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Erin's Crazified Challenge Weekend Summary. Yay.
Okay. Time to sum up my positively fabulous weekend.
Thursday
Arrive at airport. My older sister and my brother-in-law pick me up, because we have... unfinished business. (Namely... the drink she promised me for my 21st birthday almost four years ago... Well we went to Fridays, had lunch/dinner, and she finally came through. ;)) After that, I got in touch with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
megansync, and discovered we were reallyclose to her place, but she was over at Midway picking up raineesue. So Joy, Milton, and I went to a nearby Borders to wait. I inwardly squee-ed at all the HBP stuff and.. er.. picked up a pack of Bertie Botts Beans, and the HP-textbook-two-pack.
Eventually, Rainee and Megan arrive, and Rainee totally glomps me. (That was sooooo unexpected. Hehehe.). We blather a bit and drive, yammering on about the Cubs and *NSYNC. Hehe. First we go to Applebees because Megan and Rainee need food. I have.. a little bit, cuz I'd just eaten, so yes. Then we go to Megan's place, meet her cat, and for the life of me, I have NO idea what we do for the rest of the day. Woot.
Friday
Wake up. Get ready. Grab the Metra, walk to the el, Red Line whaaaat... Go to Wrigley. Squee muchly about being at Wrigley. Go to box office. SRO. Find a scalper. Buy 17 dollar upper deck seats for 35 each. Meet up with Meredith, enter. Find what we think are our seats, think they kinda suck because we can't see the pitchers mound due to pole. Move. Heheh. Get kicked out of our seats like three times when their rightful owners show up. Find our REAL seats. Realize they rock. Watch the Cubs utterly trounce the Pirates, 11-1. Be VERY HAPPY about this. Be told that I must taunt Chris at the meet and greet about this. Promise I will. Drop by the gift shop where I pick up I license plate frame and a hat forleany75. We leave. At this point, we decide not to go to the Addison station because, dude, LINE, and walk a fuckload of a way to a different one and head back to Hotel 71 to hang out at in Meredith's room briefly.
GOD, the elevator situation was crappy, wasn't it? Saw Lucca in the lobby before headed up and chilled out and met Meredith's roommates, NONE OF WHOM I CAN REMEMBER BECAUSE I SUCK. Leaned out window to watch boys leaving for bowling. Then we walked over to the LJ dinner where we made a brief show up, talk to a couple people, and leave, because we needed to get back to Meg's place in a serious way. On the way back, we play some poker on the Metra, Megan inadvertantly falls on her ass, and then we get back and play a little more poker and go to bed and stuff.
Saturday (SQUEEEEE)
Wake up, get ready. Go. I'm the only one of the three of us with Platinum, so they drop me off by the box office around 11:30. Where I wait. In the sun. Until it opens. Go in, get my ticket, sticky thing, and wristband, be highly amused at the fact that it's a PO leftover, and that I'm apparently working. Go across to the arena line for Platinum people. The starting point for the line moves. Twice. Once, it's moved by a cop, and once, by event staff. Those around me in line are rather amused. As am I. Anyway, after being in line for roughly forever, we get ushered in for the shootaround.
At first it's just... sitting around while nothing goes on. Fun. After a while.. Honest to goodness celebritage. JC comes out to shoot around some. He is incapable of making a basket. I am highly amused by this. (Oh, and before he came out, Roy was making a few shots himself. Let me just say that it's evident where JC's basketball skill comes from. ;)) Chris is briefly visible in the tunnel heading out, but soon goes back. Joey emerges with a towel on his head and.. pretty much hangs out for a bit before leaving. I see Brian Urlacher and I'm like... DUDE. I didn't know HE was here. Make a mental note to tell my dad and brother. ;)
After that, we get kicked out (;)) and ushered back across the street for the meet'n'greet. We wait in a loooong hallway for.. a while. Of course, at the time we left, JC was still on the court, so who knows how long it was before they dragged his ass off to come over and meet us. ;)
So the line finally gets going, they notify us that they're giving us programs, and that's what we'd get signed, we could take pictures, blah blah yackety smackity. They start sending us in in groups of ten. As I get a bit farther up, there's apparently a group of nine, and they ask if anyone's there alone. I am! I get to skip ahead in line whee. Enter the room, see the guys, mentally start flipping out. Because, remember.. first time ever seeing all five of them at once. Take a couple pictures on approach, utterly forget I have such a thing as a camera when I get there. As I approach the table, Joey is poking fun at Lance for signing programs sideways or something. I am amused. Lance takes my program and is all "Fine. I'll do it your way." or something. I do recall he says "This is gonna be hard." I laugh a little. Moves on to Joey.
