best date of 2009, a summary

sunday and monday were a blur of good times. mostly because of this one up there.

lindsay came down from milwaukee on sunday and got us a room at the swanky conrad hotel on rush street. we met at 4:20 had some drinks, and headed over to the best pizza restaurant in the world, Gino’s East which turned out to be closer than expected. ($5 cab ride).

wait, a pizza restaurant for a date? well it was either that or steaks, but because lindsays last bf was a billionaire, we agreed that there wasnt any restaurant in the world that i could taker that would impresser so we decided to just eat somewhere that tasted good and we could relax. so she picked ginos. which made me happy.

what made me even happier was we got there in time for the fourth quarter of the Bears game. now take notes ladies who wish to woo me: when we got to the hostess who was set to sit us i asked “where can we sit with a view of the TV?” hostess said, “sorry only place to see the game would be at the bar.” at that point i figured, guess i wont be seeing the end of the game, but miss wisconsin was all, we can totally sit at the bar. and after about two minutes there, i was like, i dont care what happens the rest of the night because right now i have a great view of a tie bears game in front of me, an Old Style in my hand, a deep dish pizza being cooked for me, and a super hot babe beside me. how much better can it get?

besides the pizza being freaking delicious and 100 times better than it should have been, da bears miraculously beat the Super Bowl champs with a field goal with mere seconds left to play in the game. an hour later we were at chicagos united center, best known as the place where Michael Jordan won his last few rings. we had great seats to see Bruce Springsteen and he put on one of the best shows id ever seen, and easily the best Bruuuuce show id ever attended.

he played all of Born to Run, and 20 other tunes, in a three hour marathon show that had no breaks, no time outs, and no encores, just one great tune after the next. i sang almost the whole night and somehow i still have my voice tonight. in fact its 3:19am and i cant believe im alive.

why? because after the show we thought it would be easy to catch a cab back to the hotel. we knew we were going to be drinking the whole night (which we did) and there we were walking around not the best part of chicago. plus lindsay was decked out and strolling around atop some very high, high heels. i was all, sorry i didnt have this planned out better, but she was a trooper and didnt complain.

after a while it became apparent that because of all the cars leaving the area, no cabs could drive in, so when we spotted a Billy Goat Tavern (home of the SNL classic skit “cheezborger, cheezborger, no pepsi, coke” we decided to grab a quick cheezborger and another drink.

the line for burgers was long but moving along mighty fast. but we sidled up to the bar first so we could have some drinks in our hands as we waited to place our food order. the place was loud and happy because most of the crowd was there post-bruce and the rest of them were there to celebrate da bears’ upset victory.

one guy even tried to get on top of the bar to demonstrate the boss dancing on top of the piano until a very authoritative voice told him to get the f down. it was classic chicago. “BECAUSE I SAID SO” was eventually yelled. we ate we drank we made friends with people from Detroit, we drank more, we drank even more and soon we were some of the last people left.

got a cab and sped back to the hotel. got there and it was only 1:15am. strangely wasnt drunk. wasnt even close to being drunk. all senses. all smiles. no apologies. wanted more booze. whats this a room service menu? ordered booze to the room, ignored the price. bro popped open the bubbly. bubbly got drained faster than either of us realized and for hours we laid in bed talking and talking and laughing and talking

until i said now is the part of the evening where i have you do some crazy ass shiznit. to which she said, let me drain my glass first. and she emptied it and did stuff that she could honestly say she didnt dream of doing. ha! then we got comfy and talked even more. good, deep, discussions about real things. imagine that.

and this morning we woke up, decided brunch was the right call. ate in the same place as the handsome bears tight end, who was easily recognized because he had a bears hat on (backwards), and as we said goodbye penciled in seeing each other again on new years. will it come true? who knows. but i do know i really fell hard for chicago this time out. maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the company, maybe it was all the learning that went on during my two days working at the trib. maybe it was da bears, maybe it was da bruce. maybe it was all of that mixed with celebrating my moms birthday and reuniting with all of my old grade school friends, most of whom turned out way more successful than i ever hoped theyd be.

if the plane ride gets hijacked by martians and you never see me again, its because i had one of the most fulfilling working vacations ever, and theyre trying to suck the fun out of my brain like i was a human slurpee of happiness. which is kinda what i feel like right now.