Thanksgiving Break

So, this is the fifth day of my Thanksgiving break. I've only have to work two of four days and I work tonight. And one of those days I was only at work for an hour and a half because it was our holiday meeting. So that's basically 3 days of nothing to do. What, might you ask, did I do withy hose days? Well, that's what I'm here to tell you about. :)

So, Friday was my first day off. Friday I met with my friend, Reva, who is in my research methods group (blech group projects!) and we went to lunch at Epic Burger. We needed to work on the statistics portion of our research project. (Once we finish the project, I'll post about what we did and what we found.) We were meeting with one of the other three girls in our group. Well, we got bored and did like half of it before Casey got there. Oops. We did a lot of work on it, so when Casey got there we kind of just updated her on what we did and then we went our separate ways. Reva and I hung out for a little longer. We also helped our friend, Erica, pack her stuff to go home for Thanksgiving break. (She lives in the burbs.) Not too long after Erica left, I went home.

Saturday! :) Actually, Saturday was kind of boring. I went slept in and then went to work. Yeah, pretty dull.

Now Sunday was fun. :) On Sunday, I had to go to work for our holiday meeting. As I said before, I was only there for about an hour and a half. I did have to walk a mile to get there though. The stupid bus tracker told me it was going to be 30 minutes before the next bus came. It lied. But anyway, after work I went to hang out with Reva. We went to lunch at Portillo's, and tried to decide what we were going to do with our Sunday. Originally, we were going to go to Michael's and get Christmas decorations. Then Reva asked if I wanted to go to Schaumburg to go to the mall. (We realized later that we live in Chicago where everyone from the burbs goes to shop and we did the opposite by going to the burbs from Chicago to shop.) Anyways, we decided to just go for it. We knew that this adventure would involve public transport beyond the realms of the CTA, but we were prepared. :) We also realized that Erica didn't live too far from Schaumburg. We texted her and she agreed to meet us at the mall. Now we just had to get there.

So we knew we had to take the blue line almost all the way to the end. It runs to O'Hare, and we literally got off one stop before the airport. From the blue line, we had to take a Pace bus. Pace buses run from Chicago to the burbs for commuters. They don't take CTA UPasses, so we made sure we had exact change for fare both to and from the mall. We knew that there was a Pace bus leaving at 1:30. We knew we would be cutting it close, but we thought we would make it. We didn't. Then next bus didn't leave until 2:30. We missed the 1:30 by about 7 minutes. So we hung out with all the other people waiting for Pace buses for about 40 minutes. Then we decided to go outside in case the bus got there early. We wanted decent seats. (Yes, there are bad seats on a bus.) Well apparently the bus had been out there for a few minutes before we went out there because there were already people on the bus. We got okay seats. The Pace bus was just like a CTA bus. Anyway, unlike CTA buses, it didn't tell us what each stop was. So we had to really pay attention to where we wanted to get off. We made it to the mall and got dropped off on a random corner in the parking lot that wasn't the actual stop. It was strange. But we made it alive.

The mall. That mall is crazy. It has 2 main levels, but there were also in between levels and there were so many store that it was overwhelming. And the one store that all three of us wanted to go to had moved out of the mall, but we didn't know that until Reva and I got back to Chicago at like 7. Anyway, we walked around the giant mall for almost 2 hours. Then we went to Red Robin for dinner. (Red Robin! YUM! No really!) Then, since the Pace bus had dropped us off on a corner and not a stop, Reva and I didn't know where to catch the Pace bus to get back to the blue line. So Erica, being the awesome friend that she is, drove us to the blue line. Reva and I got back to Chicago and she slept over at my place.

Monday! Reva hung out for a bit. We went to the grocery store. I made her some breakfast. Then after she left, I did laundry. I also baked cookies last night.

Today! I am meeting Reva so I can drop off my stuff off at her apartment. We're heading to lunch. Then I'm going to work. Sleeping at Reva's tonight and then in the morning, we are heading to Indiana to her house for Thanksgiving!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be away from my computer until late Friday night. But I have my iPhone, so if you know me and need me, text or call!

Until next time, Amber Marie

I did not forget!

Along with today being Veteran's Day {Thanks to all of the troops, military personnel, and their families}, today is someone's birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACHEL!! You are now officially an adult, and I now feel old because I used to babysit you...

Anyway, back to the subject...I hope you had a legen...wait for it...dary, awesome, fantastic, fabulous, beast-y(?), amazing, stupendous, cool, not lame, great, splendid, tremendous, remarkable, and every other positive adjective you can think of day. :)

-Amber Marie

Oh, no! I missed a week!

You would not believe the amount of work I am not doing in order to type this post. I do not understand why all of the professors/instructors put all of the hard work at the end of the semester! Papers, presentations, group projects. It is ridiculous! I have no time to waste, or I should not waste it--oops...

I just wanted to let you all know that I am still alive--barely--and I will be back as soon as I can...

Oh, and happy November! How is it November!? My puppy is turning six, my laptop is now two-years-old, and it has been a year since I started thinking about coming to Chicago...(the post was up about a month after I started thinking about it).

I will be home in NOLA for Christmas, and I cannot wait. :)

Oh and it has gotten really cold up here. It is 39 degrees outside and feels like 35. But I am loving it! :)

Until I can write again,
Amber Marie <3