This last weekend I spent Valentine's Day here in the city with Megan as part of her birthday surprise a few weeks ago. We had the whole weekend planned out: she would get in Friday night early evening and we would go out and see a late movie. Then Saturday morning we would drive a Zipcar out to the IKEA in Schaumburg to explore, spend most of the day there, come back to the city, go to Mia Fracesca for our dinner reservation and then end the night at a friend's party.

Here's what actually ended up going down.

For starters, I had the iPhone app for Zipcar. I made a reservation using credits given to me upon registration for Saturday almost a week prior. Being the planner I am, I was pretty proud of my initiative. The Zipcar app has a feature that allows you to lock and unlock the car that you have a reservation for. Knowing this, I failed to keep track of the actual ZipCARD that grants most other people access. As I discovered that Friday afternoon, you still needed the Zipcard to initially unlock your reserved car. I also discovered that I had lost my Zipcard and wouldn't get a replacement for several days. Being that I made this discovery less than 24 hours from the start of the reservation, it would have cost $117.50 to cancel. It actually cost a LOT more to cancel the reservation than to keep it. So I kept my car reserved the whole day to save money (which I find ironic).

We also didn't bank on "snowmageddon" approaching last week either. With the record snowfalls and anticipated snow in Nashville, Megan's flight ended up being delayed a few hours and arrived to Midway a lot later than anticipated. The downer to this was that I had already bought the tickets to a movie that we would not be able to attend due to a delay that nobody could help. Fortunately through my Fandango account, I was able to transfer the ticket money to another showing.

So the weekend didn't get off to the anticipated start. Logistically anyway. However the curveballs thrown into our plans ended up being blessings.

Because we didn't get to do what we planned, it called for the weekend to move at a slower pace. On Saturday we just did whatever we felt like doing at the time. We had a leisurely breakfast at IHOP, saundered around downtown a bit, saw a matinee, and still made it to our 7pm dinner reservation with time to spare. The forced slower pace made the weekend more relaxing and enjoyable.

Our resolution: no more planning. Anytime we visit each other for a weekend we are just going to take things as they come. At our own pace.

Too much planning can hinder necessary times in life to "stop and smell the roses." A concept this planner needs to grasp.

Ferris Bueller said it best: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."