Top Ten Mondays!!!! PLUS: Dave Visits the City of 1,000 Walgreens

Where to begin?  Today has been hectic.  Due to my extremely awesome, exciting weekend, I am finding it hard to adjust back to the nose-to-the-grindstone mentality of college life.  A piece of evidence to support that theory can be found in the fact that I left my cell phone in my dorm room today; this was a first, and I constantly felt like I was missing an important phone call all day.  Also, I had a test in conducting that turned out to be harder than expected.  Also, I have to finish the orchestration for a piece I'm writing, and it needs to be done this week.  Also, I have two test in the next two days.  As a result of my heightened state of nervousness, I felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off all day.   Yet here I sit, poised and determined, like the Cowboy of Maturation atop his trusty Horse of Misconception, ready at any time to blaze the Trail of Reliability that lies directly in front of the OK Corral of OKness.  Whatever the case, it's clearly time for....

TOP TEN MONDAYS!!!!  Today's topic, as voted by over 50% of America: Dave's Top 10 Favorite Elephant Jokes!  Like last week, I can't claim originality for these.  Most of them come from two reliable sources, my dad and my Uncle Steve.  The elephant joke is a "diamond in the rough" as far as jokes go.  The whole genre of elephant jokes has its own character, style, and delivery that sets it apart (and, in my opinion, above) from other joke genres.  Enough disclaimers, let's get started with...

• #10- What weighs 6000 lbs. and dances?  Cinderelephant
• #9- What time do the elephants in the jungle swing through the trees?  Between 3-4 p.m.
• #8-  Why are Pygmy's so short?  They went into the jungle between 3-4 p.m.
• #7- How do you shoot a blue elephant?  You shoot it with a blue elephant gun.
• #6- How do you shoot a green elephant?  You shoot it with a green elephant gun.
• #5- How do you shoot a pink elephant?  You hold its nose till it turns blue, then you shoot it with a blue elephant gun.
• #4-  Why do elephants paint their toenails red?  So they can hide in cherry trees.
• #3-  Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?  It works.
• #2-  What's do a plum and an elephant have in common?  They're both purple...except for the elephant.
• #1- Tarzan said, "Here come the elephants!"  Jane said, "Here come the plums!"  Jane is colorblind.

So, there you have it.  The world's finest conglomeration of elephant jokes in one blog post.  

Now, back to the cliff-hanger that I left dangling in the third sentence of this.  Just what was so exciting about my weekend?  On Saturday morning, I drove up to Chicago with my high school track coach,* Steve Gifford, who was running the Chicago Marathon the next day.  We went to the Running Expo at McCormick Place and spent about an hour looking at stuff that only runners would find cool.  Then, he dropped me off at Moody so that I could visit with the intrepid Joshua Hochstettler.  After "sidewalking" around Chicago, the two of us attended the Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert in the evening.  We got to see a dazzling performance by Josh Bell who played the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, as well as "Rondo and Cappriciosso" by Siant-Seans.  He also wowed us with an encore that featured "Variations on an American Folk Song (Yanke Doodle).  That man is good at what he does.  After Bell, we got to see the orchestra's rousing rendition of Saint-Seans 3rd Symphony.  It was truly an unforgettable concert.  Little did I know, but the theme from Saint-Seans's Symphony No. 3 was also used in the movie "Babe"

The next day, I watched Steve run in the Marathon.  The winner of the race was Sam Wanjeru from Kenya in a course-record time of 2 hours, 5 minutes, and 41 seconds with Steve not far behind in 2:59:10.  It was a majestic sight seeing thousands of people running around Chicago.  It was also really fun to see what some people were wearing.  I'm pretty sure I saw the Grim Reaper run by me at the 3.5 mile mark.

Besides the marathon and the CSO, here were some other highlights from my Chicago weekend:

• Going into Giordelli's Chocolate Shop to get free samples with Josh....twice!
• Reading "Pearls Before Swine" in Borders
• Seeing a man painted entirely silver pretending to be a dancing, robotic statue on Michigan Ave.
• Seeing a man painted entirely silver being talked to by two police officers on Michigan Avenue.
• Forgetting to wear a belt to the Chicago Symphony Concert
• Walking right next to the Sears "Willis" Tower.  It's pretty tall.

*- and father