days_unfolding

The day before my trip, I did ask my boss if I could have money for food and the local commuter train. She got madder than I've ever seen her get, but said okay. In the future, though, I'm on my own. The moral of the story is that I shouldn't go to conferences. However, I have a meeting in Champaign-Urbana next week, and I'll have to eat the cost of gas. Nice racket for the college. And I ate the cost of gas to run to Normal a couple of days ago.

I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before the trip, but got some. I was ready in plenty of time to go to the train, only to look at the ticket and discover that I thought that the train was at 10:04, and it was at 10:24. So I killed some time here, and went to the train a half-hour before the time that it was supposed to arrive. After I got to the station, I looked at my text messages, only to find that the train was running a half-hour late. It got there around 40 minutes late, which actually isn't too bad for Amtrak.

I snoozed most of the way to Chicago. Ate my sandwich close to the end of the trip, so that I wouldn't get hungry too quickly.

After I got there, I walked to the Chicago Public Library to hang out. I was meeting a friend for dinner downtown, and it didn't make sense for me to go to Hyde Park and come back. It was a long rainy walk, but I stopped and took breaks a couple of times. The Chicago Public Library was very nice. I used their WiFi, checked my work e-mail, and sent messages back and forth to my friend to adjust our time to meet.

I got to Panera early because it was even closer to the library than it seemed on the map. I was enjoying watching the traffic though. Chicago drivers are crazy, followed by crazy pedestrians. Several times, cars or buses were caught in the intersection when the light changed. Much honking of horns. Slow down everyone. You'll live longer!

I met

ravengirl for dinner. We've been LJ and Facebook friends for quite a while, but had never met in person. We knew a lot about each other though, and the conversation was great. I really hated to leave, but the commuter train was running only once an hour by that time, and I didn't want to miss the 8:22 PM train to Hyde Park.

Ravengirl and me

I made it to the commuter train station with five minutes to spare. The display at the station said that the train would be arriving at track 1. It arrived at track 2, on the opposite side of the tracks. So we scrambled to get to the other platform. Someone at the station realized what was going on, and told them to hold the train. The only thing is that I was wrangling my suitcase, book bag, and purse, so I was slow. Someone asked me if I needed help, which was very nice given that we were running for the train. Chicago people's attitude seems to be very nice or "screw you," with little in-between. Detroit people are like that too. Maybe it's a city thing.

Anyway, I made it to the train. I got off at the Hyde Park stop. I had a walk of four very long blocks to get to the Airbnb place. And it was raining, and I was tired. I got there, only to discover that the place was a three-flight walkup. I tried to lug my suitcase upstairs, but the guy who let me in took it from me and brought it the rest of the way upstairs. The room was nice. I was pretty tired, so I holed up in the room and played with my phone to relax. Then I went to sleep.