I never blog from my phone but I’ve been in line at the gates of he’ll for 3.5 hours now and have another hour to go at least so why the hell not.

Let me just say that this is absolutely insane. For starters the line is f***ing long. There are only 2 ppl helping 100. They carry your car out of the lot on unstable forklifts. Damage is inevitable.

Also we haven’t eaten anything all day long. I’m tired my back hurts and I wanna stab someone. The system is horrid.

Word to the wise… Read the sign before you park your car because nothing in hell is worth this.

So last night when I got home from a meeting I noticed there was an awful amount of water in the garden in front and out back of my apartment.  My roommate and I rushed inside and grabbed plungers and strainers and headed out side.  When I opened the slider door in the garden, the water was so high due to the drain being clogged that water started rushing inside the apartment.  We quickly removed the grate and started cleaning up leaves and plunging the shit out the drain.  We repeated the process out back and eventually the water went down.

Then I got a call from Erin saying she went through a huge puddle on her way to my house and her check engine light came on, then her car eventually stalled once she parked and sat idle for a while waiting for it to hopefully dry out.  So after I showered the shit-water off my skin, I then walked west on Division to meet her to check on her and her car.  We decided to leave it over night to thaw.  

I had the day off today so I was going to go try and start it up, see if the check engine light was still on and then hit autozone for a diagnostics test.  When I walked down to the car I noticed it wasn’t there anymore.  I remember reading the signs around where we parked it last night and thought we were good to leave it.  Today though, I read them again and noticed that it said “No Parking 3am – 7am OR No Parking when snow is over 2″ deep”.  Ironically it was actually snowing when I initially left this morning too.  I failed to notice the “OR” in the sign.  Plus the freaking sign had a huge SNOWFLAKE on top of it indicating to me that it was a No Parking for snow removal sign and even with the snow today, it was way less than 2 inches.  

What the hell.  Why do they combine 2 different signs.  Granted I know it was my fault in the end, but jesus. Could they make it any more confusing?  All I want to do is finish this post with swear words about the city and life itself, so I’ll stop now.  Here is a picture of what I thought the sign said, assholes.

What did people do before the iPhone (and especially GPS) when plans changed or they wanted to be spontaneous.  I know what you are thinking… only a complete and utter nerd would even pose this as a serious question, but think about it.  If things changed on a whim, a sudden panic to find a phone book would ensue and mass hysteria would follow when trying to figure out what some other options for dinner. Or at least it would take you WAY more time to figure it all out. Anyways, this will make sense in a few minutes, trust me.

This weekend Erin and I celebrated Valentine’s Day because she had some friends come in town on actual Valentine’s Day.  So our night started by checking in to the Hyatt hotel downtown Chicago.  When we got up to the second floor there was a big line to check in.  Then we noticed some self check-in booths just like you see at airports.  It was awesome.  I typed in my name and out came the room keys.

We put our stuff up in the room and checked out the glorious view we had overlooking the Chicago River pouring into Lake Michigan.  We could see the NBC and Wrigley Building from our window.  It was very pretty once night hit.

My original plan was to take Erin to Lula’s in Logan Square because I’ve heard many good things.  Once we got into our room and all situated, we decided that taking a cab all the way there and back would be kinda nutty so we checked out the in-room directory.  The original place we found was closed down due to some broken pipes, so we ended up starting our night at Bin 36.  

After experiencing our first wine flight (in this case a tasting of 4 glasses of red wine) we decided to skip our 6:15 reservation because I was craving some saganaki from Greek Town.  So we finished the last drops and hailed a cab to The Greek Islands (my grandpa’s favorite place).

The saganaki was all that we expected and more, but we didn’t feel like eating there either so we finished our Sam Adams and headed to find the dinner destination.  

All of these places for the most part we found using my iPhone and Yelp.  The next place old trusty told us would be good was a small Italian eatery called Coco Pazzo so that is where we ended up.  They told us we’d have a half hour wait so we bellied up to the bar but before we could order a drink the hostess came over and said our table was ready.  Maybe they thought one of us was famous or something.  

I ordered lasagna and Erin had ravioli with asparagus.  All of it was delicious in every way.  We were both way too full to even attempt filling a doggie bag.  

At the end of the night we were tired so we went back to the hotel and checked out the hotel bar before going to sleep (wow this sounds like we are alcoholics, but we really didn’t drink too much).  

Thanks to the iPhone and little appetite for adventure Valentine’s Day was a success to say the least.  Thanks Apple.