Thursday night, Kaye joined la familia in celebrating Claudia’s birthday, and then we went to the airport together, but for different flights. I managed to have found one of the only on-time planes to Chicago, but she and Mollie were not so lucky. The guy in the seat next to me on the flight offered me his finished novel halfway through the very short trip; it was curled and puffed up to twice its normal size because he got to the most exciting part while on his boat, jumped in the lake, and the book followed him in. He was crabby about the fact that he had to take a hiatus from reading to let it dry out. We exchanged travel notes (he’d been to China recently, and I’d been to Alaska), and he said he’d look for me at Lollapalooza on Saturday. Um. Sure! I hopped the blue line with a crowd of other festival-bound folks, none of whom seemed to have a clue about Chicago and spent the whole ride worrying about where to go. I realized I must be a seasoned traveler, since I never really have any concerns about finding where I’m supposed to be: if I don’t know, that’s what people are there for. I exited at Division and heard Lauren yelling, “There she is!!!” even before I saw her.

We stopped at her place long enough to drop my stuff off and toast to Minneapolis with her roommate, then headed over to Louie’s for karaoke with her new cute punk-boy pal and his North Carolina friends who were also in town for Lollapalooza. It was SO FUNNY, and, due to the house drink known as the ‘blue motherfucker’, SO DRUNK.

kevin and roy singing karaoke at louie’s

We reeled home in hysterics at 2am, and I slept in my clothes.