Meet Me in Chicago

Today I made travel arrangements for my upcoming trip to Chicago. I was emailing with a friend who I'm going to stay with after I'm done working. This friend is my sweet Annie. As we were emailing back and forth I realized that we have only interacted face to face during two trips. The more I thought about our relationship, the more I realized how much our romance resembles that of An Affair to Remember.

When describing it on paper it really does seem like a torrid love affair:
The first night we spent together was in a grotto-style hot tub in Orlando. We soaked ourselves in the steam and chlorine while talking for hours about our families, our lives back home, our hurts, our pains, our joys, and our dreams. We would not reunite until a year later in the snow covered mountains of Colorado. We shared a week together holed up in a lodge seeking protection from the storm. We stayed up late talking by the fire. We laughed together and our love for one another grew even deeper. And we spent hours in the hot tub again. The steam rose into the brisk mountain air as we gazed at the stars, hoping against hope to see a shooting star which would grant all of our deepest wishes. After our fated week we parted ways and returned home to our suburban realities with no reunion date in place.

At last the reunion approaches.

We will meet once again in her hometown, The Windy City. But alas it has been a long year apart and I am unsure if her feelings for me still remain. Has she carried a torch for me these past 14 months as I have for her? So we will meet atop the Willis Tower. (I suggested the Sears Tower, but she informed me that it no longer exists. She corrected me to call it by its updated name to spare me the embarrassment. What kindness she showed me. I can picture myself running through the streets of Chicago asking for directions to the Sears Tower to no avail.) If she still feels the same, she will wait for me on the observation deck. It will look something like this:


But if she doesn't arrive and meet me on the appointed day I will be left to assume that her heart belongs to another. Or she might have gotten hit by a car on her way to the Willis Tower. But at least I will know where she stands. I will be heartbroken...and left without a place to stay and a ride to the airport. That would suck. (At least give someone the courtesy to show up if someone else is counting on you for a ride to the airport.)

Annie, if you're reading this just know that I don't plan on murdering you and then wearing your skin around the house. The photoshopped pictures might be a little over the edge and stalkerish, but I just really needed a blogpost for the day. I promise I'm not crazy. Promise. And at least I let you be Deborah Kerr in the pictures and I made myself Cary Grant. You got to be the girl so you really don't have anything to complain about.