Rough day.

It wasn't that I had a long, hard, day on the job, but time sure as hell wasn't on my side.

I stayed at A's last night, and she doesn't believe in having a clock in her bedroom. This is usually fine for me, as I don't really care when I wake up in the morning. Nowadays, however, I have to care. Well, I have to care, at the very least, Monday through Friday.

So, at about 1:30 this morning, my phone started making noise, so I jumped (quite literally) out of bed and grabbed my phone, where the alarm was. I checked the time, saw that it was 1:24 in the morning, got mad at the person who sent me a message, and went back to bed. This process, minus the message, repeated itself at about 4. I, friends and neighbors, did not sleep well.

When I finally did wake up and it was actually the appropriate time to do so, I had to hurry. I actually took a cab to work this morning, which cost me a whole $20. Mind you, the ride itself wasn't $20, but the value of it was. What a nice guy- I hope I ride in his cab again. So, I got to work, and had a training session right away in the morning, followed by some other work, lunch, then about half an hour of busy work before we all left for our company party. It was a big fancy party, where pretty much the entirety of my company was squeezed into one ballroom at the Sheraton. There were speeches, awards, some roof-raising applause, the general bravado of a successful company's employees congregating all in one place.

Afterwards, I was talking to another one of the new hires. She found our CEO's accent distracting- how he said out and again and against, to name a few key words. Me, I already knew not only where he was from, but that we lived in the same town in Ontario. "I lived there when I was a kid, and I have several friends from Canada, so I didn't have any trouble." Tough luck for her. Personally, I haven't hung out with any of my Canadian friends for a couple weeks, so I guess I was secretly craving to hear it again.

I didn't stay long at the party- the fact of the matter is I was very tired, and I wasn't in the mood to hang out with a bunch of folks I had only known for -count 'em- four days. I walked out of the hotel and over to State Street, hoping to find a cab or that traffic wasn't too busy or something like that. I wasn't thinking straight. My ankle hurts for some reason, and the 2 1/4 Sam Adams and 2/3 Budweiser I drank weren't helping me. I stopped, bought a pack of gum and a lottery ticket. Now, I figure is as good a time as any for me to win, after all.

Eventually, I headed down to the Chicago Theatre, where I caught the train home. I sat down, realized I had forgotten my book, and looked out the window. That's when I heard two teenagers talking. I call it talking, but that may be giving them too much credit. One sounded like a combination between Ted "Theodore" Logan and Jeff Spicoli, the other, well, must have been Dumber.

The first thing that got me wondering about the IQ of the future of America was the discussion about what downtown parking structures they wanted to "longboard" down. It was followed by a story about someplace in Milwaukee. A few stops later, one said "I want to name my kid Sedgwick." I rolled my eyes so far I thought they were going to fall out of my head.

Next up, one started reciting an old comedy routine, probably one of my favorites. Of course, he got it completely wrong, even getting the title character's name wrong, then got the premise wrong, then got the final line wrong.

Again with the rolling of the eyes.

Just when I thought they couldn't say anything else to make me want to injure them based solely on their stupidity, they went there. They started misquoting the greatest movie ever set in Chicago, The Blues Brothers.

"1405 Sheffield."
"1405 Sheffield, isn't that Wrigley Field?"

For the record, Wrigley Field's address, as is properly quoted in the movie, is 1060 W Addison. 1405 N Sheffield would like in the North Branch of the Chicago River, somewhere around Goose Island.

Had it not been for my superb luck finally showing through at that particular point, and their stop finally coming up and them finally exiting, I might have had to hurt, or at least yell, at them.

I almost didn't have to do either, as then they finally departed the train, they exited out of different doors, and then started wrestling on the platform, nearly knocking a woman onto the tracks.

I fear for the future. I didn't used to.