Awake

Me in my hotel room this afternoon, flushed from all that walking

Although the salmon and risotto was very good at dinner, it was much smaller in portion than some of the other, cheaper, things on the menu, so it didn't stay with me and I actually woke up in the middle of the night hungry. We ate at Park Grill again, and it was excellent. Like I said, it didn't keep me satisfied till morning though. Yesterday's meal of cheese curds, black bean burger, and fries was almost too much to eat by comparison.

I headed down to the lounge in the hopes that they'd still have some fruit down there, but apparently they take it up on the weekends, starting early Friday. Pooh! So I came back up and made a cup of (decaf) coffee in the Keurig in my room, the first time I've used a K-cup machine. Since I wasn't sure if you took off the foil or not (you don't), I viewed a review/demonstration video on YouTube. I always found them a little intimidating, so I've never used them, and of course, unless you have a reusable cup, the plastic ones are expensive and bad for the environment. But I think, despite the fact that I don't particularly like coffee, that it helped stave off some hunger for now, by filling my stomach with something. The Wi-Fi is still a bit temperamental here at the corner of the hotel, so I moved over to the bed from the desk and it's doing better; now I'm getting two bars.

Overall, my stay at Club Quarters at Wacker and Michigan has been very good, though, and the hotel staff have been very pleasant. Unlike my stay at the Marriott--UIC previously, I've had no trouble using the key card in the elevator. I always had to rely on strangers to get me up to my floor there, because I could never make the system work. I don't know if that was user error or a problem with their system, but anyway, it's working fine here.

Tomorrow we have a meeting that runs from 8 am to 1 pm, and I'm lucky to have a ride to the meeting thanks to a colleague who I met over dinner. We talked quite a bit through that, and then some more during and after the walk back to the hotel, and so she's going to give me a ride, since she has a car here. It does mean that since check-out is by noon, that I'll have to have everything ready to go and check out by 7 am, just like I would have if I'd taken the Pink Line train, but I don't have to carry three bags on the train and walking, either. I had planned to take the Blue Line back to O'Hare afterwards, but I'm not sure I'll have time. I may need to take a cab. If I stay for lunch, it'll be 1 pm, and my flight leaves at 3:52 or so. With O'Hare I definitely need to get there as early as possible to deal with security, etc. We'll see. Maybe I can share a cab with someone else going to the airport. But if not, I think I have enough cash on me to get me there.

I should probably try to go back to sleep. I have to get up in less than four hours. Good night.