Nanki-Poo, Ally McBeal, and shin splints

So my weekend felt so long, and this is the most exhausting Monday I've endured in quite some time. I went to Chicago this weekend with my husband, my parents, and my brother to visit my youngest brother who is currently going to school there. He goes to the Chicago College of Performing Arts (a music conservatory and part of Roosevelt University), and was performing in The Mikado on Saturday evening, a very strange Gilbert & Sullivan opera set in a Japaneese village full of characters with such names as Nanki-Poo, Yum-Yum, and Ko-Ko. Now, I have never been to an opera before, and while it was at times very entertaining, for the most part it seemed excrutiatingly long! But, for my first opera experience (although it's only a light opera), I fared pretty well, and I'm just amazed and proud that my brother is studying to become a classical opera singer. I'm always jealous of people with such big dreams who are actually out there, working to achieve them!

I guess my dream was always to become a successful business woman, and at 23 years old, I'm already well on my way. I graduated in four years with a Finance undergrad degree and I'm working as a Financial Analyst for a hugely successful monster of a company. However, the dream was a lot more exciting than the reality is, and I guess I just feel a bit disappointed by it all. How come career women in movies and television are always represented as living such glamorous lives? I mean seriously, how in the world did Ally McBeal and all her beautiful lawyer friends always have enough energy, after their long days at work, to party it up in the bar downstairs from their law firm? As we all know, I can't even make it to the gym! Well anyways, enough of that. I haven't been out there that long, and I have many, many working years to figure out where I want to be, and to find a job that will make me happy. Right now I'll just keep plugging away, making good enough money and trying to cherish every last second of my weekends.

Which brings me back to my weekend! So Chicago was fantastic (it's my third favorite city, behind #1 Boston and #2 New York). We walked, shopped, ate, walked, shopped, ate, walked shopped, and ate. My shins and feet, however, are killing me today because of my poor choice of footwear. I was trying to be all "Sex and the City" stylish with my pointy mules and black knee-high boots. Which brings me to the question, how did Carrie Bradshaw not keel over in pain traipsing all over New York City in her Manolo Blahnik stilletos?