What to do with you when you come visit

I have struggled since I moved to the windy city on what the hell to do with friends when them came from out of town to come see me. Everyone always just wants to let me decide. "Oh, whatever you normally do is fine" "I want to see what you see every day" "You know this city better than I do"...these are the things I constantly hear from people.

Truthfully? What I normally do is sit around, probably in my pj's and chain smoke while I read and drink too much coffee. Or I watch really, really bad tv through my computer on Hulu. Then, if it's a day that ends in "Y" I go to the bar down the street from my house. And see the same 4 people I see every night. What I normally see is the inside of my book while I ride the train for 45 minutes to and 45 minutes home from work. Sometimes I see weird people preaching at me. Sometimes I see annoying teenagers (though mostly I just hear them). And finally, you knew me before I moved here. Was I especially adventurous then? What makes you think that I've drastically changed, and jumped into a much higher tax bracket, and therefore obviously know all the best clubs, restaurants, awesomest spots ever?

I'm the girl that once I find a sandwich on a menu I order only that for the rest of my life. Seriously, I've never had any other sub at Jimmy John's other than the #6 (which on a side note was also the veggie sub at Big Mikes, now possibly Milios back home and was also the only sub I ever ate there). I hone in on a pattern and rarely do I deviate. Is this great for my social life? No, of course not. Am I trying to change? Yes, but it apparently takes me more time than 4 years. Whatever, I'm working on it.

So when people come to town I often wrestle with what to do with them for the 24-72 hours they are living on my couch and I'm forever soliciting advice from friends who live here (which by the way if you've got any sure fire winners, please, please feel free to leave them in the comments!)

My one standard has been the Signature Room on the 95th. This is usually reserved for folks that come from towns where the highest building they've seen is between the 3-5 story range, unless it's a university building, then maybe 8-10. It's a crazy kind of fun night out with the ridiculous expensive drinks everyone expects to pay for in a metropolitan city and a view to die for. And weirdly, while I have it on standby and while I always know it's there - I haven't actually been in probably 2 years.

So obviously it is time for me to expand my default list. And I think I have just the thing to do it.

This past weekend I went on a brewery tour of Metropolitan Brewery and it was awesome. Located at around 5100 N. Ravenswood, it's a bit misleading as the door is actually on Winona, this little brew tour is a great find for a Saturday afternoon. I've never done a brewery tour so I have nothing to compare it to, but the 3 beers we got to taste were great, Doug and Tracy were personable, engaging, funny and really interesting. The whole thing took about an hour and it cost only $5 a person. It's a great way to support a local enterprise and all in all, it was just really, really fun.

Seriously, I'm doing this with everyone that comes to town. Also directly next door to Metropolitan is Koval Distillery that offers tours for $10. I hope to stop by there before the summer is out and I'll give you a review of how that one goes too.

Surprises

Have you ever had one of those out of left field, totally surprisingly wonderful events happen? I hope so, because I recently had one and let me tell ya-they're great.

It's the kind of event that sneaks up on you that are the best. Don't get me wrong, a happy moment in the middle of a shitty day is great, fantastic in fact, but whenever you remember that great part it will always be linked with the shitty day in some part.

What I'm talking about are the moments that come in the middle of an already good time. Let me break it down for you.

As you know I currently reside in this wonderful metropolis that is the Windy City. But I haven't always lived here. In fact, I'm currently contemplating not living here, but that's a blog for another time. When I moved here I tried to keep in touch with old friends but I pretty much sucked at it. If it weren't for Facebook, I don't think anyone would know what I was up to these past few years. And if it weren't for Facebook, I wouldn't have nearly the amount of "friends" I have today. See FB is famous for dredging up every single person you've ever run into in your life and reconnecting you with them. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes this is creepy. But most of the time, from my experience, it's usually pretty uneventful. Standard FB friends interact like this.

Step One: Old friend/classmate/co-worker finds you and asks to be your friend
Step Two: You accept, mostly to see what the heck they've been up to, and there is possibly a brief "HI! What's up?! What have you been up to?" interaction
Step Three: Conversation dwindles down to almost nothing, maybe a few "liked" updates here and there
Step Four: You forget you are even "friends" with this person

This encompasses most of the typical Facebook interactions. Then, every once in awhile, along comes a breakthrough.

Enter the actual story....

Last week I get a message from one of those random FB friends that I went to high school with. Turns out he's coming to Chicago for the weekend and wants to know if I want to hang out at a local street festival with some of his friends. Since said local festival is in my neighborhood I figure why the heck not, it'd be fun to catch up and an excuse to get out of my routine.

Friday night turns into a bust, which is fine with me because I'm having a pretty good time at my local hang out playing darts and conversing with the regular cast of characters. Not thinking that Saturday will work, I spend the day hanging out and getting ready for fight night*. About 2 hours before I would of begun my trek up to the house of a friend for fights I get a text asking if I want to meet up for the local festival. Judging the time it looks like I can stop by the fest, say hello, and if it's totally weird and/or unfun I can ditch out and make it for fights, so I say sure, text me when you hit the city.

Side Note: Have you ever tried to find someone at a Windy City street festival? Someone you haven't seen in 12 years? It's not fun. Lucky for me I was spotted first and was able to stop the frantic, fruitless search of the crowd of eerily similar looking drunk 30 year-olds.

So we find each other. I meet his friends, all of whose names I promptly forget, and we wander around the street fest. Things are going well, I'm having fun, these people seem nice so I back out of fight plans and stick with the street fest. At some point about half the group decides they want to venture elsewhere, mainly to the fireworks downtown. As this plan holds absolutely no enjoyment for me I step back and let them figure it out. My old school mate and half the group decide to stay so I again decide to stick with the street fest since all in all, this has worked out well for me so far.

Fast forward through boring, tedious, and none of your business details and what ends up happening is I have a really, really great night. Brand new set of people, reconnecting with someone I was totally surprised to be hanging out with, and getting out of my usual routine for 48 hours. It was utterly fantastic. And it completely took me by surprise. And I think that is why 2 days later I'm still a bit smiley about the whole thing.


* Yes I am a fan of UFC fights. We can discuss my disturbing addiction to blood lust later if that's okay.