Chicago

I had such a fun weekend!

Friday after work, I left for Evanston, IL to visit my favorite red-head. Unfortunately, I-94 is under construction pretty much all through Indiana so traffic and detours were a pain. Still, I got there safe and sound thanks to my crappy and duct-taped yet ever so reliable car Vinnie.

Saturday morning, I ran a 5-K at Northwestern. Since 5-K is only 3.1 miles, I didn't really prepare or over-train for it. It was a LOT harder than I expected, probably because I was much more conscious about the speed I was running. The whole time, I had a running commentary in my head. "Oh, I can feel the bag of Jelly-bellys I devoured last night." "Why on earth didn't I eat a balanced meal??" "Just burned off 4 Gobstoppers..." "How are tiny people with no muscles running faster than me?" Lesson learned: eat well before the race, no matter how short it may seem. My meal the night before consisted of Jimmy John's Sorry Charlie and a box of Gobstoppers. Bad idea.

Afterward, we went to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. It was so incredibly gorgeous! My favorite part of it was probably the Japanese Garden. We felt like we were in the end scene of Memoirs of a Geisha.

We walked around downtown Evanston for a bit and shopped and ate dinner. Then we drove back to Chicago to catch a show at Improv Olympic. The show was really funny and they improvised a whole musical the night we went!

We ended the evening by renting "Joe Versus the Volcano." It was Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan's first movie together and supposedly very very good. It turned out to be one of the strangest and most random movie I've watched. I wouldn't say it was super good.

The next day was leisurely. Church, then lunch at a kitzchy diner, then ice cream at Cold Stone. Then back to Michigan I went.

Now that the academic year is over, work is slowing down A LOT. I'm really looking forward to this week though. Hopefully I'll be spending my time starting some new hobbies and catching up with friends.