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Happy New Year! I hope everyone had as wonderful of a time as I did celebrating the new year with fraternity brothers in the great city of Chicago. Tom, Nathan, and I drove up from Woodhull during the afternoon of December 31, checked into our hotel, and prepared ourselves for a night (not) to remember.

We Holts stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in the beautiful Magnificent Mile area of downtown Chicago. We had a “city view” room on the 21st floor, overlooking Grand Avenue. The room was surprisingly large, although all we really did there was get ready to go out and sleep upon our return.

Once we looked sufficiently sharp, we attempted to walk to the Meixners’ downtown condo, which was only about eight blocks from our hotel, on Chicago Avenue. Unfortunately, the policeman from whom we got directions pointed us in the wrong direction, so after getting somewhat lost, we hailed a cab. Raff and Pritch had already met Dave at the condo, so once we arrived we had some light pre-party drinks, caught up a bit, and took some photos.

Shortly after 9:00 p.m., we decided it was time to make our way to Salud. Sherwin (pronounced in the Persian style), another of our fraternity brothers, had organized a party at the bar, open only to ticketed guests. It was a great time, and I very much enjoyed seeing Patrick, the Brians, Peter, Sherwin, Adam, and everyone else who I saw that night. Oh, and congratulations to Patrick on his engagement!

The fact that tickets were required for entry kept the bar from getting too over-crowded, resulting in an excellent party atmosphere. The open bar didn’t hurt, either. I started the night with an excellent gin martini, and quickly went downhill from there…

The night eventually had to end, of course, and we made our way back to the hotel. There were not many cabs available at 2 a.m. on New Year’s, but Tom was able to hail one to take us back to our beds.

We woke up about fifteen minutes before we were due to check out of the hotel, but luckily the staff was kind enough to let us delay our departure by a couple hours. After a shave and shower, we made our way back to the condo, where we again met up with Dave and Pritch. (Raff had long since left to go to the Winter Classic Blackhawks game, played at Wrigley Field.) Dave took us up to the roof of the building, about sixty-six stories above the city. We enjoyed the scenery, took some photos, and tried to avoid the urge to throw each other off the ledge.

Eventually, we decided it was time for dinner, and so walked around the block to Gino’s East for some Chicago-style pizza. After a delicious meal, we returned to the condo to prepare for another night on the town. Nate and I drove to Adam’s place to pick him up while Tom, Pritch, and Dave met up with some more fraternity brothers (who had joined Raff earlier at Wrigley for the Blackhawks game). Eventually Nate, Adam, and I joined them at the bar, where one of our group had apparently already been threatened with being kicked out due to his falling down at random. (The bouncer also thought Tom had shoved him, but that was not the case.) Luckily the bar was so dead that they certainly needed our group to stick around for some more drinks, so they let him (and thus the rest of us) stay.

Once it neared closing time, some of us decided to find another bar that stayed open later, while Adam, Raff, and Cholewa headed back to Adam’s to listen to LPs.

Tom decided to buy a round at the second bar, and so procured five PBRs for himself, Nate, Pritch, Dave, and I. Some ladies noticed that we were both wearing jackets and drinking Pabst, and thought it was so ridiculous that we must be cool enough to chat up. I also had a discussion with a girl named Maggie, which took a turn for the strange when she asked if I thought President-Elect Obama would survive his term in office. (We had not been talking about politics to that point, so it was very random.) She was from St. Louis, though, and my car was stolen there once. Draw your own conclusions…

Once Dave, Nate, and Pritch got tired of striking out with the ladies, they started singing the Three-in-One, in what has apparently become a drunken tradition whenever Pritch and Nate get together. I was waiting outside at the time, and not one, but three separate groups of people came out to tell me some variation of, “Your friends are assholes.” I found that to be quite humorous.

The next day, we grabbed lunch at Garrett Ripley’s, a small gastropub on Clark Street near the condo. I had a blackened ahi tuna steak with mashed potatoes, along with a pint of Guinness. It was excellent, and I would definitely recommend the establishment, although the service was a bit slow. After lunch, we said our goodbyes, and everyone departed for home.

All in all, an excellent way to end 2008 and celebrate the arrival of 2009.