I’m sure that you’re all just on pins and needles wondering about how my trip to Waukegan went, and so I’ll begin this little tome by stating that I have been dead tired for the last couple of days at work. I got very little sleep on Monday night and not much more last night. Work has been, to put it mildly, less than stimulating these last two days. A number of phone calls, lots of reading, occasionally looking at a spreadsheet…the usual.
On the bright side, however, I now have an actual co-worker working in my office with me! The last time this happened was in (I believe) the summer of 2008, which is when I made a lateral move away from the television company into the metrics group. You may recall that all of my colleagues and my boss were located in Texas for that gig. When I made the jump to Digital Life at the beginning of this month, all of my new colleagues were in Texas. As of yesterday, however, Atlanta has two people in Digital Life, and I finally have a guy in the office with whom I can commiserate (and, hopefully, get some better work done). For the last couple of days, I’ve been spending a lot of time helping him get software set up and find documentation on things that we’re supposed to know, but we’ve spent some time chatting and learning backgrounds and talents, etc. and I think we might make a pretty good Atlanta team.
You don’t want to hear about all that, though, right? You want all the spicy details of this romantic liaison in Waukegan.
Keep dreaming, people. This isn’t a tell-all.
It’s a tell-some, though, so here’s a quick run-down of the weekend. I left Atlanta at around 3:30AM last Saturday and made the drive to my hotel in Waukegan, arriving a little after 3:00 in the afternoon (central time). Amy was working until 6:00, so I had time to take a shower, do a little NABBA business, and worry about what I was going to wear for a planned dinner date. After spending an hour getting more and more nervous and toying with the idea of feigning a computer emergency and returning to Atlanta, I walked outside to await the arrival of my reason for making the trip.
Spent some time thinking of clever opening lines and so I was perfectly prepared to greet Amy with, “Hi! Tom Day! Damned glad to meetcha!”
I was prepared to say that, but I don’t think I actually managed to get it out. I think it was more like, “Hi,” followed by a hug.
Pleasantries done, we went to eat some pizza at The Quonset Hut pizza place. It was good pizza. And the menu was no-nonsense: “Pizza. Your choice of sausage, pepperoni, and/or cheese.” Okay, there might have been a few other toppings to choose from, but not many. I believe we also had a couple of beers.
Romantic dinner. Check. After the pizza, we went to the Illinois Beach State Park, parked the car, and walked to the edge of Lake Michigan, where – because it was freaking freezing – we nodded at the water and went back to the car. Long romantic walk on the beach. Check. Following that, we went to a coffee shop and talked until it closed. Stimulating conversation. Check.
On Sunday, Amy played a church gig in the morning and we spent most of the rest of the day in downtown Chicago, where we did touristy things like going to the restaurant at the top of the John Hancock Center, visiting the Chicago water tower (survived the Chicago fire) and hanging out at a coffee shop. More stimulation conversation.
Monday found us in Elmhurst, IL, where Amy played in a quintet for a Memorial Day parade and I shot a bunch of pictures.
If you’d like to view pictures of the weekend and the parade, they’re here in my SmugMug account.
And that’s that.
TWD