Saturday the 24th started out to be a day in which everything went wrong. Lots of little things culminating in locking myself out of the house at our farm as I was getting ready to drive home to Chicago to avoid the Thanksgiving rush home on Sunday. No phone, no keys, no jacket and the sun was going down and the temperature dropping below freezing. More than a mile walk to the nearest neighbor who had a spare key - he wasn't home. Another half mile to another neighbor who was home, called the first neighbor on his cell and was able to get into his house to get the spare key.

So I started home (unkilted) more than two hours after I had planned with my dog in the back seat. I realized I hadn't eaten so I stopped after about an hour and a half at the first plaza on the toll road, got gas and went inside to get a McD's hamburger and fries. I paid for my order and was waiting at the counter for my food, when I turned to my right and saw a guy in what looked like the XMarks tartan!!!

I did a double take and asked (since I wasn't sure about the tartan), "What tartan is that?" He replied, "You wouldn't know it - it's from a website."

"X Marks the Scot?" I asked, "I post there too, I just wasn't sure this really the Xmarks tartan - I post under McFarkus." "I'm H. Hastings, and I just got my new 8 yard XMarks kilt from Barb. I'm wearing it for the first time - I just spent the day in Chicago at the Field Museum."

He was heading back to Wisconsin, and I was heading home to Chicago. So if everything hadn't gone awry earlier in the day - we wouldn't have met. We sat down with our McD's meals and talked kilts for about a half hour and then went our separate ways.

A great finish for what had started out as a lousy day -though my dog wasn't happy that I'd left him alone in the car.