I went to Chicago this past weekend for the annual Reuniafest festivities – My third straight year and one I was only able to make because I got an absolute steal on airfare. I’d been debating whether throwing financial caution to the wind was a good idea, but I am so, so damn glad I went.

The game was awesome (the biggest comeback EVER for Northwestern), the party was fun and Henkel outdid himself as usual, and by staying an extra day I got a chance to actually see people (i.e., the ghettoalums who were considerate enough to drag themselves to the Map Room) and do things other than eat and drink.

Granted, I definitely ate and drank my way through Chicago. Thin crust pizza two night’s in a row (Pat’s Pizza: Surprisingly good), a new Chicago Style deep-dish place (Pequod’s) and of course my last-minute trip to Flattop.

I’ll have an official verdict tomorrow (I usually wait a couple days before doing an official post-trip weigh-in just so my head doesn’t explode), but I think I managed to gain five pounds in four days. THAT is a vacation.

The main downside is that I have caught some sort of rather nasty virus during the travel process. It started out just feeling shitty, tired, and without appetite last night when I got home, evolved into heinous coughing fits this morning, and seems to be on its way to a spiking fever this evening.

I had said to a couple people before I left that I would be extremely surprised if I didn’t come back from this trip with some sort of nastiness at bare minimum, and specifically with the swine flu.

I’ve got an appointment with my doctor tomorrow to see if they think I need antivirals (any kind of bad cough or flu can have super-nasty complications in asthmatics), so we’ll see if it’s the piggy flu or just some other general virus.

Thanks so much to everyone who came out. Despite my current viral travails, this was a really, really great trip and just what I needed to recharge going into the GREs, my first full online course in web programming, and trying to get my application done.

Woo, Chicago!

Special thanks must go out to Laz and his lovely wife Christin for haranguing me into getting the fuck out of Los Angeles for a couple of days, and letting me crash on the couch in their room at the Encore so my broke ass wouldn’t have to shell out for a hotel room.

I really had a good time, though I’ll admit my legs are a bit sore still from all the walking. We walked from Encore down to New York New York and the MGM Grand, which looks like a 2 mile walk on Google Maps, but GMaps doesn’t account for all the detours you take into and around casinos. Next time I go to Vegas, I’m going to bring a pedometer so I can figure out exactly how far I walk.

I also need to be a bit more careful about how much food I shove down my gullet at a buffet. We went to the excellent Spice Market buffet at Planet Hollywood, and I stuffed my face to such a ridiculous extent that my appetite is still off more than 30 hours later. That’s probably a sign I shouldn’t have eaten that much.

Once again, thanks to Laz and Christin, who had to put up with me doing this for a couple days. The results of all my photography are below in slideshow form or at my flickr.

The illustrious Casey Newton brings us a story from the wilds of Phoenix, where the Mayor of that city decided it would be a great idea to climb a tree to clear debris from a big storm. The tree disagreed, and the Mayor took a 13-foot header, resulting in a fractured vertebrae.

My favorite section:

“It’s a dangerous job even for people who are trained and know what they’re doing,” Jason Nunemacher, an arborist and general manager of Tree Pros in north-central Phoenix. “I would definitely recommend leaving it to professionals.”

Told of the arborist’s recommendations, Gordon said, “Tell him I agree with him,” according to a spokesman.

A close second is the section dealing with his previous battle with a bougainvillea that left the Mayor with a staph infection.

Too bad he’s not a Republican: He’d immediately be qualified as a at least a Cabinet-level official for his work on both Health Care and the Interior.

Joanna’s wedding was lovely. Very nice, very low-key, and a fun reception. I will say: I was impressed with the swiftness of the ceremony. I have been to at least five weddings of various friends and family where the vows alone were longer than the entire ceremony was here. An excellent strategy for preventing weeping brides (and grooms, and parents of the bride, etc).

Got to buy the father of the bride a shot of good scotch at the after-party. Got to drink enough beer to make me not want to drink another beer for at least another few weeks.

Got to see some folks I haven’t seen in a long time, several of whom are now significantly taller since the last time I saw them, they were twelve. Got to do a lot of catching up with D.C. folk I hadn’t seen in forever, since I haven’t actually, you know, been to my evil hometown in forever.

Joanna’s house is outstanding. She and Matt bought a run-down Victorian about 30 miles outside of Albany a couple years ago, and with the help of Matt’s contractor dad, did their very own Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. They showed us the before pictures when we visited Saturday, and it looks like a totally different house.

I still can’t get over how weird it is that she’s married and owns a house now. Joanna and I have been friends since the fifth grade, when we were both 10 years old. We have known each other for seventeen years. It’s so strange to realize people you grew up with are now…grown-ups.

Although I will admit, the fact that the newlyweds, the best man, myself, and Rachel (another friend from High School I roomed and split a rental car with for the weekend) spent Monday afternoon at a School Bus Demolition Derby probably did not help in my efforts to convince myself that we are all adults now.

It was, however, the completely fucking awesomest post-wedding activity I have ever encountered. Dude, a school bus got flipped on its side a minute into it! How can you NOT love such an event?

Particularly since the winner of the derby was a politician running for local office. I tried to find out what local office he was running for, but he has the same name as a (female) porn star, and she’s all that comes up when you Google his name.

