(no subject)

I'm sitting in a chair on the BNSF west line train to Aurora, so I have time to catch up on the latest events in the life of Stormdog.

When last we left our hero, I was in Kenosha for a few days for Super-mechanic Juan to look at my car. He came over on Thursday to check out the transmission I bought in Detroit back during Penguicon and which has been sitting in my parents' basement since (it passed at least a cursory inspection) and to take a general look at my car. Of course, in addition to what we knew of, unexpected problems cropped up.

First he tried to look at the engine, but the hood wouldn't open. I've had trouble in the past with the latch not wanting to operate very well (it's pretty badly rusted) but it was only partially failing, and was failing open, not closed. So Juan got under the car to look from down there and noticed that my radiator was leaking rather badly. That's also a new development, and the radiator is new as of April. I must have hit something on the way to Kenosha, because it was a significant enough leak that I would definitely have noticed before.

So, Juan asked if I could leave Percy the Swift with him for about a week to two weeks while he replaced the transmission, the radiator, and the hood latch. Wanting so very much to have my car in road-worthy condition again, I said that that sounded fine to me! So, with my car in skilled and capable hands, I was left to find a way down to Chicago without it.

Now, earlier in the week, I'd gone out for a bicycle ride up the Lake Michigan shore. It was just a little ten mile ride, but the weather was really hot and humid. I found myself feeling mildly faint or dizzy on the way home down Sheridan Road. I sat and rested when I got home and soon felt fine. But the next day, when I was planning to leave Kenosha, I was feeling that way again from time to time. A feeling like I maybe needed to eat something, but eating didn't help.

So, laden as I was with a laundry basket of clothing, a bag of board games, a backpack full of books and a laptop, and my camera, I decided that walking to the train station might be a bad idea.I waited a while, planning to get the next train, but wasn't feeling much better, so my dad gave me money for a bus and came out to wait with me. We had a really interesting conversation, but after a time realized the bus did not seem to be coming.

So, Dad gave me taxi money and I did it that way, arriving with just a few minutes to spare at the train station. A good thing as the Kenosha service only runs every couple of hours.

I rode the Metra down to Evanston, transferred to the Purple Line going south, and by that point it was late enough that I figured I'd just go straight down to see lisagems who I'd be spending the weekend with.

The two of us had a few plans, all of which required continual revision as the weekend progressed. We had planned to take a road trip somewhere on Sunday, but that had to be postponed given that I currently have no car. We got a late start on Saturday morning (but sleeping in is just so nice) and went out to Niles for a bead show she had passes for. The bus schedule was a little wonky, so we ended up wandering around a mall briefly while waiting for the right one. From there, we took some combination of buses and trains to Navy Pier to ride the tall ship Windy! But it turned out that our Groupons were not good on Saturdays.

I was starting to feel kind of ill again, and the heat and walking were kind of getting to both of us. We had dinner at the Italian place near the west end of the pier and went back home. The time seemed to fly! And despite the weather, I had a fun time seeing new parts of the city and suburbs. But I was starting to worry about the way my illness was lasting multiple days.

Lisa suggested it might be heat exhaustion, and when I Googled that up, it seemed to generally fit what I was experiencing. I made sure to drink a lot of water. And a cold shower felt simply heavenly at the end of the day.

We started Sunday with another attempt at going out on the Windy. We took the Red Line down to the Loop, and walked to Navy Pier, with a stop at Burrito Beach for something passing for breakfast. I was feeling better, but was glad for the air conditioning as I tried not to push things .The same was true at the pier. We got tickets for the upcoming excursion at 1:30, then split an overpriced confection from Haagen-Daazs, walked through cold air in the stained glass museum, and finally sat for a while, chatting.

When it was time to get on the ship, we were a little worried at the number of people in line. Earlier, we heard, some people had been bumped, and it seemed like there were more people than could fit on the ship! But we made it onboard and found seats. Or rather, Lisa found a seat while I scampered all about the ship, exploring the fore and stern castles (That is what they're called, right? I'm not sure.) as well as the lower mid-deck, and wishing I could climb the rigging to the top of the four masts and look down from above.

A couple of story tellers talked about life as a working sailor during the age of sail on the Great Lakes, and a little boy got to fire the ship's cannon, and we sailed out by the big old lighthouse on the breakwater. It was a lot of fun and I got a few pictures I'm pretty happy with.

Once back ashore, we made our way back to the Red Line for a trip to Chinatown. I wanted to visit one of the bakeries for some fresh sesame seed balls, maybe visit the book store in the walking mall, and get some dinner. As it turned out, the bookstore is gone, and the bakery I stopped at didn't have sesame seed balls. But it was alright; Lisa and I got some yummy dinner (I tried her green beans and pork and I would actually have eaten the dish; yum!) and found some silly things (and even a birthday present for her) at the Sanrio shop. Finally, both once again feeling worn out, we went back to her place.

