As you may remember, I planned on watching the Chicago River be dyed a brilliant green shade of green this weekend. Definitely not the main reason I went to Chicago, but it was something that I wanted to see while there. I wanted to see it so badly that I even went as far as going to the river and looking at the water.

And so did about 25 bazillion people.

Here's where we run into a little snag though – the dying was supposed to take place at 10:45am, before the parade. We got there maybe 20-30 minutes early and managed to squeeze into a decent viewing area. 10:45 came and went, and nothing happened. People (myself included) started seeing lighter green streaks in the water, but that might have just been our imaginations. This definitely wasn't the transformation from "Eeeeeew!" to "Ooooooh!" that I was expecting. So when it got to be about 11:30 we left. Dissappointed, a bit frustrated, we left.

From the pictures I saw later that day, I have to assume that the dying happened at some point between 12 and 2pm.

I bet it was interesting to watch.

Turns out I'm actually a starfish.

This weekend I intend to watch the Chicago River turn green. I think I'm more interested in watching that than the big St. Patrick's Day parade that's going to be going on a little later in the day. HOPEFULLY I can get some video of the water during it's color transformation, but depending on how crowded it is, I can't guarantee anything.

I know there are a lot of logistical problems, but wouldn't it be cool if the Polar Bear Plunge got involved in this? They could set up a floating barge in the river for people to leap from into the refreshing Irishy water. I'm not sure what is used to dye the water, but I'm imagining something that would at least temporarily adhere to a person. Imagine a bunch of people emerging out of the water covered in – GREEN. Maybe they could reformulate it a bit so it stuck around for a couple of days. It'd be like a badge of honor – "I'm green because I risked my life to raise money for the Special Olympics!"