Saturday, February 18

My morning started at 1 in the afternoon. I love sleeping in...Even though I wake up so early in the morning during the week, I still find that I get SO MUCH energy at night! I'm wide awake at midnight still and have to wake up so early!

I woke up, updated my blog from yesterday, cleaned up around the apartment a bit, and then gathered up enough energy to go for a terribly cold run outside. Ever since I came here, I've wanted to run by the lake. I hear there are lots of trails/paths down there. Beautiful scenery. I didn't manage to find those paths (I'm told that they're underground or something?!?) so I ran around our area, the Gold Coast. Man, it was cold. No, I haven't turned wimpy since I left Smithers, this wind is freezing. I ran for about 30 minutes braving that -6 (F) cold with a high of 9 degrees (F). Record lows for this time of year. Just my luck hey?
I came back and my roommates had come back from thrift store shopping. They immediately went into high gear for our appetizers starting at 5pm. They had a little over an hour before people would come over wanting appetizers! Chicago Semester had given a limit of 45 dollars for the appetizers...we'll give them the receipts later and get our money back...and we definitely used all of that money. It adds up fast when you have to think about serving 40-50 people. Plates, napkins, and enough bacon wrap thingies for everyone. They were delicious though! We scrambled all over the apartment cleaning up, straightening things out, making wraps, warming them up the microwave, chopping veggies, mixing the spread, cutting the wraps, putting toothpics in..and we did it all in 30 minutes. (Granted, we did hide the dirty dishes in the bathtub and end up throwing a few things in closets for temorary storage, but the place looked and felt very clean and polished.) We got many compliments on our place...the way it is set up, our lighting, our amazing wraps, and the good punch. (Whipped up with some juices, sherbet, and ginger ale.) What a night so far!

We were looking forward to seeing the two other appetizer places and then on to the main course and dessert apartments! We wanted to make an appearance at a main course location a little farther out of the city and we knew it would take us a while to get there on the blue line. Since the student and her husband lived farther away we figured not many people would go all the way out there for the meal. We studied maps and finally got what we thought was the right blue like train to our destination. We took a few tries at first to find that train, but we were sure we were at the right stop. We got there and walked a block south like we planned, but our street was nowhere to be found! We even asked people at a convenience store if they had heard of the street. Keep in mind that it's outrageously cold outside and that taking one step after the other is mentally painful in the wind and darkness, so even walking an extra block is out of the question. We had to turn around. We decided to just take the blue like back to a dessert location and skip the main course altogether. BUT we ended up waiting over half an hour in total for trains and by the time we actually got back on the red line, what we needed to get to the dessert place, dessert time was already over! Curses!
We skipped dessert as well and trudged back to our apartment, our stomachs hungry and our faces to the ground. We celebrated our arrival back after 2 hours of transit with dessert of our own...hot chocolate and ice cream :) When in doubt, eat chocolate.
Last night on TV we watched a stand up comedian talk about various disorders people say they have (ADD, OCD, PTSD, PCP, LSD, etc.) these days...and she mentioned one in particular which applies to all of us in the room: TBD--Too Busy Disorder. I'm sure it also has a lot of side effects. I'll keep you posted on that. I'm looking forward to another relaxing, hopefully warmer, day tomorrow!