That weekend marked the first Christmas party of the season for me.  And, I have to say, it was a fine one at that.  I flew up to Chicago Thursday afternoon and met Donette in Town-I-Can-Never-Remember, Illinois.  Her office was having a holiday party Friday evening, and it takes me at least one day to acclimate.  For dinner that night we tried out Lou Malnati’s, one of the endless pizza options in the area.  The topping selection was remarkably limited, but what they did have was quite good.  I’ll keep that opinion to my own pizza;  They just didn’t really have anything Donette liked so she was left a bit underwhelmed.

Friday she put in a good 1/2-day at the office, then we met up with everybody at a hotel in downtown Chicago.  After rounding everybody up, we all hopped in cabs and headed to dinner at the Kinzie Chophouse.  I’d been looking forward to this meal ever since I looked at the menu online.  After much careful consideration, I’d already decided on the Sesame Crusted Ahi Tuna.  One look at the steaks being wheeled out to all the other tables quickly changed my mind though;  I ended up with a 16 ounce Delmonico with lobster sauce.  I don’t know what ever made me think I would actually order fish at a steak house, and indeed I just couldn’t pull the trigger when the time came.  Remarkably, after that enormous meal, everybody still had enough energy left to go out, so we walked a short distance to 10pin Bowling Lanes.  Bowling isn’t really my thing, but it was a great time all the same.  We bowled two entire games (which was quite a while, considering there were six of us on each team,) then some of the group headed home and the rest of us headed over to the House of Blues.  We were enjoying some fine music, and the next thing you know the lights came on;  We’d actually closed a place down.

Saturday morning I would pay the price for this remarkably late night.  We did manage to get up and eat breakfast, then went right back to bed.  Whew, too old for those late nights I guess.  Finally, around 3:00 or so we decided we really should see some sites, so we headed out into the rain for a bit of light shopping.  The streets were absolutely insane;  You could barely walk down the sidewalk without people bumping into you constantly.  I wore out on that scene pretty quickly, but at least we could say we didn’t spend the entire day in the hotel room.  For dinner we met up with our friend Rick, who lives nearby.  He suggested Pazzo’s, which turned out to be a fine meal indeed.