"I've still got $12 left"

Last night we went to downtown Chicago & took a lovely boat cruise sponsored by the UChicago MAPH program. Unlimited drinks & tasty little finger-food on the 3-hour trip up and down the Chicago river and out into Lake Michigan. The lake was a little choppy, so that part of the trip was abbreviated, due, i think in part, to the dance party located on an elevated level on top of the boat. Every time we hit a bump in the lake the entire dancing crowd was tossed starboard & then suddenly back the other way (aft? lee? head?). But at the end of the night we'd only lost 2 MAPHers to the drink, so it was well worth it. At one point, we pulled up parallel to another large cruise ship with music & dancing (though, they had disco lights) and it seemed our two boats would have to compete in a dance-off.

After the cruise was over & we'd all stopped begging the bartenders to pour us 'just one more' drink ("we won't tell anyone") we debarked and headed up north in a couple taxis to a club called Berlin, which had been described as "a gay dance club, except for Saturdays." At first this seemed very apt, as there was pretty much nobody there. We soon left the barren bar (but managed to get hand-stamps... mark of shame for Sunday morning) and tried to go to Sheffields, but were turned away by the massive line of people waiting to get in outside. So we went to a karaoke bar down the street & had a sweetsweet drink. We returned to a reviving Berlin & danced a bit, but were tired, drunk, and hungry, so we went off in search of the Gay Donkey, a late-night Mexican food place, but were once again unable to find it. Oh so aggrevating.

Brooke pointed out that Joel never takes her to 'cool places' in Chicago, which he reserves for everyone else. Joel lamely countered with 'cruise?' but the night was degressing quickly. We hopped a taxi home & crashed. All in all a fun evening. Images should be forthcoming. Joel backwardly took photos with an actual film camera...