Things over my house...

This post I decided to title "Things over my house." After coming back from Japan, most of the month of August had several interesting things over our house for some reason. The first item caught my eye while eating lunch on the couch one afternoon. I happened to look out my window towards the Sears tower and I catch this very slow moving, white spec. I'm used to seeing airplanes, and this was traveling way too slow. You could also tell this thing was way, way up there. I happened to have my camera nearby with my 300mm lense on it and grabbed this picture. So to give you an idea of size, a shot like this of the moon would take up half the frame.

This picture didn't tell me too much, so after I brought it into photoshop, I was able to zoom in more to see what the actual outline was.


Nope, not a UFO. My guess is a very high altitude balloon of sorts. It moved like a balloon, it was very slow. The only odd thing is that it was moving West, generally winds would push things East (leaving room for speculation here). Seriously though, has to be a balloon.

There is an annual tradition in Chicago called the Chicago Air and Water Show. I immediately turn into a 3 year old once I hear those jets flying overhead. I actually have an almost 3 year old next door to me, and he does the same thing, so I know. Any plane that flies overhead he stops what he is doing, points at it, and with a big smile says "Airplane!". That was me that week.

The cool thing is they practice overhead for a couple of days leading up to the airshow, so it is like 4-5 days of really cool jets flying around. Now in years past I lived right off the lake, so I would just camp out on the shore for front row seats. Now I have a rooftop deck off my office in the house, and I sit out there and watch them circle overhead. To give you an idea of how close they circle overhead, these shots were all taken from my deck.

Cool vapor!


Blue Angels in formation


If you wondered how low they fly around the city, here you go.

The team in formation taking a turn over my house.

Later in the show an F-18, F-22, and I think a P-51...oh and a commercial jet off in the distance.

I actually posted these for two reasons. First, I think they are really cool. Second, during this whole week, all of my conference calls for work sounded like I was on a runway at O'Hare. I'm thinking this will explain things a bit more!