The Windy City: a whirlwind trip in pictures

I was going to name this "Chi-Town," but that put in terrible images of the Chi Squares I did last week. All 10 million of them.

So, I renamed this the Windy City, even though that nickname was a misnomer for Chicago this weekend.

The girls and I headed to Chicago for Anne's bachelorette party.

Anne is getting married on May 17 and we were able to head to Chicago because Anne's cousin Megan has a house in a downtown area. I know almost nothing about Chicago because I had only previously been there once but we were excited to get up there. We had shopping on the agenda as well as pizza and various other ideas.

On the way up in the car, Anne decided to tell us that she had a surprise for us. Cousin Megan was able to score Cubs tickets for all of us in the luxury box of the firm her husband works in. So we had that to look forward to on Saturday!

Friday night was spent gorging ourselves on pizza and playing one of the greatest of all games -- American Idol on the XBox. Which basically means Karaoke.

Anne sings and Amanda celebrates her platinum status after she belts out Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." I sang all sorts of things, including "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, which I didn't know had any other words but "I can't get no satisfaction, though I try," etc. However, it does have other lyrics, they're just ridiculous.

Saturday was the Cubs game at Wrigley! LtoRL Dawn (Anne's sister), Anne, Amanda, Megan, Cousin Megan, and me. The Cubs won 9-7 and it was a fun game -- and excitingly different from the Reds' games, where no one really cheers. Those Cubs fans were all pumped up.

That afternoon we shopped and that night we went to dinner at Lux Bar, where we had some mini burgers (one of mine was a mini-fillet mignon) and the above martinis. There we also gave Anne some gifts.



Anne models her assorted bachelorette wear. Notice that she doesn't have on anything scandalous -- she is not that kind of girl. We were low key.


After dinner, we headed out to a local bar where we danced to all sorts of crazy songs (I don't have those pictures on my camera) til the wee hours. Above are two from the club -- the top is Megan, Amanda and I and the bottom is Amanda and I.

It was a very packed weekend, and I'm still exhausted from it! The next thing on the wedding itinerary is Anne's Shower Redux, which was rescheduled after the first shower was terminated by the blizzard of 2008. If it snows on April 19, we are going to discuss the wedding. :)