All the little unexpected things that popped up through the weekend didn't 'cause us any undue stress. We just enjoyed the experiences as they came. Happy birthday lisagems! I had a great time with you!

From there on though, after leaving Lisa's place to head to Aurora, unexpected difficulties did begin to contribute to stress and problems for me. But I'll get to that next time and not spoil a happy story!

(no subject)

So, on Sunday evening, I left lisagems' place, trying to make it to the 8:40 train to Aurora to see danaeris. I left a little bit later than I should have; too late to account for all the belongings I was carrying with me, as I still hadn't made it home since leaving for Kenosha on Wednesday morning of last week. I was feeling better than I had earlier in the weekend, but I didn't want to press myself too hard in the heat and humidity. And really, I couldn't; there's only so fast you can go with a heavy pack on your back and a big basket in a two-arm grip in front of you. It did not help that the bus I was supposed to take got rerouted due to construction and I ended up having to move to another one and not really knowing where I was going. I ended up feeling anxious and lost.

I missed the train west and called Danae to apologize. I felt really bad about having missed getting out to see her, especially in light of the fact that weekends are typically time I spend with her and I felt that it was important to see her that evening. Perhaps I was worrying too much as she was not unhappy with me and said that getting there as late I was going to wouldn't really be that sensible anyway as we'd essentially be going to bed by the time I made it.

So, I lugged all my stuff from Union Station to the Quincy L platform and rode home on the CTA. I've never felt like I really had the hang of buses here, and the trains are so much more direct. My bag full of games sparked a conversation on the platform that continued on to the train all the way to the red/brown split at Fullerton. He commented on the games and asked me about the Pandemic expansion, which lead into finding out that he's a gamer, a board-game player, will be GMing an interesting sounding thing at Gen Con this year, is a kinkster, and is a friend of jimcyl and his partner. Small world!

I finally made it home, planning to collapse into bed. Which I didn't, because it was too bloody hot to stand in my room. I resorted to bringing a couple of blankets out to the living room and sleeping in a chair in front of the air-conditioner. I slept fitfully until the wee hours of the morning, at which point I moved to the couch as the rest of the apartment had colled down enough to deal with without being in a cold breeze. I snuggled down into the couch, hoping tomorrow would be better than that evening.

So far, it hasn't really been. I got up later than I wanted, still feeling groggy from lack of sleep. As I got things ready to leave, a huge storm rolled in, shaking things up a bit. I decided I ought to wait out the storm as I looked online and found that there were severe delays on all the CTA lines due to weather. That's when the power went out.

I sat in the dark for a while, pondering what I ought to do, and napping a little bit. Finally, about half an hour later, the power came back on. I looked out the window, got my things together, and walked to the Howard station. Once I arrived, I learned that there were trees down over the CTA tracks and trains weren't running. There were buses available instead, but I was nervous about getting lost. I decided to walk over to Subway for some breakfast which I needed anyway. Once I got back, the Red Line was opearting at least, so I boarded and headed south.

I'd just made it to Union Station when I suddenly had a worry. I couldn't remember if I'd put some things away at the apartment that I'd be deeply embarrassed not to have put away before leaving. I was pretty sure I had, but...I wasn't sure. I do that with locking the doors too, and there have been enough times I've done things like forget to lock the doors, or locked myself out of them, that I can't help but give some credence to these worries. I sighed and headed back toward the train.

It's just as well I did I suppose; on the way back, Juan called me. He was having trouble getting the radiator company to honor the warranty and wanted to see if I had the invoice or the date I wrote him a check for it or anything like that. So, it was off to the apartment again.

I got there and found that I hadn't left any of my stuff out after all. I looked for and couldn't find an invoice, but I did have the approximate date for Juan 'cause I took a picture of the install process and had a date for the picture.

Then I returned again to Union Station, finally arriving about five minutes after the train to Aurora. I had an hour or so until the next one, so I started wandering the station and taking photographs. I had a staff member ask me where I was going as I started walking down a platform, and when I told him I wanted to go look at that neat beam of light coming down through the ceiling over there, he was fine with that. Nifty.

It's about 4 o' clock now and I'm finally to Danae's place. I'm going to miss the game night because I don't have a way to get there. I was going to get a ride over after the work I was doing here in St. Charles, but I got here late enough that it doesn't make sense to go there for a couplhe hours and then leave. Complete scheduling fail.

Ah well. I actually don't really mind any of it that much, except for the worry of disappointing my sweetie.