weekend update!

Oh my. What a weekend I had in Chicago. Talk about getting exactly what I needed. Here is a brief summary.

Friday:
Afternoon:
I leave class, Meagan drives me to the airport. On the way there, we get stuck in the midst of a funeral procession. Yes, a funeral procession. We discuss the ways in which we are unfamiliar with funeral procession traffic etiquette. I am briefly afraid that I will be late to the airport, but we pass the entire procession and continue on our way.

Once in Chicago, I make it to Mel's apartment free from incident. I chill there until she gets home from work - we talk, giggle, gossip, order out for dinner. I consume half of what is quite possibly the most enormous meatball sub known to mankind and then we get ready to go out while drinking plenty of vodka/orange juice.

We hit two of Mel's favorite bars in Chicago, Delilah's and the L&L. At Delilah's, we drink a lot and are offered shots by someone who doesn't even try to suck us into conversation (which we appreciate). A discussion of how we became friends ensues, following which we detail the lack of any attractive guys at the bar, so we head to L&L.

At the train station, we take about twenty pictures of ourselves, giggling uncontrollably the entire time. Once at L&L's, we order another round and then notice that there are still no cute guys around and that we have, in fact, probably already had enough to drink so we head on home, holding hands down the street.

Saturday:
By the time we get up and out of the house, it's past 2. Oh well.

We hit the art museum and learn that language, as it turns out, is not transparent. Our deep artful appreciation of the miniature rooms goes only as far as, "hey, I'd really like to have that wallpaper." We discover that contemporary art is not for us, although a photo exhibition we see is pretty sweet.

We wander around Lincoln Park, browsing through girly things and talking about all the restaurants we see that we'd like to eat at. We feel especially classy walking through this high-class neighborhood with super big gulps from the 7/11.

Getting ready to go out requires aggressive hair styling and much debate about what our clothing choices for the evening should be. Once we're out the door, we head over to the Liar's Club, which turns out to not be such a hotspot for this particular night. Mel's friend Bill calls and invites us back over to Wrigleyville where things are apparently crazy.

Things are just as crazy as we suspected and become even more so. We have a few drinks, joke with all of Bill's friends, who seem to be enjoying our company. We head outside to wait for the trolley that has apparently been ordered for Bill's friend Jenny's birthday. Once on the trolley (which is well-supplied with drinks), headed down the street, Jenny apparently is very angry that Mel and I are there, as we were not invited. Bill and all his friends offer to pay for us and tell her to chill out but tension escalates.

A fistfight breaks out in the back of the trolley and soon Bill is bleeding. The trolley pulls over, and Mel and I, feeling the intensity, leave. We wander around looking for a place to go to the bathroom for awhile, and without any luck end up in a conveniently placed alley. On our way back to the train station, we see four police cars and a police van next to the trolley and wonder how things got so out of control so fast.

On our way back to the train station, Mel decides that really the fight broke out because we are too pretty and the girl whose birthday it was was afraid of us. At the moment, it seems like a pretty good theory. We get home safe, interrupted only by an interesting phone call from Mal.

Once home, we go straight to bed. At 6 a.m. Mel gets a text message from Bill informing her that he had just got out of jail.

For the first night in over a week, I sleep.

Sunday:
We get up and have brunch at the Twisted Spoke, which serves the best French toast I've ever eaten in my life. We then go see The Science of Sleep, a very interesting movie that I don't get and that leaves us with an unidentifiable feeling of some sort of uneasiness.

I pack everything up and head home. Reach home without incident, although as an aside, I think this whole "orange alert" thing at the airports is ridiculous and having to place my hand lotion and lipgloss in a ziploc bag is absurd.

All in all, a pretty sweet weekend. Exactly what I needed - distraction, sleep, and Mel.