Mrs. Audio's thoughts and ramblings

Last Sunday (the 9th) was our 1st wedding anniversary. To celebrate we took a road trip. We both took Friday off from work and headed out on Thursday evening. We had decided to go visit my family in Rochelle, IL and visiting Chicago. Thursday night we had decided to stay in Des Moines. We got there around midnight and it was rainy out. We got into our hotel room and lo and behold it was a smoking room, unbeknownst to us. The room reeked. And the hotel was full. There was one other room available and it too was smoking. The room also had not been cleaned properly. There was an 1/8" of dust on top of the TV closet/armoire thing and the ice bucket had a dirty liner, water and something floating in it. To top it off the window leaked. So our stay at the Des Moines Embassy Suites was very unsatisfactory. They offer breakfast in the morning and even that wasn't very good. The eggs were bland, the french toast sticks were stale, the fruit wasn't ripe. Granted that I didn't go through the made-for-you omelet line, but if they hadn't had the belgian waffle maker we would have gone hungry.

On the road again we got to Chicago around 5pm. On Friday. What should have been a 5 minute drive to our hotel (another Embassy Suites) became half an hour. And Mr. Audio had to pee. We finally found our hotel, but missed the entrance to the parking garage. He couldn't take it any longer and hopped out to find a bathroom while I slid over to the driver's side and drove around the block to get back to the garage entrance where he hopped back in the car. Then it took another 5 minutes at least to find a parking spot. That garage is also shared by AMC theatres, so movie goers park there and it was Friday evening. Our stay in Chicago was much better than in Des moines. The staff were very corteous and helpful. Our room was nice and clean and the breakfast was good too. And we had a room on the very top floor, it was cool. What's really funny is that there was a convention going on at the hotel. What kind of convention, you may ask? A trans-gender convention. Oh yeah. There were some reeaaally ugly "women" all over the place. There were even doctors and therapists and specialists there. What's really ironic is that we honeymooned in Trinidad, CO; the sex-change capital of the world. Of course we didn't know about this until after we'd made all the reservations and bought the train tickets. The train stops in Trinidad mid-morning, that's how we picked it. I'm wondering if this is going to become some sort of running gag. Every year we run into a bunch of "it's", as Mr A. calls them. 

While in Chicago we took a walk down part of the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave). And we took a carriage ride. I'd always wanted to do that, it's so romantic. Then we stopped for dinner at a local fast food/sit down italian restaurant called Go Roma. You order the food at the front counter and then they bring it to your table. The food was fast and it was pretty good too. There's too many Italians in Chicago for a restaurant to make bad italian food and stay in business. Then we took a taxi down to Navy Pier, rode the giant Ferris Wheel and took a half hour harbor cruise. It was a really fun night. The next morning we walked from our hotel room to the Sears tower. It was farther than Mr. Audio thought. He was dripping by the time we found it, I hadn't even broken a sweat. It was probably only a 1-2 mile walk. Along the way I say a woman coming out of cafe with a netted in stroller containing 2 cats. We happen to have a couple of those strollers at work for transported kitties, but I had never seen one used in public before. It was pretty funny. Mr Audio had never been to Chicago before and he really enjoyed the Sears Tower. We took a toaxi back to the hotel and then headed on our way to Rochelle, which is about an hour and a half west of Chicago (back in the direction we had come). 

We got to Grandma's house around 6pm and ate dinner with G-ma, my parents and my brother and sister-in-law. It was a nice family dinner. The next day was Sunday our anniversary and G-ma's 82nd birthday. We stayed Saturday night at the Rochelle's Comfort Inn & Suites, which happened to be the biggest room we had stayed in yet. It was an apartment. I kid you not. It had a full kitchen with full sized fridge, dishwasher, trash compactor stove and oven; living room, dining room, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and a balcony that went the entire length of the place. It was a $200 a night room which we got for about $80. And it was sweet. Sunday morning we met up with the family again at church and got to visit with the pastor who married us. He and his wife were pleasantly surprised to see us. It was so nice. For lunch we had a picnic with my brother & sis-in-law and some of their buddies, then headed back to G-ma's house to say bye to the rest of the family before heading back to T-town. The next day we remembered that we still had our wedding cake topper in the freezer. So I took it out to thaw so we could have it for dessert (tradition you know). It wasn't that bad (it had been vacuum sealed by some friends of ours), but it definitely wasn't as tasty as it had originally been.