Dear Chicago: Why you gotta waste my flava?!?!

After the midterm yesterday, I decided I would take an afternoon off and take the train into Chicago to get my hair done. What was supposed to be a relaxing afternoon/night off turned into a comedy of errors before all was said and done. Here are the highlights from before things went sour:



Stop #1: my favorite place to get chai in the whole city. Coincidentally, it's across the street from my favorite place to get a mani-pedi, but I didn't have enough time for that yesterday.



Stop #2: the Brown Line. When I was still planning on living in Chicago, I had narrowed all of the areas where I could potentially live down to any area that was on the Brown Line. I wanted to have this view every day on the way into work.



Stop #3: post-cut, pre-color. After shopping around on Armitage for an hour or so, I showed up to my hair appointment 15 minutes late (I thought it started at 4:30, turns out it started at 4:00). That becomes important later.



Stop #3.5: mid-color. I love my salon! They show chick flicks all day long, and they give you wine and champagne to your heart's content. Plus, they have super cheap blowouts. Hence the name (and the best part!), Blo Salon.

After this point everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I didn't get out of the salon until 7:00. The last train of the day for South Bend left at 7:10. I got to the train station at 7:25 - if only I hadn't been fifteen minutes late to my hair appointment! :(

No train? F! Call my friend Julie. She lives in Evanston and I heard she was in Chicago this weekend. Maybe I can stay with her and take the train tomorrow... Turns out Julie has two friends already staying with her for the marathon and her roommate's parents are in town and also staying in their 2 bedroom apartment.

No room for Bagel? Double F! At this point, my cellphone is dying, so I need to come up with a plan and fast. Decide to get on the Blue Line to O'Hare and just take a bus back to campus. That takes forever, and I don't have much time before the last bus to South Bend leaves, but it's my only option right now. Of course, with only one stop left to go before O'Hare and 15 minutes before the next bus, my train decides to stop on the tracks no fewer than 5 times.

At this point, I give up. I hate the bus, and the last time I took it I was stranded in Highland, Indiana due to the hurricane flooding the interstates. Hurricane in Indiana, you ask oh-so-skeptically? Yes. Hurricane in Indiana. It's the Bagel Luck. I'm renting a car and calling it a night.

At this point my comedy of errors continues to take a least three more bad turns (phones for the rental car companies in the airport don't work; first four companies I tried didn't want to rent to me because I didn't have a ticket showing I'd flown into O'Hare, my ATM card won't work in the first three ATM's I tried and I don't have enough cash for the tolls). Eventually, I got home safe and sound. Three hours late. After driving for 2.5 hours. And I was craaaaaabby. Hence why I never took any photos of the finished product haircut.

Today I get to go back to Chicago to return the rental car and try to make it home on public transpo again. Joy.