Warm weather. It's a crutch.

Ben and I spent New Year's weekend in Chicago. At the time the trip was booked I was picturing a nice miniature weekend couple getaway, strolling down Michigan Ave drinking hot chocolate, taking in all the Christmas lights and sale signs in the store front windows. While that sounds very romantic, it was the coldest weekend in the history of the world. Locals said that it was colder than normal for this time of year, "we usually don't see weather like this until February." The point is, YOU DO SEE THIS WEATHER!

We learned several things on this trip:

1. Cold weather attire purchased in Atlanta does not make for cold weather attire in Chicago. My winter coat may as well have been a spring jacket. My winter hat that barely covered my ears was quickly replaced with a hat that had ear flaps.

2. How to properly tie a scarf and show nothing but your eyes. Nose covered, ears covered, chin and cheeks covered. At those temperatures priority number one was keeping my face from falling off. Running a close second was priority number two: looking ridiculous.

3. Living in this climate might possible kill me. After braving the weather for a few hours I could see it in Ben's eyes, it didn't even need to be said. His "I love cold weather" attitude and "I could live here for sure" mentality quickly froze, broke off and was lost forever.

Regardless of the ridiculously cold temperatures, we continued on with our planned activities. Friday night we met up with an old high school friend and his wife for dinner at Wildfire and a show at 2nd city. Dinner was amazing, a glass of Hess Chardonnay paired with mushroom stuffed salmon and veggies. Ben had a Sam Adam's with a peppercorn fillet and green beans. 2nd City was a blast. I laughed so hard the entire night my face hurt. Seriously, my face hurt. If you have not been, I strongly recommend going.

Saturday morning we were picked up by our buddy from college, Jeff. We hadn't seen him for four years nor had we met his girlfriend who he's been dating forever. We had breakfast at Milk & Honey in Wicker Park and sat and talked. It was perfect, and we totally gave his girlfriend our stamp of approval. Jeff had to work that afternoon so he dropped us back off at the hotel and we continued our frigid adventures.

We toured Millennium park where I previously had big plans to ice skate. But, since it was -20 degrees outside, I opted to watch others and then briskly walk into a Payless to get feeling back into my legs. We walked along Michigan, went in some all time favorite stores and then ventured over to Holy Name Cathedral for Saturday night mass. It was an amazing church and absolutely packed. We followed up mass with Chicago deep dish pizza a Giordano's. We decided on Giordano's after polling several Chicagoans and decided this would be the spot at which to clog one of our arteries. The rest of the evening and walk back I had imagined stopping at a Starbuck's for a latte and people watching to cap off the night. Instead, we hauled ass back to the hotel where I immediately got into my flannel jammies, watched a couple episodes of NCIS and passed out.

With the threat of "lake effect" snow, we got up and out of Chicago on the 8:30am train Sunday morning. It could have been about 30 degrees warmer, but we had a fantastic time visiting with friends, eating great food and celebrating the new year together in a fun city.