How I Spent The Thirteenth Week Of The Rest Of My Life

Now, I'm not entirely sure of this since I'm pretty tipsy right now, but I think (with hotel) that I spent over $100 today.  That's okay since I decided not to rent a car up here in the Wisconsin Dells for my mini-vacation.  It's been a fun time so far.  Today, I completely played tourist and took a combo of the Upper Dells by big boat and Lower Dells by Duck tour.

The second part was a pretty scary experience.  Why the Ducks don't come with Jesus handles, I'll never know.  I swear that while it was on land, I was too scared to enjoy the experience one bit.  But it came highly recommended (someone expressed shock that I would even think about *not* taking a Duck tour) and I can scratch that off of my bucket list.

And I got a picture that I really love out of the Upper Dells tour:

Worth the price of admission.

Tomorrow is all about the mini-golf.  In the end, I decided not to get a rental car and use the money toward dining and such instead.  It's a good thing that I did since, as I said, I blew through $100.  This has only put one crimp in my plans - since even the water parks are walkable.  I probably can't get down to the casino without wasting a bunch of money on a cab.  Oh well.  I'll stop at a casino on my move to Washington D.C. to make up for it.

Anyway, since I am on vacation and supposed to be enjoying myself (and I have been), I should probably get this blog entry out of the way.  If I didn't do it today, with my brother coming up tomorrow night, who knows when I would have.

Here's how I "spent" last week:

TUESDAY, MARCH 29 (Free)

• 3:03 p.m. McCormick Tribune YMCA - Free.  With my packing and sorting, I had kicked up a lot of dust.  This was something I felt in my sinuses as I went to the gym.  But I fought through it as I needed to reach 100.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30 ($20.24)

• 3:21 p.m. Leo's Coney Island - $8.00.  The reviews on Yelp, mainly from people from Chicago, were kind of mixed of this place.  As a native Detroiter (or the suburbs at least), I had to see if the bad reviews were correct.  It turned out to be an authentic Coney - which meant it had mediocre food.  But, in that respect, it absolutely felt like a real Coney brought to Chicago.
• 4:20 p.m. Home Depot - $4.41.  The boxes I had bought last week turned out to be too big the moment that I got them home.  I needed small boxes to replace them before I could do anything more as far as the move went.
• 7:48 p.m. McCormick Tribune YMCA - Free.  In order so I could pack all day on Thursday, I started to go into a mad rush to do all of my errands on Wednesday.  This was the first.
• 9:28 p.m. McDonald's - $3.83.  I spent longer at the gym than expected and couldn't do much of anything else except get ready to see my weekly movie.  I figured that a Filet-O-Fish was a better dinner than popcorn.  But barely.
• 9:43 p.m. Logan Theater - $4.00.  The move that I chose to see was Beastly.  It featured Mary Kate Olsen as a witch and was a telling of Beauty & The Beast set in a New York City prep school.  It was every bit as bad as those two factors would make it seem.

THURSDAY, MARCH 31 (Free)

FRIDAY, APRIL 1 ($23.44)

• 12:35 p.m. McCormick Tribune YMCA - Free.  I had made plans with a friend of mine from the suburbs to see him that evening before I left.  I had all morning to get to the gym but, of course, I waited until the early afternoon.
• 2:34 p.m. Chipotle Mexican Grill - $8.44.  Since I had waited all day to go to the gym, I needed to get food. I had planned on watching the Red Sox opener in Lincoln Park and I can never pass up a fast food burrito joint it seems.
• 2:56 p.m. Tripoli Tap - $7.00.  Finally striking another place off of my Chicago restaurant bucket list, I made it to Chicago's Red Sox bar.  The Guinness here was expensive, but it was worth it for the patrons.  When I left the Red Sox were leading and the crowd was happy.  But they ended up blowing the game late.
• 5:26 p.m. Oglivie Transportation Center - $4.00.  Thankfully, I had a ticket left that was never collected on a trip to Ravinia for the way home since I had no idea how far Villa Park actually was from the city.
• 6:19 p.m. Villa Park Metra Station - Free.  My friend picked me up there to take me out to dinner with his wife and kid.
• 7:52 p.m. La Hacienda De Los Fernandez - Free.  It wasn't as good as a Mexican place in the city, but they do make their own tortillas and it was very passable.  I was very appreciative that my friend took me out for this going away dinner as well.
• 8:50 p.m. Starbucks - $4.00.  While waiting for the train back from Elmhurst, we stopped at this place.  It didn't look that much different than a Starbucks in the city.  I was kind of surprised at the clientele.  

SATURDAY, APRIL 2 ($14.04)

• 2:20 p.m. Myopic Books - Free.  I was shocked with the amount of books that they bought back from me.  $30.00 worth to be exact.  But I was more shocked that when I got home, I found that I had twice the number of books still left to try and offload as I had just sold.  At least I have another couple of weekends to sell them back.
• 5:37 p.m. McCormick Tribune YMCA - Free.  Carrying my books in a box tired me out as much as any workout could.  But I still went to the gym.  Really close to closing time.  I didn't really have time to do much of anything.
• 7:27 p.m. Walgreens - $14.04.  Another time at Walgreens when I was out of pretty much everything important.  Hopefully this was the last time I have to buy soap while I live in Chicago!

SUNDAY, APRIL 3 (Free)

MONDAY, APRIL 4 ($16.90)

• 11:48 a.m. McCormick Tribune YMCA - Free.  Even though I had a ton of errands to run that I wouldn't be able to run for the next week, I stopped at the gym.  To say that I'm addicted might be an understatement.
• 1:46 p.m. Sultan's Market - $8.00.  I am able to spend more money at Sultan's Market in one visit than most people are able to spend in multiple ones.  But I had to get every one of my favorites off of their Middle Eastern salad bar since it was probably the last time I will go there as a Chicago resident.
• 2:21 p.m. Chicago Public Library - Logan Square Branch - $1.00.  The reason I went to the library was to print out a bunch of coupons and a Groupon.  I ended up printing neither, but I did print out my train reservation.
• 7:16 p.m. Bubbleland - $3.90.  In this trip, I washed most of the t-shirts that I had found in the bottom of my closet.  Most of these went straight into packing boxes.  But I was glad that I was finally making a dent in the clothes on my bedroom floor before I move.
• 9:44 p.m. Logan Theater - $4.00.  Since I was going to be out of the state the rest of the week, I needed to go the movie theater on Monday.  I went to see the incredibly sad Javier Barden movie Biutiful.  It was, not surprisingly, far better than Beastly.

So that's $74.62.  Which is less than I spent today.  If I can do that well on the other side of this vacation before my move, however, I will be greatly happy.  My total money spent while I've been unemployed is $2045.68.