Long Time Lost

My friend Dan is one of the vampires over at Mayo, and understandably needed some time off. (Let's face it - you take a lot of verbal abuse when your job is to wake people up at 2 a.m. to put another needle in their arm - even when you're one of the nicest guys on the planet). And where, oh where, could an individual with interests in the arts and life sciences manage to entertain himself for a week?

Well, yes, there was a convention out in Washington that was right up his alley. But instead, he came down to Chicago for the week!

All right, yes, most of that week I was putting in a frenzy of extra hours at school. (I am trying, trying, TRYING to complete ATT by next Tuesday.) But we had set aside Saturday afternoon and evening for us. And he spent the rest of the week hitting the museums and other attractions in the area that made him happy.

We had a fine time together, and were headed back to Great Lakes from Elgin...and something went a bit wrong. And we didn't realize HOW wrong until we were nearly in Indiana. Hmmm. Oops.

But, while we didn't make it to back until almost 4 hours later than we'd planned (which meant that I didn't hit my rack until 0400 - fortunately, I didn't have to get up until 0930 the next day, it being Sunday), we had an amazing six-hour conversation with the extra drive time. It was great! Yeah, we were both crazy-sleep-deprived for the next few days, but we, well, "we talked about soccer and how every man's just the same."

Okay, maybe not. Caedmon's Call has a song, "Table for Two," about two guys staying up all night talking about life, and it always makes me think of Dan. Late night conversations are the best, because your filters are shot. You're not trying to sound good (so, half the time I sound a little nuts), you're not trying to impress, you just hit this point where you're solid. Just solid core, talking about what you really think. Yeah, those conversations always cost you for sleep, but tired is temporary - as long as you can remember them later, there's something cool that happens when you're with a friend at 2 a.m.

Sunday was another series of misadventures, but I'll have to share that with you later.