It's 10am Friday morning as I type this. During the past 2 summers, my company has been utilizing summer hours -- employees work an extra hour a day Monday thru Thursday and then get a half day off on Friday. Today is the last half day Friday of this year. So, naturally, Lins and I took it off. It only costs us 1/2 day of vacation and -- hey! Now we get a four day weekend! Thank you labor day! Brilliant at planning things like this, that Lindsay.

At any rate, I'm on vacation and awake at 10am. That's not cool. Itchy eyes, nasal pressure and sneezing awoke me. My allergies have been a bitch so far this year. They actually first started to kick in during the Chicago vacation and as soon as we got back, I went to the doctor, and for the first time ever, I'm now on allergy meds. Allegra D, oh how you make me feel so much better.

After work last night Ryan and I played tennis again. This time he beat me 6-2, 6-4. I actually was up 2-0 in the second set, later we were tied at 4-4. So it was closer than our first match, and I played a lot better. It was humid and the 'squitos were out in hordes, sending their West Nile love all across the midwest. I have about 93 bites to show for that love. Thank you mosquitos -- now piss off.

Coming up this weekend: Today we're thinking about hitting the Minnesota State Fair. Usually, when I hear "State Fair", I think of the Iowa State Fair, the only other one I've ever been to, and I immediately get this glossed over look in my eyes and have flashbacks of pigs and pigs and pigs and horses and cows and butter sculptures. It makes me want to not go to state fairs. My bosses at Designstein insisted that I give the Minnesota State Fair a chance, though. Lots of great vegetarian food (I swear they said that!) and lots of cool art and live music and stuff.

Also tonight: Unkie Ross is coming up and we're going to hang out for the first time in quite awhile. I'm looking forward to that. I think he is, too, but my powers of ESP are failing me at this point -- so I can't be certain.

Also this weekend, the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, featuring Cake, the Flaming Lips and four other bands, rolls into St. Paul! Rock! Lins and I are totally going. Totally! If you live in or near the cities, you should totally go, too. Doors are at 5:30, music starts at 6:30.

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While rolling into Madison the previous night (that, friends is part 3), Lindsay and I noticed an IHOP on the same strip of road as our skanky hotel. Mmmm. IHOP. Kitchy + breakfast food. We're a fan of breakfast food, and if you've ever seen our house, you'd certainly know we're fans of kitchy. Needless to say were pumped up about hitting IHOP for a breakfast/lunch type deal on Thursday morning.

Our Nine-Four-Five AM wakeup call came, just as planned, and we got up, showered, dressed, checked out and headed to IHOP.

Mmmm. Crepe-pankcakes, we thought. Sounds delicious. They are, informed our server. So we waited for our food. Hey, look at that. Flies everwhere! We don't get many flies in Minneapolis. I don't miss them. Lindsay doesn't miss them. Should there be this many in here? Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the cleanliness of a restaurant. Can't they just stick up some fly paper in the kitchen? I mean, one-legged-hopping-in-a-circle-Christ, I want to eat my food, not have the flies beat me to it thru intimidation.

We waited. And waited. And waited. (Hey! Look at that! A Thursday Theme!)

Finally the food came. And it was cold. We saw these plates sitting under the heat lamps for at least five minutes. The heat lamps must not be too heaty. My fake-eggs were cold. Is there anything worse than cold eggs? The butter on my crepe-cakes, or as I like to call them now, crap-cakes, was already melted. When you're not particularly a big fan of butter, it's nice if you receive the plate before the butter melts, so that you can knock it aside and eat your supposed-to-be-warm food.

Ick.

Lins' had the same problems. We each ate a bite of eggs and maybe two bites each of hashbrowns and eggs. Ick. Ick ick ick. The problem now was: we had to wait about 10 minutes for our server to get us the bill. I hate having to wait for the bill. Then, after we get the bill and paid, we had to find some place with honest-to-God edible food. We were both starving.

So, after "experiencing" the Madison IHOP, I would say that a pack of wild wolves couldn't drag us back there ever again. Hell, a pack of wild wolves with machine guns, stun guns, riot gear, tear gas and a dirty bomb could never force me to ever eat at that IHOP ever again. Even if they promised that it wouldn't make us sick again. Even if they said they'd give us a million dollars. I mean, really, how would a wolf get a million dollars? Did they steal it? Are they a dark-sided wolf-CEO that plundered from all their peoples to get the money? Did they save up as a group and pool their money together to lure us to an IHOP? I'm just saying... a million is a lot of dollars. And, yeah, we don't ever want to go to that IHOP ever again. I think that's my point.

IHOP, I Hate You right now.

After "breakfast/lunch/eating 3 bites of our cold and very-likely-contaminated food", we set off for Suburban Chicago -- more precisely, for Ikea *angel music*.

En route, just into Illinois, in a display of pure brilliance, the likes of which have never ever been seen before -- I ran a toll.

Brilliant, you stupid bastard, I muttered to myself.

Well, actually, in a way, it kinda was. There was no license plate on my car, since it was new and all. Plus, the toll cop was already pulled over to the side of the road, writing someone else up. So no one really gets hurt here. I mean, I didn't do it intentionally.

I accidentally drove thru the semi lane, you see. The, uh, semi behind me was not a happy driver cause he had to slow down while I looked for a place to chuck my change (to no avail). He pulled the horn and laid it on me. There is no other feeling quite like looking in your rear view mirror to see a semi loaded up with hundreds of logs and hey! he's laying on the horn -- at you. Exhilarating.

When you're approaching the tolls, there have signs that say automatic, manual and pass. So I went for manual -- hey, I'm paying with change, not some new-fangled auto-matic way. Then, when I was about 30 feet away from the tollbooth, Lins was all, you have to go to the automatic lanes! The line for manual, what with everyone making a cash transaction with their tollbooth person, was quite a bit longer than the other lanes. Blindly trusting her, I tried to make it to the automatic lanes, but with the confusion and lack of space, I had only made it to the semi lane. Running, honking, I'm sure you get the picture.

Don't worry, though; Illinois more than made its money back off me by charging 40 cents a toll and my paying 50 cents. I mean, who carries around all the necessary dimes and nickels for that? Think that 40 cents is intentional? Uh. Yes. It is. Illinoisan bastards. If I'm paying a toll to ride on a road, I expect that road to be in good shape. The Illinoisan toll roads were bumpy and old looking and... not nice. I mean, it felt like they were taking advantage of me by making me pay to ride their road and then (obviously) not using that money to make the roads nicer. Maybe they funnel the money to packs of wolves to get people to eat at crappy restaurants. I dunno. Maybe?

Coming up in Part 5: Ikea and maybe some other stuff. Oh, I can tell you're excited now. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading,
Eric