First Week Survival!

You know, I'm pretty sure that in a drunken stupor last night I posted something but I'll be damned if I can find it, so maybe it got blown away.

So I made it to the end of the week! Shaken and stirred, dazed and confused, cross-eyed and painless, but alive. Work, as I imagined, was pretty damned tough, but I had a couple of successes and no huge failures, so I'm already a frickin' hero. Hell, I suspect that as long as I didn't drop trou in front of the customer and didn't try to jump the security turnstile on the way in, I'd be a hero.

I am embarrassed to say that after spending all that time looking at all the great places to eat around here, I've eaten at Elephant & Castle (small chain I'm familiar with from Ottawa), Subway, TGI Fridays, the hotel restaurant and only once at a local place. Had dinner at the bar at Friday's last night watching the tournament and hanging out with the locals (and drinking way too heavily). Tonight I decided to take care of myself and walked over to Whole Foods and came back with sushi, a really nice salad and a six pack of Sierra Nevada and have settled in for some basketball-watching. I figure I did my St. Patrick's Day celebrating last night.

Obviously I'm going to have to do a lot of work this weekend but I do intend to get my ass out and actually see some of this part of Chicago. It's going to be cold but I HAVE to get out and run along Lake Michigan and after that I plan to do a lot of walking and picture-taking.

I think this will be much easier in a couple of weeks when we get into the apartment, which I've now got settled. On April 1 we move into a 1 bedroom apt at One Superior Place on the 45th floor. With that I'll be able to concentrate a lot less on survival (where am I going to eat? am I going to work out?) and more on enjoying being here. I say "we" 'cause my sweetie will be up here with me for awhile after next week!

That's not to say that I haven't enjoyed it here - the people at work are fine of course and I had a good time hanging out and talking hoops with the locals last night. Tuesday night was awesome - walked all the way down to Hubbard to find Andy's Jazz Club which I remembered from our trip up here a dozen years ago. Barbara the bartender was great, the music was quite nice and the food was actually pretty decent. I'm looking forward to hanging out there as often as I can afford.

More later after I see if I can get the Carolina game off the CBS website. George Mason just upset Michigan State but unfortunately UConn just finally took the lead over Albany.