Sunday,
December 23, 2001

It was Lyndon's idea to come up here for a White Christmas, you know

I'm sitting in the food court at Water Tower Place, soaking up the increasingly frustrated consumer vibe as I sit here and wonder -- where the hell am I gonna find Lyndon's present? He wants an Ericsson T39 with Bluetooth handless headset, you see, and I had kinda assumed that it would be fairly easy to find in a big city like Chicago.

Ho ho ho, as the big man in red is wont to say -- I've checked three malls so far, and haven't found one place that sells mobile phones and accessories. There are booths that sell subscriptions and toss in the phones, yes, of course, but none of them have an Ericsson T39 and I don't WANT a subscription, I just want the damned phone. I may need to hunt down a Yellow Pages somewhere and see if I can find a store that way.

Which probably would have been the smarter way to start out, considering that it's BLOODY FREEZING out there right now. I was born in Chicago, spent three years in Stockholm, and yet less than a year in Texas has completely wiped out my cold weather resistance. Which just goes to prove what I've always known -- I loathe cold weather. I mean, I loathe it with a passion. I stepped outside the hotel this morning, smack into a stiff breeze coming in off the lake, and all I wanted to do was curl up into a fetal ball and cry.

I mean, okay, so the temperatures in Dallas climb into Hell range during the summer. But it was in the 60's when we left yesterday. I was actually kinda hot in my leather jacket. Here, I'm wearing the jacket, a cap, a scarf, gloves, thick socks, and I'm still freaking freezing.

I love Chicago, but can we just move it a couple hundred miles south, please?