Can You Dig It? (Yes I Can)

This photo was taken in the photo booth at The Holiday Club in Wrigleyville. Neither one of us has a skin condition, it's just the blotchy photo booth ink doing that to us.

I decided to back track a bit now that I have some photos to add. Tonight we're going back in time to last weekend when Erik took me to Chicago. As most of you know, I was born in Chicago, moved away when I was about a year old, moved back to the South suburbs when I was 10 and moved away for good when I was 14. A lot of my family members still live there, and I will always have a little junior high school girl crush on that city. Would I ever want to live there again? I doubt it, but I love to visit.

I know I've already said this, but the 3 1/2 hour drive there and back was almost the best part of the trip. It was a great way to cut all the distractions and talk about a bunch of stuff. One thing I will say about Erik, is that I've never been bored with him or run out of things to talk about. We made it into town around eight o'clock. After getting our Bears tickets, we went straight to dinner, which, as I've said, was all-you-can-eat sushi. You had to bring in your own alcohol, so Erik ran to the liquor store and picked up some sake and Sapporo beer.

After dinner we went to a few bars. Our first stop was the Holiday Club where we took that picture in the photo booth. After that we stopped into some bar that had a country band playing "Redneck Girl" and the owner and his wife were noticeably lacking in teeth. I told Erik that we could just as easily be in Iowa at this bar. We finished up at a sports bar that is probably crazy busy during baseball season, but was pretty tame that night.

The next day we woke up too late for a proper meal. We were going to stop at a Star bucks for caffeine and pastries, but luckily we spied a Dunkin' Donuts across the street. Which made us very happy and gave Erik occasion to flip off the Star bucks as we walked past and say, "Fuck you Star bucks and your four dollar pastries..." Amen to that.

First and foremost, this photo is up here so we can all see how adorable Erik is, but then if you look behind him, you can see DIANE! Unfortunately, we didn't photograph her Bears tattoo at the top of her back.

The game weather started out okay, but then the sun went away and the wind kicked up. The most entertaining part of the game was meeting a woman named Diane - pronounced DIANE! because she was just that loud and larger than life. She loved the Bears more than any person I've ever met and I lived in Chicago for several years. She lost her ear muffs when she first got there and when Erik found them, she kissed him. Later, after she found out that he was a Saints fan, she kept wiping her mouth and complaining of cooties. DIANE! definitely made our Bears experience. She said the f word at least four times in each sentence and refused to sit down during most of the game. I had a hard time choosing between watching DIANE! or watching the game. At one point, the camera guy turned around and we all got on TV. I'm sure the camera guy was just trying to film DIANE!

I got a migraine about halfway through the game, but Erik was really good about taking care of me. He rubbed my back during the ride back on the El and after we stopped to get gyros and tres leches cake, he drove the whole way back to Iowa where we had another great car conversation.