My trip to Illinois has finally almost come to an end. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I flew out to the Chicagoland suburbs to watch my parents’ business (a laundromat) while they were out traveling to South Korea. They’re due to return tomorrow, and I fly out of Chicago and back home to Las Vegas the day after that.

… And if you weren’t able to guess, yes, it is freezing cold in Chicago.

I’ve been both very productive and unproductive at the same time. I have a lot of time to sit in the office in the back of the laundromat to do my own stuff, but I also face a ton of interruptions from customers, and I’m confined to a Chromebook while I travel because I never bothered upgrading to a newer laptop. What I have been able to do, however, is browse through some of my old photos and back them up on Google Drive.

While I did that, I noticed I had a handful of photos from recent times that I never got to post. I picked out a random set of them to post here.

The first is of a “chicken” “sandwich.” I placed both of those words in quotation marks because I’m not really sure if the chicken was real (and if it was, then it was wildly overcooked), and I’m not sure if placing a thin slice of pita bread on both sides of the meat and vegetables counts as a sandwich. It was also extraordinarily expensive… though that fact is mitigated because this was from a restaurant in downtown Long Beach. I think the food was borderline terrible, but at the very least, I had a pleasant experience.

The next couple photos are shots I took from the balcony of my condo back in Las Vegas. Being high up has the benefit of letting me see a massive slice of the Las Vegas Valley at once, and the view becomes surprisingly different depending on the time, weather, and other factors.

I also have a clear view of the Stratosphere from my balcony, which was recently rebranded to the Strat. To go along with the rebranding, they put “STRAT” in blue letters down the side of the building. I managed to catch it before they were done.

Because my travel scheduling was so tight, I flew straight to Chicago from Oakland after the PUBG Global Championship. Unfortunately, there were no non-stops from Oakland to Chicago, so I had to take a layover in Salt Lake City. Upon landing, I was (un)pleasantly greeted by… snow.

Unfortunately, because my layover was so short, I didn’t have an opportunity to walk around and explore Salt Lake City International Airport—all I had time for was to deplane, go to the bathroom, answer a few emails, then board my connecting flight. But, seeing as my feet did technically touch the ground, I can say that I’ve been to Utah now.