Man, I’ve been getting just absolutely pummelled at work.  Beat down, I tell ‘ya.  All these short work-weeks are catching up with me I guess.  Sheesh.  It’s really cutting into my Internet time, I’ll tell you that much.

Anyway… Last weekend was our Chicago trip.  We flew out there bright and early Friday with the Martins and Belangers.  We headed down to Wrigley field with the Martins that afternoon and found a GREAT deal on four bleacher tickets.  (Just a tinge of sarcasm there… I have never paid that much for a sporting event in my life, and likely never will again.)  I would say it was worth it though; it was definitely an “experience”.  Plus, it was a double-header so we got two-fer-one.  By the end of the third inning, Doni was bestest friends with the entire section of course.  That girl is chatty, bless her heart.  We met some nice kids from New Orleans, St. Louis, and various other locales.  The Cubbies lost the first game, but won the second handily.  (Far as we know anyway… we didn’t actually make it to the end of the game; the team seemed to have the game under control, but Martin and I were losing control of the girls fast.)

Saturday I can’t really recall what we did all morning… not much I don’t imagine.  We hit the Lincoln Park zoo for a bit early in the afternoon, and then met up with Belanger down at the Pier later.  Listened to some tunes and “crowd watched” down there for a while, and then went and met Liz and some friends of hers for dinner.  We went to “Bin36” and it was pretty cool.  A little on the foo-foo side, but we had a blast.  Ate a bunch of wacky appetizers, and had some wine that our “interesting but nice” waiter suggested for us.  All in all, I’ll rate is as “inexpensive, fun… Two thumbs up”.  After that, for some reason I wasn’t really in the loop on, we went back to Lincoln Park and began a mission to visit every establishment that ended with “apostrophe S.”  For example, “Durkin’s” or “Kelly’s”.  Gotta have a theme I guess.  This little project ended badly.  Very badly.  That’s all I got to say about that.

Sunday we went and checked out the rest of the zoo… Pretty cool zoo overall, if a bit small-ish.  There was also some kind of false advertising on the hippos, which are of course a significant attraction of any self-respecting zoo.  The sign listing the animals clearly stated “HIPPOS”, but all we could find was one lonely pygmy hippo.  Difference of roughly 1400 pounds there I would guess.  This mild disappointment was offset by a very cool polar bear display though, so it all worked out.  After that, the Martin’s had to go catch their plane, so me and Doni hung out and watched the football games all day.  We went back to one of the “apostrophe s” places, and found it to be quite possibly the single best place to watch football in the entire world.  A bold statement, sure, but I feel an accurate one.  They had the NFL Sunday Ticket package, and little 15″ Plasma TV’s all over the place so you could watch whatever the heck you wanted only your own little personal TV.  Man it was awesome.