lots and lots of water...

and not in the awesome Brad Paisley song way. on friday, we had a HUGE storm come through and pretty much the whole chicago area flooded. lots of things shut down - people's electricity, the eisenhower expressway (the major east-west highway to the city...picture 66 being shut down from the Beltway to DC), the kennedy expressway (north-south highway...so add portions of the Beltway shutting down and maybe even 270), and even my parents' sump pump.

that's right, we awoke to about 3 inches of water in our basement saturday morning. bummer. although we had nothing compared to some folks - my office got 18 inches in the basement, the company down there lost all of their computers, and our AC is broken (80 degree office on a monday is also a bummer). then, when alex and i took the train into the city for a work event saturday, we saw people in row boats going down their street. that's right - row boats. some underpasses even became swimming pools for children of irresponsible parents. it was chaos.

here's a picture of the street in front of my office on saturday afternoon.
thankfully, it's all clearing up now and people are starting to recover. you can tell by the streets lined with old carpet for the garbage folks to grab :)