on school and the weekend trip to chicago.

my winterim class is officially over. all of my assignment grades have been posted except my final grade. i can do the math though and i earned myself an A-. i'll take that.

spring semester starts tomorrow. i paid my tuition earlier this evening (why must it cost so much?!). i don't have any classes on campus tomorrow, but i do have a few online classes that i should get cracking' at right away. i'm taking 7 classes for 15 credits. one class does not count for any credits (it's an extremely low math level course). i'll be on campus essentially all day on mondays. my schedule is as follows:

• health care systems, mondays, 8-10am.
• anatomy&physiology lectures, mondays/wednesdays/fridays, 12-1pm.
• anatomy&physiology lab, mondays, 2-5pm.
• nursing research, thursdays, 5-7pm.
• biology of women, online.
• health documentation, online.
• essentials of algebra, online.
• sociology, online.

tomorrow i need to head to campus after work to buy all my textbooks (why must those cost so much as well?!).

and as for chicago... it was nice. i wasn't able to leave work early, so danny and i left milwaukee later than we had hoped to. we got caught in the crappy weather of snow/rain mix on the way down. we checked into our hotel, dropped our bags, and caught the el to the chicago diner. we had to wait about 20 minutes, but the food was worth it as always. the kale and white bean soup was amazing. after that we decided to head back to the hotel. we strolled in a little before midnight and stayed up for a few hours just watching tv.

in the morning, we woke up to this:

we got ready for the day and walked down the street to yolk. the food was good and the waiter was eyeing danny up. we decided to stay an extra day after breakfast, so we went back to the hotel to reserve the room for another night. our 11th floor room wasn't available, but a 6th floor room was. we took it without thinking about the noise... ugh. the noise. 

we went to the shedd afterwards. danny has never ever been there. at first he thought that maybe he has, but once we walked in nothing seemed to trigger his memory. we watched the beluga whales swim for a while (i love them) and the sea otters (danny couldn't pull himself away). it was crowded and children are annoying.

we went down to michigan avenue after to walk around. i forgot what we were looking for at first. we found a spot tucked away and headed towards the action. eventually we grew tired of all the bustle, so we went to giordano's for some deep dish. because you have to wait so long for the pizza to cook (45 minutes) i wasn't very hungry by the time we got it. when we left, we went back to the hotel room and i crawled into bed immediately. danny wasn't very thrilled that i was exhausted by 730 because he was still full of energy. we just watched some tv and eventually fell asleep around 1030 or 11. all night you could hear the busses' engines and cars honking. ugh. and then the room got too hot for danny to sleep. he was complaining and tossing so much that i told him to just open the window. after that, he slept pretty well. i, on the other hand, kept waking up to pull the blankets up and over me. 

we woke up this morning and walked around the corner to get a donut and coffee for breakfast. we walked around for ten minutes after deciding what we were going to do for the rest of the day. neither of us seemed too enthusiastic about the cloudy day. we went back to our room, both sort of cranky and fussy, gathered our stuff, and checked out. we were going to look for a record store, but couldn't find any parking so we gave up and went back to michigan avenue to get some popcorn for danny's mom. we went to crate and barrel and walked around for a bit and then headed over to clark street. there were two record stores on clark that i found on google. plus molly's cupcakes is over there. our first stop was dave's records. we weren't there long. maybe 15 minutes. danny couldn't find anything he wanted to spend money on, but i walked in there knowing exactly what bands i was looking for. i left with a copy of braid's "movie music vol. 1" and ryan adam's "gold." we went to molly's next. i promised a coworker that i would get her a cupcake. i got her a peach cobbler and a blueberry cheesecake. i bought myself three of their chocolate peanut butter ones and one eclair cupcake. we put my new treasures in the car and walked up the street to the second record shop. i can't remember the name of it, but it only really had house music. we walked out in less than five minutes. on our walk back to the car we decided to just go back to milwaukee, beat the traffic.

i was a little bummed we didn't get to go to the science and industry museum, but at the same time we had already spent so much money on parking in the city and it was already noon when we finally got a move on. it just didn't make sense to spend however much money for only a couple of hours.

i didn't feel well on the way home, so i was grouchy. i was also tired. i was sort of dozing off and then we passed the last toll, stopped at the lake park oasis, and then we were at the mars cheese castle. we stopped there as well and i bought a turtle kringle to split with my mom and a 7up for my stomach. i slept most of the way back home. we dropped off some popcorn at danny's mom's house and headed back to the east side. he dropped me off and i've been laying in bed basically ever since 6pm. the cats are happy that i'm home; they haven't left my side since i walked in the door.

(as a side note: marla and jasper are really good at not scarfing down their food. i'm able to leave a bowl of food out for them and it lasts two days. their water is the same (mostly. winter is sometimes sketchy with the dry air and all). i'm really glad they're able to control themselves otherwise i'd never be able to leave for two days without having someone check in on them. i gave them treats when i came home too.)

it was a good weekend, mostly. i'm glad i was able to go down to chicago before my spring semester starts and takes over my life. tomorrow i'll be frantic trying to get everything in order for my classes and irritated that i have to stand in line with a bunch of books totaling close to $1000. plus i need to swing by my bank to cash my paycheck and get a cashier's check for my rent. i hope i can leave work early.

anyway, off to bed!