Being Productive

This is how to do a productive Chicago trip in 54 hours and 20 minutes, starring Arvin, Ken, myself and other various co-stars:

Friday, 3:15pm E.T. - pick up Arvin in the PT Cruiser (a gas guzzler by the way) and head for Chicago

5:30pm - arrive in Sarnia; proceed to wait 45 minutes to cross the damn border

(before arrival) - watched Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Saved By The Bell, and plenty of gas/rest stops, puctuated by vending machine visits

Saturday, 12:00am C.T. - arrive in Chicago, pick up cousin Mar, go to White Castle and enjoy burgers like the movie

1:30am - sleep

6:30am - wake up, shower, get ready, proceed to wait a couple of hours for everyone else to get ready

8:30am - arrive at IHOP for breakfast. Ordered an "International Passport" breakfast; 2 eggs, 2 bacon, 2 sausages, 2 french toast, 2 pancakes. Yummy, but a little overkill on the butter

10:00am - visit other cousin Daisy and her partner Kim, who we find out is pregnant with twins. It's an immaculate conception!

10:45am - visit United Centre; take photo with Michael Jordan (statue)

11:20am - arrive at Sears Tower; was gonna go up but the wait was 1.5 hours long, so we ditched that plan. Oh, and Ken almost got into it with a crackhead, who was luckily to cracked up he started to bug other tourists instead

11:45am - decide to walk to Millenium Park and Buckingham Fountain. In 40C heat. Ouch

12:15pm - get there, do a bunch of photo-ops, swelter in heat

2:00pm - drenched in sweat, reach the car again. Might be a gas guzzler, but the PT Cruiser has an awesome A/C system (which we would proceed to use the rest of the trip, undoubtedly killing our gas mileage. But whatever).

3:00pm - late lunch at Al's, where they served this Italian Beef Sandwich and fries with cheese sauce. Frikin' awesome. We then had some watermelon and strawberry "Italian Lemonade" across the street, which was equally awesome and cooled us down. Someone needs to open up places like that here

4:00pm - arrive at Steve and Barry's, a store with decent clothing and nothing over $6.98US. Ken and Arvin think it's an awesome store

5:00pm - arrive at Mar's work to pick up the car parts that's been at her desk for the past 7-8 months. Much bigger package than what I thought; Ken and Arvin proceed to start to freak-out that we will be stopped at the border. Yeesh

5:30pm - arrive at Outlet Mall. End up buying a Nike dri-fit shirt for $10 and a pair of Nike runners for $40. I threw out my New Balance runners that were a bit wide and had seen better days

7:30pm - arrive at home for a quick breather. Oh and to "deposit" some stuff in the bathroom. I made the executive decision to try to sneak in two of the three boxes of car parts to Canada, and get the third box delivered to me

9:15pm - arrive at Lou's Pizza, where we had an awesome deep dish sausage pizza. My heart starts to moan

10:30pm - go to Dominick's Grocery store, pick up a couple of Chex Mix for the brothers

11:45pm - get home, shower and do some more deposits

Sunday, 1:00am - talk to cousin Meng, who is leaving for Florida in a couple of days

1:30am - sleep

7:30am - wake up, go to bathroom, say "screw it" and went back to bed

8:30am - wake up, take shower

9:15am - ate breakfast that Tita Myrna cooked for us; longanesa, rice and atchara

9:30am - watch "The Simple Life" on TV

10:15am - say our goodbyes, go to Target for one last shopping excursion, go to White Castle to pick up slyders (aka. burgers) for the road

1:30pm - stuck in Indiana traffic. Thank goodness Ken is driving

(before arrival) - watch "Fun With Dick and Jane", Saved By The Bell and In Living Colour

7:00pm, E.T. - reach the border, had no problems at all. I proceed to get mad at Arvin and Ken for being too worried about getting stopped at the border and I could've taken my other car part (in honesty though, I was kinda worried too, but only because they were so worried)

9:35pm - arrive home, and start thinking about how it would be like if (when?) we were to do this for New York

I do believe I will be calling in sick tomorrow. Now that's productive baby