It's Our Party

I got up bright and early and commenced a quick packing job - today is the day of the big party thrown once a year by my employer - and headed off to the airport, where I was rendezvousing with MyAdoringPublic and her date, SamTheButcher. We had cleverly scheduled ourselves on the same flight, and as it turned out, I was seated in the row directly in front of them.

If anyone has flown from Cleveland to Chicago, you will be familiar with that moment of uncertainty when you look at your itinerary and see that you leave at, say, 10 am and arrive in Chicago at 10:12 am. Oh, yeah, there's that TIME ZONE. Just enough time for a catnap and a brief sip of a beverage (they served us and mere seconds later were collecting half filled glasses for landing) and bang! You are in O'Hare. Here we parted ways, as I had to find the gate that my party guest, BC, was arriving at. Sounds simple, but it took the better part of 40 minutes and about three airline officials to get the straight story. Everyone wanted to tell me the gate she LEFT from, which, I felt was clearly irrelevant. But they do have a giant dinosaur in the airport, and you have to love that. Anyway, we found each other and off we went in search of Ground Transportation.

There was an array of taxis to choose from, so I picked the most aesthetically pleasing, cleanest cab ( a snazzy combination of tan and green). We arrived soon enough at the Sofitel Water Tower, which is some bit of architecture conjured from the imagination of Jean-Paul Viguier (he's French). We checked in, and went to check out the room. We had a terrific view of the John Hancock Center, and could even see the lake. I liked the bathroom, with its seperate marble shower. They had the good taste to furnish us with Frette robes (which are Italian). This was going to be good.

Hunger was getting the best of us, so we set off to explore some options, and ran into the very charming outdoor Basil's Cafe at the Talbott Hotel, which was literally around the corner. Short walk. I decided to live large and try the Kobe beef burger. It was wonderful, and we each had a Goose Island beer - when in Rome, you know.

We then had several options - there was a the Printer's Row Bookfair going on, there was a couple of good exhibits at the nearby Museum of Contemporary Art 0r....I suggested we could walk to the Biograph Theatre and see where John Dillinger met his untimely end. That was the winner. And while Perry, the helpful concierge said we could walk there - just because you can doesn't mean you should. It was three miles. We saw a great deal of the city, including walking past Lincoln Park Zoo, where BC asked if that was a bunny in the grass, I said, Yes, it is. Then she asked if that was a squirrel by the sidewalk. Again,affirmative. She said it was a GREAT ZOO. OK, not so funny, but we'd been walking a LONG time...There were lots of dogwalkers enjoying a perfect Sunday afternoon and great buildings, but we LOVED the cab ride home. Oh, yeah, we passed a Starbuck's or two on the walk. Don't think I didn't pay my respects...

We were back at the hotel in time for some room service snacks, a quick nap, and then the transformation into our party clothes. MyAdoringPublic and SamTheButcher came down and we went to get the party started! We were all dressed in formal black, and made a lovely quartet. MAP had one killer evening dress, folks. You all missed it.

The party was quite nice and it was great to see everyone in our extended work family and make some new connections. Food, wine, dancing the night away.

We retired to the room and while BC read up a little on King Tut, I watched a program on the Sundance Channel about human behavior experiments. Frightening, yet interesting. We then went to sleep in a FANTASTIC bed (it was the featherbed that made it great) eager for our adventure tomorrow...