I think I'll move to Australia...
Today, I had planned on heading up to Chicago to get one piece of my visa paperwork completed and then hang out with Tom on the North Side. I had received my police clearance (a piece of paper saying that I'm not fleeing the country due to a warrant for my arrest), and I had to take it to the Cook County Clerk's Office to obtain a apostille (an international notary) for it. Well, here's how the day went:
-I had wanted to wake up around 8:30 so that I could have time to see the city, but, of course, I slept until noon. I decided to take the Metra train up to the city since the clerk's office was two blocks away from the central station. As I was driving to the University Park station (the closest to Bourbonnais), Randy called me saying that I had received another form from the Illinois State Police in the mail. Since my police clearance form looked like it had been printed off of Internet Explorer, I turned around thinking that perhaps they had sent me a more official copy. Nope. It was another IE copy. The turnaround caused me to miss my train by five minutes.
It was turning out to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
-Having bought my ticket before looking at the schedule, and needing to kill an hour, I decided to walk to the nearby gas station to use the restroom, get a drink, and avoid giving up my parking spot in the almost full lot. For those who don't know, University Park is just on the border between the south suburbs and the podunk farm towns. So while there were some paved roads, there were no sidewalks and much mud and gravel on the street corners. As I walked back from the station, I tried to avoid the massive puddles from the recent storms. When I placed my foot on what I thought was a patch of asphalt (there were many), it turned out to be a piece of asphalt (or something similar-looking) floating in a shin-deep mud puddle. Therefore, I had to walk with a mud-boot back to the station to rinse off my leg and white samba sneaker (though, it was probably good that I didn't wear my Chuck Taylors). I was able to rinse most of the mud off, but I had to walk around with a wet, black sock for most of the day.
It was indeed a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
-The train ride was thankfully uneventful, and I was able to find the clerks' office with no problems. When I reached the window to get my apostille, the lady told me that a) I needed to have the form notarized first and b) they had stopped taking forms a half and hour ago. As I stormed off in frustration, I heard one of the women in a slightly sarcastic tone say, "well, I guess we'll see you tomorrow."
Yup. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
-Having some more time to kill before I met up with Tom, I walked across the street to Sears to get some socks and a new pair of shoes. Out of a new habit, I checked out the electronics section to see if they had a Wii Fit. Instead, they had a woefully pathetic selection of Wii games. Giving up, I went to the station to take the red line to Addision. The ticket machine refused to take my ten dollar bill, and I sure wasn't going to put in twenty, so I went to the lobby shop to buy a Snickers bar and get change. When I left the store, I realized that I had grabbed a Dark Chocolate Snickers instead. I hate dark chocolate.
Terrible, horrible, etc, etc.
-After arriving at Tom's house, he had the desire to pick up a copy of Settlers of Catan for us to play with his wife, Liz. Having found out that the local game store had closed down, I suggested we try the local Barnes and Noble. On the way, my fantasy football league commissioner called me to say that it was my turn to make my first pick in our draft, 20 hours after the first pick (really, don't ask why it's being done this way). While Tom and I were able to find a copy of Catan, I searched throughout the store for their RPG section, and there strangely was none. When we got back to his place, it turned out that Liz was busy with homework for her summer class. As most of us know, Catan is not a two-player game.
T, H, NG, VBD.
-So, here I sit in Tom and Liz's living room since they graciously offered to have me stay the night so that I can attempt my errands again tomorrow. I called Metra to say that my car will be there overnight, but I only got as far as leaving a message. Hopefully, they won't call me back tomorrow morning saying that my car has been crushed into a cube and that I have 30 minutes to move my cube. I'll be sleeping with my contact lenses in, and my only change of clothes are the socks that I bought. Not to mention that it's 3:30 in the morning, and I'm still wide awake.
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.