Battery Low

My battery is low.

I thought that my relatively solitary first few days in Chicago would have been enough to recharge me, but apparently not. I spent Saturday so tired and irrationally grumpy that it wasn't at all conducive to adventuring, and I had to turn down another invitation to an event for cool people because I just didn't have the energy.

I spent a few hours lying awake in the early morning when my scumbag brain decided that 5am on a Saturday was a perfect time to panic about the degree results I still haven't received, and then everything else in the universe, until I had the good sense to drown it out with Cabin Pressure and hugging the cat.

But once I managed to get to sleep and then wake up again, I rented a bike and cycled along the lakefront, even managing to wear a helmet, which amused me.

Make mine a double.

Millennium Park.

Navy Pier Ferris wheel.

Along the lakefront.

More lakefront!

My temporary bike friend.

But cycling didn't fill me with its usual transcendent joy, even though it was the first sunny day since I'd been here. My whimsical plan to leave the path and visit a nearby vegan restaurant also failed to inspire a spirit of adventure, and I turned around halfway and headed back after getting tired of cycling on unfamiliar roads with unfriendly drivers.

GRUMP.

So I went and ate something vegany and drank hot chocolate at Handlebar, then called it quits for the day, and went home to cat, Netflix (look at all this X-Files I've never watched!), blankets, and tea. I am a low-powered adventurer. Maybe there's only so much adventuring I can do all at once.

I decided to take it easy today, and after a few episodes of 30 Rock I started my day with lunch at the Chicago Diner, which was so popular that there was a queue, which at least gave me a chance to sit in the sun and finish my adequate book.*

My eyes are bigger than my stomach. I learned that in Seattle, except  that I obviously didn't, because I ordered a bacon cheeseburger and a large peanut butter cookie dough milkshake.**

My next religion will be based around this milkshake.

And then I felt sick, predictably. But it was totally worth it. 

Well, almost totally. I should have ordered a small milkshake.

Anyway, I decided that the best thing to do with the rest of this sunny day was lie in the park and read, so I went and did just that to rest my tired adventure limbs.

Crunchy leaves!

I still don't feel like I've recovered, but I'm taking another evening to go to bed early and hopefully recharge in time for New York. Which I'm sure will be very relaxing and not at all stressful, just like New York is known for, particularly as I get there tomorrow and I don't know where I'm staying yet.

Ah, adventures. Fun, but exhausting.

*Monster, by A. Lee Martinez. Don't buy it. But do buy Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, which I'm reading now.
**"Bacon" "cheeseburger" and "milk"shake, for the pedantic.