Oprah Wednesday!

Today was Oprah Day!

We had to be at Harpo Studio’s this morning between 7am-730am (which means we had to wake up at 5:30AM!!!). We got in right away and had to check our coats, cell phones, and cameras, and they looked though everyone’s purses. Then they had the 300 member audience wait to be seated. And wait we did. Over an hour. We also had to sign a waiver giving them permission to use our images. One of the staff members warmed up the crowd by asking questions and talking to the audience. Today’s show was about big events of the past 25 years. So the staff member asked people what was a big event that was most memorable. I raised my hand and got picked! My response was that the Challenger explosion is one that I will always remember where I was. We were told that 300,000 people tried to get tickets for the October shows!

Oprah was much nicer and kinder than I thought she would be. She was average height, had puffy hair, and walked in holding her high heel shoes (she was wearing slippers). They started to tape the show a little after 9am. Her main topic was talking to Mark Fuhrman, the cop from the OJ Simpson case, and what was he doing now. The whole OJ thing was 15 years ago. Oprah believes OJ was guilty, as does Fuhrman. Fuhrman was very interesting to listen to (he told of all the mistakes that where made, about all the 100s of pieces of evidence that was not used to convict OJ, and how OJ was so guilty). The second guest was the mom and a mentor of a woman who was in jail for life for plotting with her lover to kill her husband. The show went past 11am. It was fun to watch how the show is made and how small the studio is. Sadly there were no free gifts. Our show will air October 11, 2010.

Next we were off to the Oprah Store! Lots of fun stuff to buy. After lunch we went to the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) and went up to the 103rd floor, which is 1,353 feet to the Skydeck! The Skydeck gives you a 360 view of Chicago. On a clear day you can see 4 states and 50 miles. For 25 years it was the tallest building in the world and on the Skydeck there is the Ledge! The Ledge is just that- a ledge that allows you to walk over the edge of the building a few feet. Its like a little glass box. As you can imagine it freaky walking out on the this piece of glass and looking down into space below you.

Then I had to go back to the hotel room and logon to my PhD class, while mom and Janet when for a tour of Chicago on a Double Decker bus. For four hour they toured Chicago! We all had Chicago Deep Dish pizza for supper.