Here is when I start kicking myself for missing an opportunity. For the record, I am wearing this button. Joey looks up at me and actually asks what 'FKA' stands for. I.. cannot muster up the balls to tell him. So I say something like.. "Oh, God, I can't.." And then he's like.. "Now I really want to know." I laugh a little. And half-hope he googles it. ;)
Then to Chris. Which, me being me, is the most substantive part of my little M&G. I want to prove to Rainee and Meg that I didn't chicken out. So. Here goes.
Me: Hey, Chris, how 'bout those Pirates?
Chris: *shakes his head slowly* We're gonna get swept this weekend.
Me: *laughs a little* Yeah, I was at the game yesterday, and everyone told me I totally had to taunt you for it.
Chris: We suck.
Me: Well, I'm a Cubs fan. I don't get to taunt people very often.
At this point, Justin looks directly up at me cuz I've wandered over to him by this point.. (I'm highly annoyed at myself for not looking at JC at all.) He interjects. "Worst luck in Major League Baseball."
Me: Don't I know it.
And then.. it's over, and I leave.. and I maaaaaay be shaking juuust a bit.
Walk back over to get my seat. Front row, behind the Knights bench, just a biiit to the left of their Gatorade Cooler.
I was right there for Chris inadvertantly whacking JC in the face, followed by the hug and then attempted depantsing. Was, in fact, grossly amused by the entire game. Better accounts of it than mine would be have already surfaced, so I probably won't go into too much detail. Had I known they WOULDN'T BE CHECKING FOR CAMERAS at the game, I would have totally brought my digital, but I came woefully underprepared with just a disposable.. which meant I was out of film before the end of the first half. Alas. But.. GOD, I love how much they love each other. It was just.. SO OBVIOUS all game. Made me giddy.
At halftime, I go out to the concourse and stretch my legs a bit. I'm walking around, and then behind me, I hear.. "Excuse me, is your name Erin?" I turn around. "Yeah.." "Erin..Dizmo?" "Yep!" It'spuszysty. We chat for a bit and I tell her of my meet and greet experience. It's amusing. (So, yes, Steph! Nice talking to you! It made me happy to get recognized from LJ. ;))
In the second half, when Joey had started hitting up the crowd for money, much to my surprise, Rainee was actually given the mike by Joey to harangue Lance out on the court as she'd flown her ass from Mississippi to see him. I started cracking up. And much with the envy. ;) I threw five bucks in the Get Lance On The Court fund, which.. alas.. failed. Boo on Lance. But his attempts to avoid it were amusing anyway, and I love them all, so I'll give him a pass. ;)
After the game, we head back to Megan's place and chill for a bit.smc1996 came over, and we played a bit more poker. With certain house rules. (Like a pair of fours would always beat everything due to Kyle Farnsworth being Megan's favorite baseball player and lust object. ;)) At one point.. I had a hand that won, but also won on sheer creativity. I started laughing hysterically looking at it, and then put it down. It was three jacks, a king, and a queen. I explained it as follows. "Look! It's the boys! Three J's, King Chris, and then Lance is the queen!!" Needless to say, there was a bit of hysterical laughter around the poker table for a bit.
Anyway, Elle has to leave, and we muse a bit about HBP. We find out, via one of Rainee's friends, and Megan and I not leaving well enough alone, one rather major spoiler, but.. don't know the circumstances surrounding it, or, indeed, who the Half-Blood Prince is. We work ourselves into something of a fury, me knowing even that MY COPY IS SITTING AT HOME. So.. We go to Meijer and Megan picks up a copy. I read the first chapter on the way back to her place and squee a little. As it IS, however, her book, she opts to go read it in her room. She promises to come give it to me if she realizes she's about to fall asleep, but no promises. Which is cool, as she falls asleep without knowing. ;) Rainee and I play kill-each-other-by-notebook (don't ask) for a while before we go to bed.
