Division? Clark? Red Line?

So the famous Taste of Chicago starts tomorrow (Very Exciting). Enjoy it, despite the fact that apparently only fat greasy men are supposed to enjoy it. My roommate for 4 years of college (the only person I’ve ever shared a room/apt with) is coming because she thinks it sounds fun so that is great.
For people who have never been it’s essentially like a big block party with music and TONS of food booths. You don’t have to pay any thing to go, but you use food coupons (strips of 11 tickets for $7) to get anything. Every booth has a taste portion “small” for 1-3 tickets and then 2 or 3 specialty items for 5-7 items. BUT you can get cheaper tickets if you buy them in advance at Dominicks. (the strip of 11 only costs $5.50). They are only available one week before the Taste.
So I offered to pick up tickets for many people and figured that I really needed to get 9 strips to cover everything. Because of a last minute trip to Wisconsin, I didn’t get to Dominicks until Tuesday and found out there was a limit of 4 strips per person. FOILED. So I decided that I could make do with 8 strips and was trying to work another trip to Dominicks into yesterday or today. I was going out to dinner last night anyway, so I found the closest Dominicks to the train. I figured I would get off, walk 5 blocks or so, get back on the train and it would be fine. I mentioned my plan to a girl at work and she’s like, oh just take the brown line to the Dominicks it will let you off much closer (walk one block) That’s my stop and my Dominicks.
Ok, sounds good right.
So as I left to go home, there was a tremendous storm and I decided that I would just duck in the library for 20 minutes and let the storm pass rather than walking through it. I checked where I could transfer to the Brown Line and got all ready. Now if I hadn’t been SO pressed for time, I would have looked at the map to visualize where I was going, but this girl made it sound really simple and heck she lives there. Because of the 20 minute delay I was already running late and then I missed my first train and just in general the trip was not going well. I get off the brown line finally and I see nothing. I start walking it what I think is the right direction, but I start walking through a slightly questionable residential area. No sign of the “big Dominicks” or any sort of commercialization. I walk for probably about 4 blocks. I see nothing. No signs of anything. So I call the girl I’m meeting for dinner and ask her to look at a map to help me find Division. After much communicating and stress, finally she tells me what direction I should be heading and 20 minutes later I’m on Division. I ended up being near the train station I needed to be for dinner so I just headed up to Lakeview sans tickets. Of course it was humid and by this time it was after 7pm. I was starving, not to mention how embarrassing is it to call and admit you’re lost in your own city? Especially when I really do have a good sense of direction. I’m sure this friend would really doubt that last statement.
So still no four strips of tickets. Basically I suck as a ticket getter apparently. This wasn’t a great story, but if you knew how much I hate getting lost, it really was quite amusing. And the fact that I was afraid that I was going to end up getting mugged over these darn tickets.