Last weekend, I had a girl’s getaway at the County Inn and Suites.  I spent the day shopping.  I went and had a great dinner at Maggiano’s.  I also went and saw The Men Who Stare At Goats.  (Interesting movie, let me tell you).  I also got to spend the night at the Country Inn and Suites.  I love this hotel.  Bill and I actually stayed in a Country Inn and Suites on the night we got married.  However, the room I got to stay in was way better.  Want to see why?

Needless to say, I loved these features in my room.  Oh yeah, my other favorite things had to be the FREE wifi in the room.  I’m finding that lots of hotels don’t offer that anymore, and I love hotels that do.  Country Inn & Suites also had a great pool and fitness room too.  Something I do love about them is that their lobbies feel so homey.  I just love their look.  Our hotel had freshly made popcorn waiting for us in the lobby (and let me tell you how yummy it smelled).  What did I enjoy the most though?

I didn’t have to share a nice big bed with two little kids who like to sprawl themselves out!  Thank you Country Inn & Suites for a great woman’s getaway!

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.

For me, any show that is called Banana Shpeel is something I’d love to win tickets to go and see.  I love the fact that this show looks extremely fun and extremely playful and super funny.  Check out this video for a little background information on this show:

I love how the clowns look. They aren’t your normal run of the mill clowns which draws me in.  This whole show reminds me of an event that took place at Izeafest last year –

This is how we spent most of Izeafest. Except, I kept getting stuck driving. If you know me, that is not a good thing. It’s not that I am a bad driver, I just have no sense of direction. At all.  Heather and Christine will remember a fun trip home after one of the events.  Since I didn’t drink that night, I was the sober driver for the evening.  Now, the event was held in downtown Orlando.  Our hotel wasn’t there (it was cheaper at this other place).  This should be pretty easy because it was a straight shot there, right?

Well, if you have never been in downtown Orlando, everything is seriously one way.  If you have no sense of direction, you are screwed.  We kept using this Marriott hotel as our point of reference, and all we could figure out to do was drive around the stupid thing.  We could never even figure out how to get close to it.  The worst was when we ended up what looked like it could have been a pretty bad neighborhood.  We ended up stopping at mall and asking the security for directions.  So picture this, three lost women at 1 am in the morning in completely the wrong city and two of them had been drinking all evening.  Needless to say, it was not a pretty picture.    We did get back in once piece.  Sort of.  Since this was a rental car, I had no idea how to use it.  We thought we locked it and turned the lights off.  Well, we didn’t.  If Heather’s daughter wouldn’t have noticed when she returned to the hotel after us, we would have had a dead battery or an ax murderer in the backseat!

Now, the Banana Shpeel show should be way better than my crazy driving experience in Orlando.  (This year we stayed nice and close and cabbed it everywhere).  It’s a comedy show with tap, hip hop, eccentric dance and slapstick, all linked by a hilarious narrative that ignites a succession of wacky adventures.  With the economy in dump, this is just the show most of need to forget our problems and enjoy ourselves (even if its only for a couple of hours).  I’m super excited that it’s coming here to Chicago!  Tell me you don’t want to see this show after seeing this:

It just looks like a super fun time, and I hope I’ll get a chance to see it while they are here in Chicago!

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.

This is what our Christmas tree looked like for about two hours on Sunday.  Granted, our prelit tree is 8 years old.  However, half of the tree was out when we put it up.  Of course, Bill didn’t bother to plug it in until we were over half done getting it up and fixing the branches.  He’s lucky I didn’t recommend he start researching a hotel las vegas.  Instead, I stayed quite calm and just finished the tree.  Since only one side of the tree was out, we were able to cheat and just turn that side to the wall.  We also broke two ornmanents (thanks kids!) before we even had the garland on the tree.  Good times, good times.

Here are a few more pics of us/the tree/the kids having some fun:

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.

Next time the federal government bails out the big business morons, they really need to attach some strings and some consequences.  It is absolutely ridiculous what the ABC15 reporters found. At first glance, the 2008 Asset Management Conference held this week at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix looked like a normal conference. However, the people who went to it were less than ordinary.  American International Group made efforts to disguise the conference, and there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property (they were a $343,000 sponsor of the event which was not allowed under the bailout rules). The ABC15 Investigators went undercover at the resort and observed AIG executives having poolside meetings while drinking coffee and working out at the spa while other attendees were in conference rooms for seminars.  The executives were also seen at after parties drinking it up and having AIG pick up the tab (ie the taxpayers).  I wonder what else we picked up the tab for: taxi trips, travel insurance, room service? The hotel staff were told they weren’t even allowed to say AIG.

This, of course, comes on the heels of them getting another $40 million (or is it billion?) of taxpayer money to bail them out.  Yeah, I think we need to take the blank check away.  How about you? Obviously, AIG doesn’t get it.

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.

Yes, I am admitting it.  We went to a work dinner for Bill’s work on Saturday night.  It was about an hour away, so we had already decided to get a hotel room.  It was really fun — there is no need to be sending out Chicago resumes or resumes anywhere else either.  We had Filet Mignon for dinner (yummy) and free drinks all night.  They even opened a tab up at the bar upstairs after the party was over!  We ended up staying up till like 2 am.  That isn’t all that late, I know, but man, I am still dragging butt.  Seriously.  I didn’t even have a buzz when I went to bed, so this isn’t even hangover related.  The only other thing I can figure that is making me so tired is that I am getting sick.

How old were you when you figured out you were old?  LOL

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.