Heya. As you may have…

Heya. As you may have noticed, the diary is more erratic than usual these days -- it should settle down once school starts (August 21st). In the meantime, be patient with me.

So I'm on vacation right now in Chicago, visiting wonderful friends (in case any of them ever read this, hello Jordan and Roshani, Alex and Julia, Elissa and Bryan, Eugenie and Ben (who I haven't met yet, but hello anyway), Michael and James (well, James isn't here, but Michael's visiting, so :-), not to mention all of you I haven't seen yet at this point but who'll be at Lori and Steve's going away party tomorrow night....(okay, those last lines will be totally meaningless to the vast majority of you, but that's okay, right? :-)

Had fabulous Thai food Tuesday night (Thai Twin has changed its name to Thai Twee, goddess knows why, but I'm not going to complain 'cause the food has, if anything, gotten better). For some bizarre reason, Hyde Park currently has something like six Thai restaurants (one Chinese place, one half-Indian place (the other half is cajun, go figure). I don't understand it. But the Thai food is really good nonetheless. Wednesday night was Chicago-style pizza at Florian, also pretty good (they've gotten rid of that nasty sewage smell that was plaguing them for a while) and last night we met Lisette (remember her? I've mentioned her before) at Tucci Benucci downtown for Italian. Eating out more than is good for my wallet, but it's such fun. The Shells with Chicken, Mushroom, Sun-dried Tomatoes and a Mushroom Porcini Sauce with fabulous, as was the Portobello Mushroom and Roasted Walnuts appetizer Lisette and Roshani shared (and I sneaked tastes of). Good wine, too -- a red Classico Chianti, I think? Maybe? I know nothing about wines -- Lisette and Roshani picked it.

I really ought to start a separate food section on this page -- I talk about it so much. :-)

We had an oddly intense conversation about Sri Lanka and the war there -- Roshani knows much more than I do (and was there during the riots in '83) -- if we have time, I'll try to pump her for information to add here. Very disturbing, unsurprisingly.

Talked to Kevin last night and he says matters at home are well in hand, good. Kitten is getting much better (did I mention she had an infection and wasn't eating for days? :( ), so that's good. Hopefully she'll be all well by the time I get back (so I can pack the poor thing into a tiny box 11"x16"x17" and stuff on the plane for 8 hours with me).

Rest of the plans for the trip include a bachelorette party tomorrow night (Bryan and Elissa are getting married August 11th in Philly (her family's there) which is great, though a little weird, since Kevin and I got them together). We're actually going to a strip show, in the traditional fashion. I've never been to one before -- should be interesting, from an sociological perspective if nothing else. Maybe I'll get material for a story out of it. :-) After that it's the aforementioned going-away party, more hanging out with friends, packing up of some stuff I left in Roshani's dad's basement and shipping it to California, visiting Lisette again (she has the misfortune to live way up on the North Side rather than in Hyde Park (where all the cool people are :-)), etc. and so on. I'll be back in Philly the 6th, though I'll try to do another diary entry before then and tell you what the strip show was like.

> Hope y'all are doing well -- I'm pretty happy these days, though more than a little stressed and frantic. My ride to Pennisc just backed out on me, so now I have to figure out how John and I get to Cooper's Lake Campground on August 12th without a car (neither of us drives). Hope there's a train running the right way...

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