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The Cubs won tonight, 4-3, in an exciting game where I got to spend time chatting and catching up with an old friend. These were good things.

Traffic management by the City of Chicago *following* the game was a complete disaster. There were announcements on the news about how the Keeler Ave. entrance to the Kennedy was being reopened early. More than two weeks ago, they were making these announcements.

Guess what was closed tonight? With no signage to warn you that it was closed. This meant that there was a tremendous backup trying to make the right off of Irving Park to get to Keeler, exacerbated by the idiots trying to butt in near the front of the line. And then, when you got onto Keeler, you found the entrance was closed. I have no idea of why.

Keeler, of course, is a tiny two-way street that cannot carry this much traffic, but there it was. And the people coming southbound were even worse off, because there was a large panel truck that had gotten several cars past one of the intersections only to discover that it could not proceed any further south because of the traffic disaster trying to move north. I barely managed to squeeze past it going northbound.

I don't know when I last saw such a big mess without a major accident being the proximate cause. But that's life in Chicago.

Tomorrow is going to be a train wreck. We have a meeting at school at 10, then meetings for work at 11:30, 1, and 4.

This is too many meetings.
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Some years ago, we were watching "Wheel of Fortune" on TV when we saw someone come up with one of the worst failed solves ever. The category was "Same Name", there were no letters visible in the final word, and the contestant announced that the solution must be "Strawberry and Traffic Pie".

Ow. The solution was, of course, "Strawberry and Traffic Jam", because no one has ever seen a traffic pie, but we have all seen a traffic jam.

This story comes to mind, because today I saw a traffic jam. Several traffic jams, in fact, as we returned the Midkiff kids to their parents. The Tri-State had the usual construction-related congestion, far more than I'd expected early on a Sunday. The Borman decided to contribute as well. And we'd gotten off later than I'd intended because of reasons, so we got to our rendezvous point a good 45 minutes later than I'd intended.

I'd have made it on time if it weren't for those kids and their dog. Or something like that. Actually, I'd have made it on time if the traffic were anything reasonable, but today was not a day for reasonableness.

The traffic was similarly bad on the way home, but the Tri-State opened up and I had hope. Except someone appears to have been in a bad accident around the Ogden interchange, resulting in a monstrous backup that took half an hour or so to go two miles. The other driver had clearly had a much worse day than I was having, but this last delay ate all of my gasoline safety margin and contributed to K being fabulously late for her friend Lilly's surprise birthday party.

I finally pulled into the Sam's Club gas station near my home and pumped 14.789 gallons into what I believed to be a 15 gallon tank. That was a bit closer than I had in mind. Although the Internet tells me that the gas tank holds 16.5 gallons, despite what the gauge said.

Anyway, K made it to the party, the Midkiff kids made it back to their parents, so all is well.

I am tired now. :)

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