Chicago

I realize that I never spoke of the trip I took to Chicago for a conference in September this year.  I had never been before and was lucky to find myself in the windy city during unseasonably warm weather.  Staying downtown, I was quickly finding myself quite in love with the city.  Only there 4 days, I had convinced myself by the time I had left, that I was ready to make a change.  Ready to start over somewhere new, somewhere urban, somewhere a train took me to work.  I am not at a point to leave now, in the midst of school and with a job I love at a company I truly believe in.  In an industry I find consistently fascinating.  But, sitting on the rooftops next to Wrigley Field, Chicago seemed to be under a different sky, one of endless possibilities.  As I sat, wet from the rainstorm rolling through, the field bright green against the grey sky, I was entranced by the taste of a different world.  As I look back now, I don't know that Chicago proper is what endeared me but the idea of different, itself.  The allowance to believe, for a moment, that all our ills can be dispossessed by state lines.  But Chicago itself, well, I despise the cold, more than most anything, and as you recall, unseasonably warm was part of that mental picture I had built.  Reality of winter looks more like this:

What it did show me, however, is that there is a part in me that is ready to find a new world where John and I can step out and find a new footing.  But for the time being, here is where we need to be.  Here is where I want to be.  But who knows what the next 10 years will bring.  I may find my perfect mix of urban and industry, somewhere on the equator, where winter never comes.  In the meantime, here are some pictures from the trip.  Two girls, completely buying into the belief that the reality of a city can be captured in a tourist's eye view.  You know it isn't true, but it feels far more magical that way.