Travel Expo

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is I found my passport, after I gave up looking for it. The bad news is I fainted. I don't think the two are related. The fainting episode happened early yesterday morning. Andrea and I had gone to dinner in Evanston at a place called Davis Street Fish Market. Then we came back here and had some wine. Luckily Andrea stayed for a few hours to sleep off the wine, because I don't know what would've happened if I had fainted alone. I'd still be on the floor and Peewee would be eating my face off. I think it was food poisoning from the whitefish. I got up to use the bathroom and suddenly felt really sick, then couldn't see anything and had to lie down on the floor. Apparently I fainted three times and denied that anything was wrong the whole time. And while I was still a little delirious, I said, "Oh my God, I'm like Marie Osmond." Never too indisposed for a Dancing With the Stars joke. My mom thinks, after thirty years of soap-watching experience, that I'm either pregnant or have an inoperable brain tumor and will die soon, then probably show up as someone else on a different network.

I was able to pull myself together so Kate and I could go to the travel expo at Navy Pier to meet Stanley from The Office. Don't judge us. We were the most normal people there. The guy in front of us in line was holding a boom box with the antenna all the way out and headphones plugged in. Not ten minutes after we got in line, a crazy woman with some sort of stuffed animal lemur on her shoulder came up to us and asked what the line was for. We told her it was to meet Stanley from The Office and she said, "Oh. I don't watch much primetime" and then walked off. She said it like she was judging US, like WE were the weirdos. The whole time I was thinking, "Is anyone going to acknowledge the pet lemur?" and no one did. A while later, another woman came up to us and asked what the line was for. After we told her, she was like, "Oh, I don't understand. I'm foreign." Even though she had no accent. So I think that's become my fail-safe excuse from now on. "Oh, I don't understand, I'm foreign." Like later when Kate was trying to get me to ride the mechanical surfboard, I was like, "I can't, I'm foreign," and she had no choice but to back off.

We waited in line for over an hour, which gave us plenty of time to figure out what to say to Stanley (whose real name is Leslie, but Kate was uncomfortable calling a man Leslie). Like "We really love your work" and "We watch your show together every Thursday and it's the one thing we look forward to" and "Stanley, this is something I would only admit to my best friend: I farted in line." We thought maybe we could invite him to go bowling later with us and Kate's friends, and OF COURSE he wouldn't be able to say no. But when we got up there, all we said to him was, "Hi, nice to meet you." Then, not only that, but there were also a couple NBC Chicago newscasters and the host of the game show Crosswords at the same table, and we spent WAY more time talking to them than with Stanley. He probably thought we were just there to meet the newscasters.

I'm not really sure what a travel expo is, but I think it's about people dressing in weird costumes. So we tried to get pictures with all of them. Kate asked the Chicago Bear if she could get a picture with her head in his mouth.

Later we went to dinner in Lincoln Square with Kate's doctor friends. I had asked a couple days ago if they're all doctors, and she said, no, her friend's boyfriend is a producer for Oprah. I was like, "WHAT!" I need to start hanging out with high school kids. Then I can say, "I went to college! What did you ever do?" And they'll be all, "Ma'am, I'm sixteen." I was dying, DYING, to ask him about the Oprah show, but I thought maybe that was inappropriate. Having manners is so hard.