strange days indeed

First off, the apartment we stayed at in Chicago? More than I ever imagined: Three bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, 2 blocks from Michigan Ave, 2 balconies, floor to ceiling windows with views of the Hancock building, the lake, and the Sears tower. And it was on the 40th floor. Decadent doesn't begin to describe it.

Saturday morning we got up with a vague plan of heading south, finding a cheap diner to eat breakfast and then snagging a cab to the museum. That went really well. We found a perfect little place to eat and got a cab outside a hotel on Michigan. I even nailed the price: $15-$20 for the 4 of us. We got to the museum before noon and wandered around. It was really cool though a wee more kid friendly than I expected. At some point I managed to put my ticket to the Star Wars exhibit down (there were these terminals all over the museum where you could send emails to people and I did just about everywhere!) and I think that's where it happened. Why oh why did I not just put the ticket in my pocket or purse I'll never now. There was about 30 minutes of retracing steps, some lump-in-the-throat "No, seriously, you guys should just GO" moments as I was convinced I was out of luck, but low and behold thanks to Melissa having brought the receipt and some extremely nice ticket people I got in. We got a sweet picture of the 4 of taken right when we walked in. The exhibit was really cool. Lots of props and costumes and models and stuff. Unfortunately it wasn't made clear that the sit-in-the-Millennium Falcon thing was completely separate, but Reuben got some sweeeeet pictures of the model they used in A New Hope. Insanely detailed. We were there for about an hour or so, breezed through the gift shop and decided to head back and catch a beer at the Billy Goat.

First impressions of the Billy Goat weren't great, but the experience got increasingly better. Especially after Melissa and I had Horny Goats to drink (Traci, you would LOVE it: Bacardi Limon, 7UP, and a splash of cranberry juice!) and we found out State had won that day and Notre Dame lost. We watched some of the Illinois game and though we didn't get to see it live were happy to hear they beat Ohio. We then headed back up to the apartment after stopping at Trader Joes for some nosh (man, I love that place), watched YouTube videos, and had way too much fun with the very expensive very high powered telescope. Around 8:30 we decided we should head out on the town for a little bit. I was under the mistaken impression we were east of Rush. After walking 4 blocks west we discovered our error and after stopping at a little pub for a pint headed back. Rush Street was something else. The Bentley dealership on Rush Street was something else. We rubbed elbows with the rich and gazed into shop windows and just had a good time. We stopped into one more place for another pint, Peter bought me a birthday shot of Jameson and the evening took a turn.

I'm not going into details, but the evening got ugly. Really ugly. Tears were shed and people got shoved around and the night dissolved into a Jerry Springer-like atmosphere. It was really unfortunate as we'd had such a great time up until that point for the most part. Needless to say the majority of Sunday was strained though Peter very wisely chose to sleep for most of it including the drive back. I'm sad to say it probably goes down as the worst birthday in recent history though the first birthday we were together I got to see Jeff Tweedy, and the second birthday I got to see OCMS both of which are hard to top. The majority of the weekend really was fun. But I'm pretty sure there's a new "normal" in town and things are not ever going to be the same.

The bed? Can't be cut. The stairs have got to come out. I need to set something up with my front neighbor soon as we're going to need her help on this and we're both already sick of not having an actual living room. It's like we're still downstairs as one room is completely unusable.

I'm off this afternoon and am hoping to get the rest of my kitchen up along with the bookcases and little end tables and whatnot. Maybe tonight is a good night to scrape together some pennies and head back to our favorite waterhole. I think we both need it.