All in all, a rather entertaining weekend, capped off by a trip through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, completely drowning in Republican-conventioneer-targeted advertising, and approximately the size of the state of Rhode Island. I wish those of you covering the Convention luck in figuring out where in the fuck your gate is when you’re trying to leave.

I’m off to Albany, New York for the first wedding of one of my high school friends, which is really, really weird. Actually, I’ve known Joanna since we were in 5th grade, which makes this whole endeavor even fucking weirder.

Her brother, who I still picture as the eleven year old he was when we graduated from high school, will be picking me up from the airport. This weekend is going to be hilarious.

Well, except for the five hour layover I have tomorrow between 5-10am in Detroit. That’s just going to be brutal. Thanks for changing the schedule on me like 8 times, Northwest!

* – Where the title comes from.

I hopped the redeye to Cape Cod Friday night, and watched some Jons get married on Saturday. It was wonderful in so many ways.

The place Joel found us (thanks, Joel!) was fantastic, right on the water looking out into Nantucket Sound. It was a really gorgeous place to stay, it was incredibly fun to hang out with everyone, and it was such a nice break from the L.A. madness.

The wedding itself was beautiful, touching, and even hilarious. The dancing after the wedding was definitely hilarious, and I feel I made a nice drunken contribution to said hilarity.

In all seriousness, though, I hope to hell I find someone that makes me half as happy as the Jons obviously make each other. If I do, I’ll consider myself incredibly lucky.

Although I lacked my camera, about 20 other people brought theirs, so there’s no lack of documentation of the beauty of the weekend, both literal and metaphorical.

It was also my birthday on Sunday, and I’m pleased to note that for the first birthday since I turned 24, I managed to remain ambulatory for the entire day. It’s those little victories that matter.

Speaking of little victories, I took no small amount of joy out of the fact that the Lakers choked both Friday AND Sunday against the Celtics.

I was slightly disappointed I couldn’t find a “Lakers Suck!” shirt to wear around L.A. all week, but I suppose that given the general agressiveness and assholishness of Lakers fans, not finding said shirt reduces my chances of getting beat up and/or shot.

All in all, I had a really great weekend, and spent my day off today recovering from the whole thing in order to go into a truly delightful next three weeks of six-day weeks and a full shooting schedule.

Posting will be light for a bit, save the occasional complaint about how ridiculously goddamn tired I am.

..of Mark “Wordman” Greer.

Strike day 1 came and went. Some pictures of the group picketing the lot this morning are up on LAist, but our writers were on the afternoon shift, so none of my friends are pictured there.

However, this afternoon I found out another friend I used to work with got hit by a car and badly injured while she was riding her motorcycle yesterday. She’s going to live, but only because she was wearing her helmet.

She’s still in the ICU, and after a very long time in surgery yesterday, it looks like she’s going to be okay, or at least as okay as you can be after having one of your hands crushed into a million pieces and having your femur break so badly it breaks the skin, among her many, many injuries.

As much whining as I do about my stupid foot and all the horseshit it’s given me after I tripped on a stupid fucking rock, it’s nothing compared to the utter hell my friend is about to go through.

It also gives me perspective about my worries about unemployment: If I lose my job, I can get another one. My friend might never be able to get back a lot of what she lost yesterday.

Cross your fingers for her. She’s a good kid, and I wouldn’t wish the pain and frustration she’s about to go through on my worst enemy.

I had not even been considering seeing wholly unnecessary sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age until I read Tim’s magnificent review of it in all its glorious awfulness.

Now, I have to see it. This is why Tim should be writing reviews for a living. God bless Rotten Tomatoes for adding him to the Tomatometer, giving him at least some of the exposure he richly deserves.

Chicago was awesome. The game was ridiculous. Reuniafest was everything I’d hoped for and then some. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to see since I was only in town for two and a half days, but I got to see a decent number of y’all, which was great.

I didn’t want to come back, and I so do not want to go back to work tomorrow. Stupid reality.

Anyway, a few odds and ends from the weekend:

- Nate and I stayed with Mark, and that led to my favorite Inappropriate Joke of the weekend, which was that we were off having threesomes, but they were the worst threesomes ever because absolutely no one was getting what they wanted.

- [whining]I hate my foot. Hate hate hate hate hate. It hurt all weekend, I kept having to sit on barstools instead of actually standing to talk to people, I repeatedly had to leave early because it hurt, and I blew about $50 on cabs I probably wouldn’t have blown if I could walk more than a few blocks without feeling like my leg was going to fall off. This horseshit better end soon.[/whining]

- Man, I’ve gotten spoiled living in California where you basically can’t smoke anywhere indoors. My throat is still killing me from trying to shout over the music in several smoke-filled bars, and all my clothes smell like they spent the weekend at the bottom of an ashtray. You guys will love life when the ban goes into effect at the beginning of the year.

- So for those of you who heard me panicking about the potential writers’ strike, here’s a fairly good summary of why TV people in particular are panicking about this.

- On the flight back, as we were coming in for a landing, I got some sort of air bubble in my sinuses, leading to some of the most excruciating pain I’ve felt in several years. And I include everything involved in my foot ridiculousness in that. Fortunately, it managed to dissipate by the time we landed, but I’m still feeling residual pain. Ow.