☆paging doctor gorgeous☆

So, I've spent nearly the entire past week traveling, and it's been a real trip. I met a friend in Chicago for a few days, and though it's a city I've been to twice before this, I hadn't really had the opportunity to explore it much before.

You ever had a sandwich or a burger where everything in the middle is delicious, but the bread is stale? It was kind of like that. The trip itself was packed with fun, wonder, excitement, and even a tinge of drama, but my flights to and from the city were disasters.

My original inbound flight was direct, because I endeavor to spend as little time as possible in airplanes, but they ended up canceling it and shoving me onto this new flight that had a layover of only forty minutes. Of course, the first leg was sluggish to take off, sluggish to land, and sluggish to taxi, and I would absolutely have missed my connector if not for it being delayed by ten serendipitous minutes, which allowed me to just barely sprint to the correct gate before they finished boarding. It was stressful as hell.

My flight home, I did miss my connecting flight. The weather in Chicago had turned so bad that dangerous lightning strikes kept us grounded for nearly an hour past schedule, so by the time I finally arrived at my layover city in Dallas, I was well and truly stranded there. Mine was the last flight of the night, so they'd have nothing else to book me until the following day, and they were not in the mood to hand out hotel vouchers. Fortunately, I have a friend who lives in Dallas, and they were only too happy to come along, pick me up, and let me crash at their place for the night. You have no idea how grateful I am to them for it, too; not only did I avoid having to sleep in an airport terminal and going hungry, since every restaurant in that god-forsaken airport closes just following dinner, but I also got to spend some great quality time with a friend I had never actually gotten to meet before.

Also, tried some amazing tacos. I don't even really eat tacos that often, but if you've got a Velvet Taco spot near you, go try it. Trust me. It was my first and only time in Dallas, and I think I'd return for the food alone.

The trip itself? Great! We packed so much into three days that I'm not even sure how we managed it. The Medieval Torture Museum, ice skating, Navy Pier, Adler Planetarium, an architecture river boat cruise, the Immersive Frida Kahlo exhibit, the Art Institute, a stroll around the Bean, and many other side adventures involving meals, meandering trips around downtown poking in shops and other interesting places, and enjoying some drinks.

It was also a much needed bonding experience for my friend and I. Nothing quite like relying on one another for days at a time and mutually deciding to be trapped in each others' company for a number of days to really open you up to one another. I admit I was anxious about it, on account of our relationship being a bit on the rocks lately, but we parted ways on a good, strong note, and I'm overall pretty content with that. I don't know when, or even if we'll see each other again, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I've been home now for a good twenty four hours, and I've done literally nothing except for sleep and sling my ass across the sofa to catch up on all the youtube I missed while I was away. It's now almost 8pm, but if the fool birds are still chirping outside, I guess it isn't too late to run to the store and stick a load of laundry in the wash.