Sunday
I wake up. Megan's awake. I go snatch the book, at her offer. I read. And read and read and read. And eventually have to shower and get ready to take Rainee to the airport, as her flight leaves a good six hours before mine. :b So.. I read in the car. (I am, for the record, not being an uncooperative guest, as I am still participating in conversation at need while reading.) So while we're kinda halfway to the airport, I turn a page and start completely freaking out. Rainee's already been thoroughly spoiled at this point, so she knows what I'm going on about. I will not put any spoilers in this post, as.. that would be uncool. But rest assured that for the rest of the day, I was having random freakouts about the last few chapters.
So after we drop Rainee off, Megan and I decide to go down to Shedd Aquarium and see the fishies. Megan is highly disappointed by the shark exhibit, but I think it ain't bad. She also utterly freaks out at the anaconda. Which I did try to warn her about, knowing of her insane fear of snakes. I told her not to look, but she did anyway. Tsk.
So we decide to have some lunch and go to the food court. After we get our food and sit down... after a while, at the table next to us sits, swear to God, Justin Timberlake's younger and brown-eyed twin. We're looking at each other like.. Oh my GOD. And occasionally sneaking glances for the rest of the meal.
Then we leave, check out the dolphin show, which is short, but fun. I win a.. Shedd Aquarium sticker and a.. coupon for a free Dilly Bar for my.. er.. dolphin knowledge. Or something. One of the dolphin trainer guys is, swear to God, a dead ringer for Cubs announcer Len Kasper. Megan and I are all.. Shouldn't he be at the game? ;) So we're being stalked by dopplegangers. Wow.
So we then check out the crab exhibit which is really awesome, and have to leave. Megan takes me to the airport, I go home, the rest is.. monotony. ;)
That. Was such. A great. Weekend. The end.
Thursday
Arrive at airport. My older sister and my brother-in-law pick me up, because we have... unfinished business. (Namely... the drink she promised me for my 21st birthday almost four years ago... Well we went to Fridays, had lunch/dinner, and she finally came through. ;)) After that, I got in touch with
megansync, and discovered we were reallyclose to her place, but she was over at Midway picking up raineesue. So Joy, Milton, and I went to a nearby Borders to wait. I inwardly squee-ed at all the HBP stuff and.. er.. picked up a pack of Bertie Botts Beans, and the HP-textbook-two-pack.Eventually, Rainee and Megan arrive, and Rainee totally glomps me. (That was sooooo unexpected. Hehehe.). We blather a bit and drive, yammering on about the Cubs and *NSYNC. Hehe. First we go to Applebees because Megan and Rainee need food. I have.. a little bit, cuz I'd just eaten, so yes. Then we go to Megan's place, meet her cat, and for the life of me, I have NO idea what we do for the rest of the day. Woot.
Friday
Wake up. Get ready. Grab the Metra, walk to the el, Red Line whaaaat... Go to Wrigley. Squee muchly about being at Wrigley. Go to box office. SRO. Find a scalper. Buy 17 dollar upper deck seats for 35 each. Meet up with Meredith, enter. Find what we think are our seats, think they kinda suck because we can't see the pitchers mound due to pole. Move. Heheh. Get kicked out of our seats like three times when their rightful owners show up. Find our REAL seats. Realize they rock. Watch the Cubs utterly trounce the Pirates, 11-1. Be VERY HAPPY about this. Be told that I must taunt Chris at the meet and greet about this. Promise I will. Drop by the gift shop where I pick up I license plate frame and a hat for
leany75. We leave. At this point, we decide not to go to the Addison station because, dude, LINE, and walk a fuckload of a way to a different one and head back to Hotel 71 to hang out at in Meredith's room briefly.GOD, the elevator situation was crappy, wasn't it? Saw Lucca in the lobby before headed up and chilled out and met Meredith's roommates, NONE OF WHOM I CAN REMEMBER BECAUSE I SUCK. Leaned out window to watch boys leaving for bowling. Then we walked over to the LJ dinner where we made a brief show up, talk to a couple people, and leave, because we needed to get back to Meg's place in a serious way. On the way back, we play some poker on the Metra, Megan inadvertantly falls on her ass, and then we get back and play a little more poker and go to bed and stuff.
