So we wanted the noon shuttle, and as we trudged back, at
about five of we saw the van zooming away down the road,
and so uh-oh, as it was scheduled every half hour only.
Inquired at the desk, where they said she'd be right back,
and in fact she was ready to take us at about 10 after,
having dropped her previous guests off at lunch, probably
at Blind Tiger, from which we had just come.

She's a college student working on a business major, cute
and bright and will go far.

We got to the airport in plenty of time, especially
considering that the inbound was stuck back in Dallas for
thunderstorms or something.

AA2604 SHV DFW 1328 1431 CRJ 8AC

Every half hour they announced another half hour's delay;
this bothered some of the passengers who had shortish
connections. Turned out it didn't take off until about 3,
which messed up a lot of plans. Bumpy unpleasant flight
with no service, not the fault of American Eagle. We
landed a couple hours and change late. When we wanted to
transfer from the one terminal to the next, the shuttle we
were on decided obnoxiously to break down, stopping the
clockwise flow, and we ended up having to take the other
train all the way around the airport, and we were sweating
it out when we arrived in the midst of boarding.

AA2331 DFW ORD 1725 1953 788 8AC

The flight boarded close to on time, and we started
taxiing, but then came the announcement that we'd be
hanging around for an hour. Thunderstorms.

Extremely poor service on this leg, nonexistent during the
hour we sat in the penalty box despite the captain saying
that he was authorizing a cabin service while on the ground.
Surly flight attendants, their mood probably not improved by
the delays - bad enough that I came close to phoning in a
complaint, but then I gave them a pass for having been on
their feet all day; but in general poor representatives for
American Airlines, in contrast to most of the other crews on
this trip.

And to top it off, when we landed there was another 41
minutes waiting for our gate to be ready for us.

We got in way late, and it was dark, and any thought of a
nice meal had gone by the wayside.

The Westin O'Hare is also pretty nice, looking kind of like
various other Westins. The room looked familiar, too, but
that was because it's designed the same way as the Westin
LAX and the Westin IAD and probably numerous others. The
good thing is that these hotels have bar-restaurants
designed for distressed travelers; these tend to serve okay
food.

We got down to the restaurant with half an hour to spare.
The waiter was caring, competent, and unhurried. I got the
honey soy glazed pork belly, which despite being tarted up
with strewings of microgreens and such, I can recommend
highly. I got a sizable end-of-the-evening serving that was
big enough for a main dish, plus it tasted good, with the
sweetness and Asianness understated, and lots of rich pigfat
to adjust my attitude. lili's French onion soup passed the
test with flying colors as well; speaking of which, I got us
a bottle of Colores del Sol 2013 Malbec reserva, which was a
little thin and lacking in color but respectable, better than
most of the wine we'd had for the past several days.