August Calendar: not as quiet as it sounds - nearly two dozen events, including Willies, kayaks and cocktails

Hear that sound? That faint, chirping crickets sound? It's August, and a lot of people and institutions are taking the month off, as if they expect summer to finally arrive this year.

Don't be fooled, however. For those of us not being remanded to the countryside, there's a rich, if reduced selection of events. Just this Tuesday, there's a great panel at the Cultural Center on Burnham and beyond that includes Carl Smith, Dunn and Felsen and more. On Wednesday, AIA Chicago is offering a tour of Optima's Old Orchard Woods. On Thursday, Herb Berg discusses the underbelly of Chicago for Friends of Downtown, also at the Cultural Center. SEAOI's SEPAC has its cocktail part at the Cliff Dwellers, complete with spectacular views of Millennium Park, CAF offers up its third and final panel on Reinventing Public Investment, Sundee Wislow and Sara Beardsley discuss the Greening of Wee Willie, the tower formerly known as Sears, for AIA Chicago, which also has a session on working with the GSA, and a kayak tour of downtown architecture, while APA considers lessons from the last boom. And no matter how many people skip town, there'll always be AIA Chicago's First Tuesdays Happy Hour and ARE Study Halls.

Lean back in your lawn chair, watch the sprinkler oscillate across the lawn, take your Long Island ice tea in hand and check out all the great August events here. (Keep the sprinkler away from your laptop - you know this, yes?)