Saturday (SQUEEEEE)
Wake up, get ready. Go. I'm the only one of the three of us with Platinum, so they drop me off by the box office around 11:30. Where I wait. In the sun. Until it opens. Go in, get my ticket, sticky thing, and wristband, be highly amused at the fact that it's a PO leftover, and that I'm apparently working. Go across to the arena line for Platinum people. The starting point for the line moves. Twice. Once, it's moved by a cop, and once, by event staff. Those around me in line are rather amused. As am I. Anyway, after being in line for roughly forever, we get ushered in for the shootaround.
At first it's just... sitting around while nothing goes on. Fun. After a while.. Honest to goodness celebritage. JC comes out to shoot around some. He is incapable of making a basket. I am highly amused by this. (Oh, and before he came out, Roy was making a few shots himself. Let me just say that it's evident where JC's basketball skill comes from. ;)) Chris is briefly visible in the tunnel heading out, but soon goes back. Joey emerges with a towel on his head and.. pretty much hangs out for a bit before leaving. I see Brian Urlacher and I'm like... DUDE. I didn't know HE was here. Make a mental note to tell my dad and brother. ;)
After that, we get kicked out (;)) and ushered back across the street for the meet'n'greet. We wait in a loooong hallway for.. a while. Of course, at the time we left, JC was still on the court, so who knows how long it was before they dragged his ass off to come over and meet us. ;)
So the line finally gets going, they notify us that they're giving us programs, and that's what we'd get signed, we could take pictures, blah blah yackety smackity. They start sending us in in groups of ten. As I get a bit farther up, there's apparently a group of nine, and they ask if anyone's there alone. I am! I get to skip ahead in line whee. Enter the room, see the guys, mentally start flipping out. Because, remember.. first time ever seeing all five of them at once. Take a couple pictures on approach, utterly forget I have such a thing as a camera when I get there. As I approach the table, Joey is poking fun at Lance for signing programs sideways or something. I am amused. Lance takes my program and is all "Fine. I'll do it your way." or something. I do recall he says "This is gonna be hard." I laugh a little. Moves on to Joey.
Here is when I start kicking myself for missing an opportunity. For the record, I am wearing this button. Joey looks up at me and actually asks what 'FKA' stands for. I.. cannot muster up the balls to tell him. So I say something like.. "Oh, God, I can't.." And then he's like.. "Now I really want to know." I laugh a little. And half-hope he googles it. ;)
Then to Chris. Which, me being me, is the most substantive part of my little M&G. I want to prove to Rainee and Meg that I didn't chicken out. So. Here goes.
Me: Hey, Chris, how 'bout those Pirates?
Chris: *shakes his head slowly* We're gonna get swept this weekend.
Me: *laughs a little* Yeah, I was at the game yesterday, and everyone told me I totally had to taunt you for it.
Chris: We suck.
Me: Well, I'm a Cubs fan. I don't get to taunt people very often.
At this point, Justin looks directly up at me cuz I've wandered over to him by this point.. (I'm highly annoyed at myself for not looking at JC at all.) He interjects. "Worst luck in Major League Baseball."
Me: Don't I know it.
And then.. it's over, and I leave.. and I maaaaaay be shaking juuust a bit.
Walk back over to get my seat. Front row, behind the Knights bench, just a biiit to the left of their Gatorade Cooler.
I was right there for Chris inadvertantly whacking JC in the face, followed by the hug and then attempted depantsing. Was, in fact, grossly amused by the entire game. Better accounts of it than mine would be have already surfaced, so I probably won't go into too much detail. Had I known they WOULDN'T BE CHECKING FOR CAMERAS at the game, I would have totally brought my digital, but I came woefully underprepared with just a disposable.. which meant I was out of film before the end of the first half. Alas. But.. GOD, I love how much they love each other. It was just.. SO OBVIOUS all game. Made me giddy.
