I promised you guys a recap with pictures, and I don’t like breaking my promises.

Just so you know, this is totally out of order and random. So here goes. 🙂

On my flight out to Chicago, there were some snafus. Firstly, there were tons of people going into O’Hare for some reason, so they asked us to reroute. But the pilot wasn’t sure we had enough fuel. So that possibly a delay (we were already 30 minutes late). This is the face I made when I heard that news:

We had enough fuel to take the reroute. But when someone asked the flight attendant if they were SURE, the flight attendant answered “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out!”

That’s SUCH a Southwest Airlines response!

But, I eventually made it there. The flight was scheduled to land at 6:15pm CST, and I landed at 6:30pm CST, so it worked out because the reroute ended up being quicker.

I spent several days and nights in Chicago. It was balls-freezing cold, but I enjoyed it anyway. I ate well, got a lot of exercise (let me tell you how hard it is to walk through 12 inches of snow, especially unshoveled!), and hung out with a lot of great people: adamselzer, saintscribble, jebbyk, ralinad, projectlost1 just to name a few, and of course, the awesome Mr. Mike Smith, who so graciously went along on a journey to Hot Doug’s for my first Chicago-style hotdog, which was THE BOMB.

The line for this place wound around the block. It was freezing outside. I’d trudged through lots of snow to get here. I really did walk uphill in the freezing cold and snow to get there.

It was SO worth it.

On the left—The Dog. An all-beef hot dog with a bit of a snap to it, tomatoes, relish, mustard, celery salt, and a pickle, all on a poppy seed bun. There are supposed to be onions but you know I asked that those be held. I also didn’t get the sport peppers, which you really aren’t supposed to eat anyway. You’re supposed to throw them at cars.

OMGz THE YUMMERZ!!!!!! It was my first Chicago-style hotdog, will NOT be my last by any means.

On the right—Smoked Chicken Cordon Bleu Sausage with Apple Ale Mustard and Applewood-Smoked Cheddar Cheese. Interesting flavors. It was okay, no where near as good as The Dog, though. Mmmmm.

On the very far right—duck fat fries. Only available Saturdays and Sundays. Mmmmm.

A blizzard hit the city on Tuesday, which made trudging through the snow to find adamselzer‘s newly released book a challenge. It was that stinging snow, too. The kind that hurts when it hits your face. Yow.

Among the other things I did: took the Metra train out to Naperville to attend the Children’s Literature Breakfast. I’m glad I went because not only were there ace donuts, but I got a bag of free stuff, and I was surrounded by authors, some who said they’d tried submitting up to ten agented manuscripts before they finally sold. I immediately stopped being so hard on myself and felt compelled and ready to get back in the game. In addition, I got to hear best-selling author Brian Selznick speak, who wrote the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret which is pretty much like an epic novel if I’ve ever seen one.

The weird part was that at the Metra station, you wait by the tracks for your train to come, of course. There are these speakers with this weird, haunting voice: track number six, track number ten, track number eight. They say it over and over and let me tell you, at 6:15am, that’s CREEPY.

A huge group of people celebrated jebbyk‘s 30th birthday at a fancy restaurant called Marche. I didn’t eat much, BELIEVE ME. Anyway, Jen looked stunning:

Of course, there was Adam’s book signing:

A snowy sidewalk:

And goood memories all around. I can’t wait to go back, when it’s warmer, and take more pictures. I saw many gorgeous opportunities, but it was just tooo dang cold. However, ralinad is an AWESOME photographer, and he got some beautiful pictures despite the chill in the air, so check out his LJ or his flickr pages.

And yup, that was my trip. In a nutshell of sorts.

Eventually, I’d like to post a video from Adam’s book reading/signing, but I’m having computer drama at the moment. Seems as though all of my USB ports have been disabled for some reason.

Later.