Don't Trust the Forecast aka Why I Will Always Pack a Jacket or Umbrella From Now On

A few weeks ago I went to Chicago for a work conference.  The conference was great.  It was three days long and depending on the day it went from 8-4 or 8-4:30ish.  That meant we had the evening free to explore the city. One of my colleagues and I flew in the day before the conference started and had plans to go to a White Sox game.  Thanks to traffic from the airport to the hotel, we missed half of the game, but what we saw was good.  There was a fireworks show after the game.  I'm not really into fireworks, nothing against them, just not as excited about them as some people.  Anyway, the girl I went with wanted to see them so we stayed.  Unfortunately, the show was interrupted due to incoming severe weather.  Now with very few exceptions (i.e. going to Arizona in June), I always pack a jacket or an umbrella in case it rains.  However, since we were only going for three nights and the airline we were flying charges for luggage (seriously?!  I still can't get over that luggage used to be free and now you have to pay for it on so many airlines), I wanted to fit everything in a carry on.  So after checking the weather several times and not seeing a drop, I decided to save room in my carry on; I would NOT bring a jacket or an umbrella since there was NO rain in sight.  BAD IDEA!  Yep, the fireworks, as I said, ended early and we got to go back to our hotel in a "nice" rainstorm.  Let's fast forward to the next day.    After the conference, we went to the Sears Tower (it's not called that any more, but you know what I mean).  Sadly, we had to wait TWO hours to get to the top, which I could deal with (though I wish I'd brought my book) and about ONE MINUTE (I'm not exaggerating) after we finally got to the top (remember we'd been waiting 2 hours), the fog rolled in and the tower (as the man who worked there said) was "going to zero visibility."  There were a couple of breaks in the clouds, but let's just say I did not get may good pictures.  And yes, it rained again!  Thankfully, it wasn't raining much when we walked from the tower to a restaurant for dinner.  And when it rained at dinner and after dinner, at least dinner was a short walk from the hotel.  Did I mention the weather had been gorgeous all day when I was inside at the conference?  Moving on to the next day (you can guess where this is going), it was another beautiful day (we left the hotel for lunch).  After the conference was over for the day, we walked around a little bit (wanted to get dinner at some pizza place, but due to a 2 hour wait and the fact that we had plans to take a boat ride, no go on that so we went elsewhere and had good pizza there instead).  Anyway, we get on the boat and the first 30-45 minutes was lovely, but then guess what?  It RAINED!  Let's just say I was glad I took a Dramamene (sp?).  It cleared up a little at the end, but we missed many of the nice sights.  :-(  The last day of the conference,  you know the day I flew home, it was sunny.  Go figure!  So the moral of the story:  always pack an umbrella or a jacket.