At halftime, I go out to the concourse and stretch my legs a bit. I'm walking around, and then behind me, I hear.. "Excuse me, is your name Erin?" I turn around. "Yeah.." "Erin..Dizmo?" "Yep!" It's
puszysty. We chat for a bit and I tell her of my meet and greet experience. It's amusing. (So, yes, Steph! Nice talking to you! It made me happy to get recognized from LJ. ;))In the second half, when Joey had started hitting up the crowd for money, much to my surprise, Rainee was actually given the mike by Joey to harangue Lance out on the court as she'd flown her ass from Mississippi to see him. I started cracking up. And much with the envy. ;) I threw five bucks in the Get Lance On The Court fund, which.. alas.. failed. Boo on Lance. But his attempts to avoid it were amusing anyway, and I love them all, so I'll give him a pass. ;)
After the game, we head back to Megan's place and chill for a bit.
smc1996 came over, and we played a bit more poker. With certain house rules. (Like a pair of fours would always beat everything due to Kyle Farnsworth being Megan's favorite baseball player and lust object. ;)) At one point.. I had a hand that won, but also won on sheer creativity. I started laughing hysterically looking at it, and then put it down. It was three jacks, a king, and a queen. I explained it as follows. "Look! It's the boys! Three J's, King Chris, and then Lance is the queen!!" Needless to say, there was a bit of hysterical laughter around the poker table for a bit.Anyway, Elle has to leave, and we muse a bit about HBP. We find out, via one of Rainee's friends, and Megan and I not leaving well enough alone, one rather major spoiler, but.. don't know the circumstances surrounding it, or, indeed, who the Half-Blood Prince is. We work ourselves into something of a fury, me knowing even that MY COPY IS SITTING AT HOME. So.. We go to Meijer and Megan picks up a copy. I read the first chapter on the way back to her place and squee a little. As it IS, however, her book, she opts to go read it in her room. She promises to come give it to me if she realizes she's about to fall asleep, but no promises. Which is cool, as she falls asleep without knowing. ;) Rainee and I play kill-each-other-by-notebook (don't ask) for a while before we go to bed.
Sunday
I wake up. Megan's awake. I go snatch the book, at her offer. I read. And read and read and read. And eventually have to shower and get ready to take Rainee to the airport, as her flight leaves a good six hours before mine. :b So.. I read in the car. (I am, for the record, not being an uncooperative guest, as I am still participating in conversation at need while reading.) So while we're kinda halfway to the airport, I turn a page and start completely freaking out. Rainee's already been thoroughly spoiled at this point, so she knows what I'm going on about. I will not put any spoilers in this post, as.. that would be uncool. But rest assured that for the rest of the day, I was having random freakouts about the last few chapters.
So after we drop Rainee off, Megan and I decide to go down to Shedd Aquarium and see the fishies. Megan is highly disappointed by the shark exhibit, but I think it ain't bad. She also utterly freaks out at the anaconda. Which I did try to warn her about, knowing of her insane fear of snakes. I told her not to look, but she did anyway. Tsk.
So we decide to have some lunch and go to the food court. After we get our food and sit down... after a while, at the table next to us sits, swear to God, Justin Timberlake's younger and brown-eyed twin. We're looking at each other like.. Oh my GOD. And occasionally sneaking glances for the rest of the meal.
Then we leave, check out the dolphin show, which is short, but fun. I win a.. Shedd Aquarium sticker and a.. coupon for a free Dilly Bar for my.. er.. dolphin knowledge. Or something. One of the dolphin trainer guys is, swear to God, a dead ringer for Cubs announcer Len Kasper. Megan and I are all.. Shouldn't he be at the game? ;) So we're being stalked by dopplegangers. Wow.
So we then check out the crab exhibit which is really awesome, and have to leave. Megan takes me to the airport, I go home, the rest is.. monotony. ;)
That. Was such. A great. Weekend. The end.
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BUT just for the record, the Pirates took the Cubs on Saturday. So even though Chris lost at CFTC at least it wasn't a blow out for his Pirates. Kudos for giving him crap about Friday's game. (I don't think I could have necessarily explained 'FKA' to any of the guys either. Especially with Chris sitting right there. lol!)
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Yeah. I know the Pirates won on Saturday. So good for Chris or something. ;) But I figured.. when am I ever gonna have the opportunity to do that again ever? And I still think I *should* have explained. Even WITH Chris sitting right there. *laughs*
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I had a bunch of fun and am glad I finally got to meet you guys! **hugs**
P.S. I had a shit-tastic day or I would reply more in-depth to this...
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And I also had mucho de fun-o! Yay!
*hugs*
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ps. What does FKA stand for?
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*sage nod*
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that did NOT come up in my google, poor Joey hasn't slept in days I'm sure.
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And I was wondering if you'd actually do the FKA/Pirates thing, so heeee!
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