Advice for Day 80: Fall in Love

My amtrak train got stuck 15 minutes outside of Chicago. Besides the drunk lady sitting in front of me who didn't know or didn't care that she was swearing loud enough to make the amish in the quiet car blush, i didn't even care. I was headed to Chicago, my one true love.

After a Metra train shoved my amtrak all the way to Union Station, I exited the platform to be greeted by the welcoming arms of a blowing blizzard. Note: wind, rain and snow to not fall down on Chicago, it goes sideways, diagonal and sometimes straight up from the ground. In the whirling white, i was disoriented and asked a woman at the cross walk if i was on Wells. She along with 2 other blizzard bravers bravely took their mouths out of their scarfs to answer no this was Wacker and wells is one... no two... oh right, you're right...it's two blocks up. That is why I love Chicago.

Getting onto the el, two people held doors for me and an entire group of Chicagians made room for me and my burdening luggage under the heat lamps. That is why i love Chicago.

As I rode the elevator up to my interview clearly frozen from my half hour walk in winter, one lady told me where to buy silk long johns, another guy suggested i get layered gloves and a third advised PETA friend faux fur boots. That is why I love Chicago.

Now I'm not really the falling in love type of person. It is quite normally irrational,unproductive, potentially awkward and almost always painful. But it is also the thing 23 year olds should do and should do with a little chutpah.

So today i profess my love to Chicago and decide to go all. I'm moving down Jan. 3rd.

Advice for Day 75: Does Nostalgia have a place in a grown women's heart?

I hear my college roommates groaning even before I write these blaphemous and insanely nostalgic words but I must write them anyway: I miss finals.

I miss eating pokie sticks for dinner a week straight. I miss cramming at Helen C. until my ass cramped. I miss endless cups of coffee that made my taste buds die and my head spin. I miss taking a test and knowing I nailed it, knowing that 3 months of work paid off, that i had something as proof in the end, even if it was just a test.

And i miss that final's end celebratory beer. Nothing tastes as good as 1-12 cheap beers (or boots as my crowd rolled) after your final final.

Maybe it is just my lack of productivity these past 3 months that has me yearning for the fake productivity of college. For three months I have eaten crap with no excuse of final's food cravings. My ass has cramped not from hours studying in cheap wooden desks but from too many Jon and Kate Plus 8 Marathons. And I drink coffee not to learn about civilizations of old and revolutions of tomorrow but simply to try to stay awake in my boring middle America life of today.

And I have no final test to prove that it has been worth anything, that i have learned anything about myself or life in the past 3 months.

Sad but true, what i miss is validation that I am not wasting my life, validation in the form of a test, a paper, a project.

And I am slightly afraid that cheap beer will never taste good anymore...

All I can hope is that this nostalgia is just a part of what I am learning in this grand course of life, that nostalgia is just a little test on my endurance to make myself a future and not live in the past.

Maybe PBR will never taste good again but I am learning there are other beers, more expensive beers, more expensive and probably European beers, that might be waiting on the bar for me in the future.