Happy 4th

The house is beginning to smell like gunpowder. I had to close some windows.

You wouldn't guess fireworks are illegal in Chicago from all the noise out there.

This is the downside of living so close to a park.

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I haven't shared anything in this blog lately besides cartoons and playlists. It's not been for lack of anything happening, though, just the lack of will to write about it.

My father came to visit for a few days, which was very nice. We went to see the CSO, and happened to get tickets for the first of Barenboim's three going-away concerts. The concert was good, and it was sort of exciting to be there for this, even though I'd never made it to the CSO before.

We also took the architechtural boat tour and visited Millenium Park one day, and drove around the swanky north suburbs listening to Philip Glass the other day. (We got as far as Lake Forest, where my stepsister went to college. Lake Forest is a real bedroom community — no real commercial strip that we could find, and tough there were sidewalks, we saw no pedestrians. It was a beautiful place, though.)

My father and I saw a bicyclist get hit by a car. There were no obvious serious injuries — no clearly broken bones, blood, etc — but it was still a pretty serious accident. It shook me up a great deal. I still bike, of course, but I'm more careful; and while I always wore a helmet, now I really feel the need to, rather than it just being an obligation. The lesson: don't assume people will see you, even if they should. And don't assume people are competent drivers.

In other news, I recorded a podcast with Jen, which will presumably be available online at some point. That was fun.

Susanne and Ivan stayed here Sunday night on the way back home from their long road trip. That was unexpected but a real pleasure.

Next week I'm going to a conference in New York, which should be quite fun.

Labels: personal

posted by Tony at 9:56 PM