More Guests

Well its been a little while since my last update. Life has gotten busy with work and wedding stuff. (Even I've been getting roped into the planning.) Kelly returned to Boston recently for final wedding preparations. However, before she left, we did manage to have a little bit of fun this past week when Stacey from Boston was in town visiting her folks. She's one of our favorite people, and she throws the best parties in Boston. We met up with her at the 24-hour Starbucks at Piper's Alley (right next to the Second City Theater) and managed to spend all night talking about Boston, Chicago, weddings, and life in general. A good time was had by all. Being the only late night Starbucks around, we had to fight with medical and law school students for a table. Looking around me I saw people studying anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology. It was like a flashback to the bad old days in Crerar library. Except with much better atmosphere...and coffee. (By the way, I passed my pathology boards a while back, yay!) and managed to spend all night talking about Boston, Chicago, weddings, and life in general. A good time was had by all. Being the only late night Starbucks around, we had to fight with medical and law school students for a table. Looking around me I saw people studying anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology. It was like a flashback to the bad old days in Crerar library, except with a much better atmosphere...and coffee. (By the way, I passed my pathology boards a while back, yay!)

Actually, originally Kelly would've missed seeing Stacey, as she was scheduled to fly out before Stacey got into town. However, circumstances conspired to push back Kelly's departure date. Since the two of them got to hang out, it wasn't all bad.

Two days later sans Kelly, I met up with Mark, my friend from medical school. He was in town for a few days for a conference. We met up with another Chicago friend of his and went to Chinatown for dinner. It'd been over three years since I'd last seen him, and in the meantime he'd joined the faculty of a prestigious medical school, bought a house, and become a daddy. We talked over dinner about grown-up stuff and how things had changed since medical school. Mark's friend tried to explain to me again what he did for a living (he's trader at the Chicago Board of Trade.) I quickly got very confused. Mark told me not to feel to bad, after ten years of being friends with him, he still had no idea what his friend did either. Afterwards we went to Dave and Busters, a sort of Chucky Cheese for grownups. We regressed for a little while by killing zombies (re-killing?) and other nasty critters on the latest shoot'em up video game.

Later, I saw our friend Stacey again at Green Dolphin Street, a classy bar with a live swing band. In the three months Kelly and I have been in Chicago, we have only gone out dancing about four times total. So I got to have Stacey introduce me to the Chicago dancers that she already knows. I danced, chatted and I got to meet a few other Chicago dancers. Some of them were vaguely familiar to me from my prior time in Chicago, but I don't think I'd actually talked to any of them before. It is kinda sad when Kelly and I have to rely on people coming in from out of town to introduce us to Chicagoans.

Unlike Massachusetts, Chicago still allows smoking in bars and restaurants, and by the end of the night, my throat was sore from all the smoke. After getting home, I really reeked of cigarette smoke. Yeach. While I can sympathize with the civil libertarian argument against a smoking ban, I definitely am looking forward to it coming to Chicago.

These three outings, over the span of three days, pretty much encompass my and Kelly's social adventures for the entire month. We've been pretty much homebound otherwise (sushi outings being the rare exception). After the wedding, we promise to go out more and meet people.

-Brian