Pre-Chicago

I love Chicago. I don't know if I have maybe romanticized it due to the presence of a certain baseball team, possibly due to the holy trinity of Chicago food: hot dogs, Italian beef and deep dish pizza or perhaps it has to do with its prominence in the ABC TGIF television lineup when I was a kid, but the city has always held an allure to me, so when the opportunity arose for me to do a bit of sightseeing with Lauren before this year's Cub Convention, needless to say, I was ecstatic.
Truth be told, I wanted to go to this Cubs convention because I was convinced that this was the World Series year. Reservations were made in mid-August, when the Cubs were in the midst of their 97 win regular season. In fact, after witnessing the fateful Game 3 defeat at Dodger Stadium, I was somewhat prepared to forgo the Convention this year. I'm glad I didn't, despite the fact that two of my favorite Cubs had unceremoniously become Cleveland Indians mere weeks before the Convention in somewhat questionable moves by management. That was to be a recurrent theme at the Convention for the malcontents.
We were set to fly out of San Diego early on Tuesday morning, and I was able to sneak out of work a few hours early on Monday, after all, how can anyone work when vacation looms mere hours away and when Lauren has the day off? Conceivably a better man than I. We finished up our last minute packing and made it down to my parents house with no problems at all. The departure time was set at 545 the following morning for a 730 flight. Suffice it to say that I was unable to sleep, so after repacking my bags for efficiency's sake, I settled in and watched a few TV shows on Netflix before falling asleep.