I had never been so frustrated with Chicago as I was this afternoon. A full 24 hours after the marathon was over, streets were still shut down. Heading northbound on Lake Shore, Roosevelt was closed. Balbo was closed. Jackson, with its ridiculously long turn lane, seemed open, but was closed off about 20 feet from the intersection, which trapped people who were planning to turn left in the left turn lane and forced them to reincorporate themselves into traffic that was flying past while they stood completely still; the lights weren’t cycling either, of course, since it essentially wasn’t an intersection anymore. Monroe, too, was closed. Randolph was closed. I ended up getting off at Chicago.

It’d be fine if the traffic folks had had the courtesy to let people know of the closings. I’d have happily gotten off 4.8 miles earlier on 55 if I’d known I’d be forced to drive all the way up to Chicago. A simple detour sign would have done the trick. Maybe the City can’t afford detour signs anymore.

This was the for the marathon—or I guess the day after the marathon, but who really needs to get anywhere these days?—and it happens every year. What did Chicago expect to have happen if the Olympics were in town?

One more reason to take public transportation, I guess.

Or wait. Shoot. Maybe not. Why would the City reallocate some of the $5 billion they had just budgeted for the Olympics to something popular? Silly me.

Really? Ben Stein is still giving people financial advice? After this?

• Estimate a close date upon purchasing, then plan to close seven months earlier than this date. Don’t tell anyone about this, especially your buyers, until a few months ahead of time, or really whenever you feel like it, especially if your buyers are really poor and couldn’t possibly afford the place even if you were to close near the original date.

• Fail to close in the first place, and don’t tell your buyers until a mere few weeks before the updated, vastly early close date.

• Send your buyers very few, if any, letters, and generally communicate as little as possible regarding massive delays in groundbreaking, lack of progress in construction, and the overall progress of the building. Communicate as little as possible in general, and force your buyers to rely on mortgage brokers, lawyers, and realtors from other area developments to get any information at all about your property.

• Answer questions about number of units sold as abstractly as possible, if at all.

• Host parties for current buyers, but make sure no one shows up. Make sure anyone who is supposed to have information about the building and be able to answer questions isn’t actually equipped to do these things, but offer beer and cookies with aplomb instead.

• Ensure the sales center moves to a new location every few months, and also that none of these locations is anywhere near the development itself. This is very important. Also, don’t tell anyone, ever. You definitely don’t want your buyers visiting you for any reason.

• When you must send letters to buyers, do so as late as possible, and demand ridiculous sums of money within ridiculous time frames while you’re at it. As a totally hypothetical example, ask, say, for half of the cost of upgrades within the next week. Never, ever cash the checks you receive, and avoid answering repeated calls about these uncashed checks at all costs.

• Charge as much as possible for upgrades. Built-in desks should not be any less than a few grand.

• Be as shady as possible and manage your money very poorly.

You might have guessed that the condo we purchased over a year and a half ago officially fell through this week. The bad news is that we no longer have a place to move into shortly and that we’ve wasted the past year and a half waiting around for this place to be done and keeping a large sum of money in a completely stagnant account; the good news, of which there is much more than the bad, is that we can find a much cheaper place now, in a better location, and not have to wait for it. It’s not that we were hoping this would fall through, but—yes, that’s exactly what it is. Needless to say, we’ve been getting the most out of Craigslist over the past few weeks.