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Last weekend I went into the great city of Chicago to help my buddy Devon Sharma celebrate his being accepted to the New York Bar. (We were also celebrating his brother’s completion of medical school. Smart family, the Sharmas.) A bunch of us were invited to Maggiano’s in Oak Brook for Saturday afternoon.

I arrived at Tom’s apartment around 7:30 Friday night. Since the Blackhawks were about to start, we ordered some Indian food for delivery and settled in to watch some hockey. I gave Tom a hard time for eating with his left hand as we devoured the chicken tikka masala and tandoori chicken. The Blackhawks destroyed the villainous Canucks 7–4, and Tom and I decided to go out and meet up with our cousins Kelly and Kara.

As I mentioned, I spent NYE 2009 in Chicago with many of my fraternity brothers. We had a blast: Makeshift put on a great show at Goose Island, we met up with cousins Kelly and Patrick on the 1st, and despite the wrong team winning at the United Center, we did our best to cheer the Illini to victory. Our family had a lovely evening downtown on the 2nd, before we headed for home on the 3rd.

Adam K. invited me to come to a White Sox game with him, Sarah (Adam’s girlfriend), and Raff. Since he wasn’t able to make it to the Quad Cities for the JD Classic, and baseball is always a good time, I eagerly accepted.

I decided to take the Amtrak train into the city. I haven’t used the train in the midwest since I was a boy, so I was interested to see how it worked. (Travi, Collin, and I took the Acela from NYC to Boston about a year ago.) Overall, it was a very pleasant experience, and I anticipate doing it again next time I visit people in the city.

I woke up Friday morning to the sound of my phone beeping and Dad's frantic voice. Dad was trying to tell me that my flight had been cancelled and we needed to reschedule asap. I will admit that I initially thought he was joking. Then I checked my phone. Christine had sent me a message asking if I’d heard our flight was cancelled. I had three missed calls and three new messages all from Mom and Dad. Unbelievable, my flight was cancelled. Dad and I rescheduled for the 5:05 p.m. (as opposed to the original 7:55) flight. Turns out that my original flight was supposed to fly out of London to Chicago then complete the trip with me on it. However, London had just received a snowstorm worse than had happened in 18 years and the plane was unable to take off.

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.