I'm back in the windy city, after 2 weeks away.  I spent last weekend visiting Sean and Melissa in Hoboken.  Gloriously last Thursday was the first big winter storm of the season in Chicago, so after being several hours delayed getting out of DSM I got to spend 3 hours at ORD, my 6pm flight to Newark didn't take off until 9:30, so I didn't land until after midnight on the east coast.  In addition the flight was full of "slight to heavy chop" pretty much the entire way.  I'm pretty sure a couple of wine glasses were broken at one point.

So, since it was so choppy, and I hopped on a differnt flight out of DSM I didn't get nearly as drunk as I'd hoped in first class.  At least the service was good.  Then on the flight back into DSM on monday we were delayed for a couple of hours, and the jet bridge didnt work in DSM, so we sat at the gate for 15 minutes while they dicked around with it.  The silver lining came on Tuesday when I received an unsolicited e-mail from UAL apologizing for Thursday's delay, and crediting me 8000 miles.  Today I was concerned we were going to be in trouble due to high winds in Chicago, the flight 2 flights before mine was delayed for over and hour, the flight right before mine was cancelled.  Fortuantly we boarded early, and got our delay lifted, and actually landed early.  Joyiously (and as to be expected) traffice has been horrible.

So, last Friday we went into Manhatten, I got to see Melissa's office (in the Wall Street Journal building), and we went to a great russian reasteraunt.  The flavor infused vodka was great (And inspired Sean to try to make his own later in the weekend), and the food duck was quite tastey too.  However, the salt lick that Melissa and Sean shared left me quite parched from the couple of bites I had.  The caviar was lovely, although the samon variety was a bit too salty/fishy for my taste.  We were shit faced and home by 1.

Saturday we did a bit of shopping on 5th avenu (I know the magnificant mile doesn't have much shopping going on, so I had to go to NYC).  We saw the tree at Rockafeller center.  In fact while we were looking down on the skating rink we watched a guy drop to one knee and propose, it was kinda neat.  That evening we stayed in Hoboken, and went to meet up with a couple of Sean's friends at a swanky new resteraunt/loung.  IT was a realy fun place.  The drinks were a pricieer than the pub we started at, but that was to be expected.