Today started off great! Everything went well, I got to Chicago - was even able to check into my room at the Chicago Hilton EARLY - around noon. I dumped my luggage and headed off to the French Market. Can I just tell you it's really hot and humid here? I was determined to walk the 3 miles or so because I knew I would be eating candy all week, but I was really hot by the time I got there. I also realized I couldn't buy much chocolate because it would melt before I could get it back to the hotel.
So I bought five macaroons at Vanille Patisserie - in some great flavors - chocolate, peanut and honey, white chocolate and lychee, chocolate hazelnut, and red velvet. Then I went to Michael Canady Le Chocolatier and bought what I thought I could eat on the spot. How cool do these look? (now keep in mind that I have neither my usual photo set up nor my autopsy suite this week, so the pics might be kind of crappy. Please bear with me):
The one with the dancing couple on it is a blueberry cream with dark chocolate. It was VERY tart and good, although the blueberry overwhelmed the chocolate. It was too fragile to autopsy. Plus I was in public and it's weird enough to be photographing your food - much less taking it out of your mouth half eaten and photographing it.
This was a milk chocolate truffle - I couldn't get over its crazy red, metallic appearance and had to get it. It was very creamy and very good, but there wasn't much to it. It looks fabulous, but tastes only slightly better than average.
This is peanut butter and dark chocolate and is shown (unbitten) at the bottom center of the first picture. I did pull this out of my mouth half eaten (so classy!). The base of chocolate was so thick I had to see what was going on. And was surprised to see more layers of dark chocolate in the peanut butter. With this one, the chocolate overwhelms the peanut butter. The dark chocolate was good, but I wanted more peanut butter! Don't I always?
This one I had to buy because it looked so, well, implausible. It's a pistachio pyramid:
The pistachio flavor was very strong and I have to admit, the metallic color was kind of unappetizing. It didn't have any flavor, it was just, well, weird. But what creativity and novelty! So cool!
I left the French Market and decided to go to Macy's. I was standing on the street corner and when the signal changed, I stepped out - and that's when the bus hit me. I'm not kidding. The driver ran the red light.
No head on (I'd be dead) - it grazed me, moving fast and at first I didn't even know what happened. Thank God for Jean Bass, a retired nurse who was right beside me when this happened. She was kind enough to ask if I was okay - it happened so fast we were both shocked. The bus didn't even slow. I thought I was okay, but she walked me across the street and noticed my arm was really swelling. She took me into a restaurant to get ice and that's when I passed out - she caught me before I hit the floor and told the people in the restaurant to call an ambulance. Thank God for Jean Bass!! I don't know what would have happened if she hadn't been there. Thank God for the kindness of strangers.
And thank God I didn't get any further out in the street. I am really, really lucky to be okay right now.
The ambulance guys got there VERY quickly and were the best - so nice! Chicago Fire and EMS ROCK!!! The ER was packed and, the truth is, I wasn't dying. So they weren't taking me anywhere right away. At this point, I just wanted to make sure my arm wasn't broken (I've got an Expo to work, damn it!). We'd been icing it and the swelling had gone down, but this is what it looked like at this point:
This is what the back of my arm looked like:
I was in the ER for about 4 hours - the bus hit me at 1:50 pm and I didn't get a cab back to the hotel until 7:00 pm. So much for the great first day I had planned! But I have to say that everyone I dealt with was very, very nice. The cops that came by to take my report (after all, a city bus ran a red light and hit me - and God knows how much this whole fiasco is going to cost) were hilarious. One of the young men on the hospital security crew even managed to come up with a square of Ghirardelli chocolate for me! These folks were great.
That's me, back at the Hilton all patched up. But you know the worst part? I don't know what the hell happened to my macaroons!
