Windy City For A Week

I'm in Chicago for a week, attending the big annual USPRA conference and it hasn't been a very good trip so far. First, we had to fly Southwest, the world's lousiest airline. Of course I was given a boarding pass in the B group and was at the very back of the line. If you've ever flown Southwest, you know I was doomed. Of course the flight was packed to the brim and I had the wonderful fortune of being forced into a middle seat, next to a stale-beer breathing behemoth who felt that because he was there first, he should be able to have half my seat along with his. On the other side of me, a little ol lady sat eating chicken chunks, whose aroma nicely complimented yeast-breath on the right of me. The flight was uneventful except for a brief squabble with seathog, and then I discovered that we're way the hell out of the city and the cab ride downtown will be a good 45 minutes, which means we'll be stuck there all damned day. Now this isn't too terrible in itself, but it means I'll have to carry all the crap I need or want with me when we leave this morning. When we finally got to the hotel, I discovered - horrors - my awesome Olympus camera has decided to launch as a weird purplish greyscale. I don't know what the hell happened to it, but it looks like it's going to need a repair, so its SOL for the trip. I went to log on to the hotel's internet, only to discover that Weston doesn't provide it free, like most good hotels do. 10 bux a day to use the net kinda sucks, don't you think? Finally, before I hit the pillow, my roomie was snoring so loud I could barely hear myself think. He kept it up the entire night and continues to snore at top volume as I write this. I'm going to be a bit on the tired and crabby side today, which really sucks since I was so looking forward to attending some of the workshops available at the conference. At least it's sunny and cool.....