV on the Radio while catching bits and pieces of Kurt Vile, Twin Sister, OFWGKTA, Shabazz Palaces, Kylesa, and Deerhunter.

There were a couple unplanned wrenches thrown in the works, one good and the other not so.

First the good... WXRT 93.1 FM picked Eric and I to go into the Green Room to meet DJ Marty Lennartz as he interviewed Tim Hoey, the multi-instrumental talent from the band Cut Copy. It was a fun diversion and set inside an air conditioned room with pup kegs of Heineken. How can you say no?

Now the bad... I started to catch low-grade heat exhaustion (if that's actually something you can "catch") at about 5 p.m. so we missed a little bit of music while I sat off to the side trying to relax in some shade and down some water. It was about 94 degrees out with a ridiculously high level of humidity and we were in direct sunlight for most of the day. Not fun at all. I finally fully recovered as the last act of the evening, TV on the Radio, took the stage.

Those of you following me on Instagram and Twitter know that I was posting photos throughout the day. I've got all of them collected in an album on Flickr for you to check out.

Overall, it was a great day punctuated with several high points including meeting Ren, hanging with Eric, seeing Yuck and Superchunk and Cut Copy play (the bands I was most looking forward to seeing), meeting Tim from Cut Copy, and, oh yeah, nabbing a copy of the 20th anniversary re-release of Nirvana's Bleach, one of my favorite grunge albums of all time.