Weekend Review-1.24.10

A lot can be said for tried and true friends. Their ordinary everyday antics evolve into hilariously funny inside jokes. They are the first ones to raise their eyebrows and scratch their heads at questionable color coordination, or failed encounters with the male species. Yet they are even quicker to approach with a pat on the back for those jobs well done. If you look real closely you can see all of the direct impacts they've had on you as well. Your sense of humor has probably expanded, your ambitions heightened, and most importantly your compassion grown. At least these, and many more, are what I can say after a weekend in Chicago with my three best friends from high school, Anna, Emilie, and Margaret.

• Thanks to Anna's flight anxiety, good spirits kicked off at the airport bar and the flight North to calm the nerves.
• The question of "do you have a pair of scissors?" posed to Margaret by myself while I held up the black top I was planning on wearing for the evening, sent a shrill of panic up the Material Girl's spine. Fortunately for all parties, my style plans went off without a hitch.
• Nothing beats a pad Thai takeout dinner and a few glasses of champagne before a night out.
• Kudos to Margaret for having the bravery to take us out with her work friends.
• Karma is when you help make sure a severely intoxicated girl, who very well could have been any one of us in our college hey-days, correctly remembered her name and apartment at 11:15 P.M.
• As Anna and her skull figured out, you should never ask to be dipped real low when dancing in the late night hours.
• If you find out that a guy has a girlfriend, turn your cheek.
• It's never a true late night out without a fourth meal and a mini-argument that would be completely forgotten in the morning, quickly being replaced by laughter.
• In completely un-Suzanne Iovaldi like fashion, Saturday started at 11:30 A.M. and would move along much the same for the rest of the day.
• Just try to catch any of us riding dirty. I dare you.
• We wanted to see to it that our long lost classmate, Marla, received a sufficient amount of rest after her Lasik surgery that morning. Which is exactly why we decided to sit just a few feet from her room and burst into roaring fits of laughter every two minutes after great stories and judgmental notes were told.
• Deciding to take a break from immaturity, we decided to slip into intellectual mode by paying a visit to the Uptown Starbucks and Borders. Of course we never did make it out of the "Style and Beauty" section of the bookstore...
• For all of our high-maintenance quirks, it was a wonder we were all able not only to agree on sushi, but come out enjoying the meal from Shine in Lincoln Park.
• A real-life "Mizzou Connection" story: running into two former Mizzouans at two seperate house parties.
• I'm still not sure what it means when your "hair doesn't" quit, but after being told this about my maneby a energetic and styling young man, my new mantra has become "My hair doesn't quit, so why should I?"
• Not sure I'll ever find a bagel better than the Chicago Bagel Authority's.
• After a short Megabus ride home, it was back to St. Louis where I was able to watch some good football at Pietro's. Could not be more S-T-O-K-E-D about the Colts finding their way back into the Super Bowl.