Girls' Weekend, Redux

J and The Sisters McDowell came to town for the U2 concert last weekend. We had a blast! Where to begin? Well, I guess with what they came to town for: The Concert™.

I wouldn't classify myself as a "U2 Fan", but I had never seen them before, and I can fake my way through the choruses of a couple of their songs. Plus, the company I would be keeping that day was top notch, so. My excitement was tamped down a bit when I learned that we would have to get to the concert to stand in line (the crazy ladies had GA tickets so they could get as close to the sweaty band members as possible. Meantime, P and I had seats) half a day before it was even to start. But, as it turned out, J and Sisters decided they were going to try to cut into line at the last second. In their defense (as horrible as that sounded to me at the time), I have to say that I was skeptical that the whole line system they had a Soldier Field would even work. I wish I had taken pictures of the holding areas. The only ones that truly looked like a refugee camps were the ones closest to the start of the line. Those sections were crammed with sweaty and stinky bodies of the weirdos who had traveled great distances to see Bono and Co. The holding pens farther back had next to no one in them. They looked like VIP cattle yards with just a few people sprinkled around for show.

So, we decided to explore a bit. We found a couple of interesting items, like...

An inflatable pub! Which I managed not to get a picture of. Well, except for this one. This is what was left on said pub after I got up. It looked like I had peed. (I didn't.)



The pub was sponsored by Guinness, which sounds exciting, especially since I love Guinness. But the mix was off, and it ended up just tasting like thick water. I still managed to drink my entire beer, for the record. They also had these crazy people walking around having their pictures taken with people. Much to my dismay, they didn't stop anywhere near us. I took this picture out the pub window. I call it "Bubble Boy's Dashed Hopes".



After this, we went to the Blackberry booth where we all got free cell phone screen cleaners. Speaking of, I can't find mine. At the ONE booth, I signed up for annoying email alerts so I can feel like an activist and send harassing emails to my Congressperson. Oh, I also got a bracelet. We also stopped at the Amnesty International booth and spend $25 (each!!!) on a t-shirt. A t-shirt that has already shrunk and can only be worn to bed now. *sigh*

After all of this, we still had several hours to kill. I bought a U2 t-shirt, mostly because I felt like I hadn't spent enough on t-shirts. This one also shrunk, but I learned from the seller that it would, so I planned ahead and got the next size up.



Then, the line theatrics started. Turns out, what appeared to be a system that would leave holes all over the place for sneaking people to... well, sneak... wasn't that sneakable. This is what the line looked like.



This is what everyone else looked like watching this line.



Note the teeth-shattering, tooth-chipping, stressed out grin above.



Note the look of annoyance above. Well, he looks annoyed a lot, so this could have been for pretty much anything.



You can tell that Heather (above) is stressed because she's not looking like a deranged turtle in this picture.



You can't really see Megan's stress level, mostly because she's always smiling. But trust me... there were times when I thought she was going to kill J.

Well, more specifically when I thought they were going to gang up on J and kill her. See, J wasn't so much into the whole "sneaking" thing. She kept saying things like, "You guys are small and can just squeeze in anywhere" (like she was some sort of giantess) and "You guys just go ahead without me. I'll meet up with you on the floor" (which we all knew was a lie. She would have been angry at the end of the concert). Lucky for all of us, they managed to sneak into the line farther back and avoided detection entirely.

The concert was pretty good (coming from a non-fan)! My camera battery died soon into the concert, but here are a couple of neato pictures.





The rest of the time we (1) ate a lot, (2) went to a gay bar (where we were pretty much the only patrons) and (3) took a whirlwind 1 hour trip of Shedd Aquarium.

I have videos from both 2 and 3 above, but am having issues loading them. In any event, that was our weekend. And P and I are ready for everyone to come visit again already!