After another hard week on the giant hamster wheel I was feeling ready to sip a well-earned drink from the water tube, nibble on some bird seed, and then go out and have some fun chewing through newspaper.

This weekend was a long weekend courtesy of Dr Martin Luther King Jr who worked his life to liberate white-collar employees like myself from the inconvenience of turning up on Monday. Thanks dude!

On Friday the Aussie crew from work went out for dinner at Firkin. I'm not sure whether it was a bar or restaurant and on that night it was pretty busy so neither aspect was great. The food wasn't too bad but we waited ages to get a table. Here's some trivia... here they call the main course "entree." And an entree is an "appetizer." Then checked out Mickey Finn's for one drink. I wasn't too impressed but this place is going to be the local so I'll need to get used to it.

Next day we made a pilgrimage to the First McDonalds Store replica in Des Plains, birthplace of the Big Mac. From this googie shrine restaurants sprouted across the globe. However the store was surprisingly modest: just a fenced off little shack, fandangled with neon tubes, and attended by uniformed mannequins. There was an operational McDonalds restaurant over the road but we decided to get Chinese for lunch instead.

From that kitsch fast food mecca we moved to an equally significant building: the Bahá'í Temple in Wilmette. The temple seemed to serve two purposes. Obviously it is chiefly a place of worship for Bahá'ís. Then it is also a way of attracting newcomers to the faith. Godless tourists who were visiting just to take pictures seemed to be more tolerated than welcomed. I found it challenging to invent an appropriately sincere expression of deference before entering the holy building. We were greeted in the visitors area by two representatives of the faith. I'm wary of those earnest religious types. First you listen to their spiel; then you ask a few questions; and next thing you know you're sitting in a bible study group going over the main stories of the Old Testament. It's happened to me before. But they were cool enough and not too pushy. One of them was disowned by his Muslim family in Pakistan because he became a Bahá'í. The faith is based on the message from Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892) who is the messiah, the second coming, the manifestation of God, etc. and the writings of the various prophets: Krishna, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Bab. Apparently all of these people are all in basic agreement with eachother. There are minor differences in the details. The example our guide gave us was that under Islamic law it is OK to kill non-Muslims. The Bahá'í however just don't use the nasty bits of the various religions and instead concentrate on what the prophets said. I'm not too sure what their position is on the big Catholic issues like abortion and gay rights, perhaps they just don't care. Anyway, after the introduction we checked out the main temple. While in there I took the opportunity to make a quick prayer for snow. None of the 9 prophets have delivered yet.