6:00am – The day began with my cell phone alarm clock going off waking me up from four hours of sleep. I didn’t get to bed until past 2:00am since I was up working on a slide deck for a group project, writing a review of literature on the relationship between government expenditure and high school student achievement and catching up to episodes of The Pacific, The Tudors, and Mayweather-Mosley 24/7 since I was gone all weekend at a wedding in Baltimore. I promptly fell back asleep for another half hour before succumbing to my better senses and got ready for the grueling day.
7:10am – Leaving the house for a commute to the office, I noticed the trains at the Kimball were much more emptier an hour before my usual arrival and quickly sent myself to light mode nap mode. I made sure to check in to defend my mayorships at Kimball Brown Line CTA and Belmont Red/Brown/Purple Line CTA when it was time to swap trains. The trains were so empty at Belmont that I was able to grab a seat to continue my express napping session.
8:00am – I arrived to the office and caught up with everyone and chitchatted about my trip to Baltimore over the weekend for a friend’s wedding and how there are new hotel-style super dorms over my alma mater, Johns Hopkins University. I found out about the new changes at my first college, Drake University and was reminded of Paul Revere’s Pizza’s breadsticks in Des Moines and recalled to a colleague how we once snuck a keg through a window into the dorms when I was a freshman. I then began working on research projects and archiving some of the latest publications in the field of family business.
9:00am – The Loyola University Annual Block Party gave us all a subtle reminder of its presence by sneaking the scent of charcoal into our nostrils in our third floor office. The grills were on and food would be coming right up!
11:00am – The Loyola University Annual Block Party announced itself ready as the band broke out in a wave of guitars, beating drums, and loud unintelligible singing. Two workers went to grab eats as I lamented that of all days, I left my ID at home! No ID would mean no access to the goodies of char-grilled burgers, chicken, brats, ribs, and Diet Cokes! DOH!!!
11:15am – My coworkers returned with a surprise and brought me a bag of chips, a char-grilled cheeseburger and a brat laced with grilled onion!!! Score! I was going to be able to benefit due to their more sensible eating habits! Having been denied barbecued food since winter melted away, I quickly wolfed down my eats and couldn’t help but smile.
12:15pm – I was originally due to hit up the Cubs game since a friend had free tickets to the game courtesy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Unfortunately, he got to the office too late and all of the tickets were gone. Yesterday, another friend asked me what I was doing today and let me know he had not one, but two free bleacher seats! Working on a project and having work the next day, it made much more sense for a friend to come grab them then drop me off a ticket so I could get in the game when I was done with work at 1:00pm.
1:00pm – Backpack packed, it was time to jet and off I went to Wrigley Field all the while tweeting to pass away the minutes and defended my Chicago Ave. Red Line CTA mayorship on the way from the notorious Fakesquare former mayor.
1:30pm – After going through a longer than usual security line and getting my backpack more thoroughly checked than by TSA agents at Midway and BWI Airports combined, I reached the top of the center field bleachers and found the birthday boy waiting. The sun was blazing down finely with a negligible 5mph wind blowing in from the north. I postulated that it would be a low scoring affair with few home runs but was proven wrong when I was told that Adam Kennedy (Adam Kennedy!) went yard in the top of the first and then watched Adam Dunn dump a ball into the left field bleachers. For every run the Cubs would score, the Nationals (The Nationals!) stayed ahead. My friend @greenmind0428 was heavily immersed and baffled why he checked into Wrigley Field with 4 others while @OldStyleRedLine checked in with 40 other people. He decided that the @foursquare entries were duplicates and I noticed I couldn’t check in via dumb phone since there was more than one Wrigley Field!
3:45pm – Nine innings later, my fantasy baseball pitcher Ryan Dempster fired 8 innings of 3-run baseball while the Cubs managed to flop after receiving a leadoff double from Marlon Byrd, also leaving the bases loaded and stranding two more runners after man on first and second with one out. The Cubs outhit the Nationals but still, the L flag would fly over Wrigley and there would be no singing of “Go, Cubs, GO!” The Cubs were 0-2 in games this year with me in attendance and I was hoping Friday’s game wouldn’t leave it at 0-3.
5:00pm – Back at Loyola, I prepared more of the slide deck researching various data on high school graduation rates, governmental expenditures on education and the national debt picture. Group team members arrived at 5:30 and we shuffled into a study room and shut the door.
8:25pm - My sections of the slide deck finished and review of literature complete with additional citations, I was good to go to a goodbye dinner at Maggiano’s on Clark for some fellow school chums who would be done and graduated
9:00pm – Dinner consisted of Parmesan Garlic Bread, Tomato Caprese, Fettuccine Alfredo, Four Cheese Ravioli, Chopped Salad, Maggiano’s House Salad, Herb Roasted Chicken, Veal Marsala, New York Style Cheesecake, and Tiramisu. Dinner conversations included upcoming graduation, moving, decay infrastructure in the United States, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and mind control, business school and law school, group project dynamics, the MBA Cup, good bubble tea places, life philosophy, web site redesign, blogging, Twitter, marathon training, and commuting.
11:30pm - Dinner concluded with an exchange of handshakes and the inevitable walk to the train. I sat in my customary front car of the train and began to fall into nap mode but waking up whenever my phone vibrated with the inevitable Twitter updates.
12:20am - Returned home and snapped a quick picture of the full moon from my back yard. Caught up on baseball box scores, updated my fantasy baseball teams, played Mafia Wars, and caught up on updates from Facebook. Uploaded more pictures from the past week onto Facebook, leaving out duplicate pictures / very similar pictures.
2:02am – Wondering how the day passed by so quickly and what time I will have to wake up tomorrow…..
Pull the biggest prank by calling in an awning company and replacing all the Macy crap and returning it to Marshall Field’s