...In which our heroine returns.

Home again, home again. It gets stranger every time, I swear. Everything is so oddly familiar, yet so foreign. This isn't my life anymore, but it still doesn't feel weird to settle back into old routines.

Before coming home, the family was in town for the weekend. The big deal was to go to a Reds game at Wrigley Field, which also happened to be my first Cubs game. Honestly - and maybe this comes because I walk by it so often - to me it was just another stadium, just another baseball game. This is a sacrilegious statement I realize, but I just wasn't enthralled anymore then I would have been at a Reds game. I used to love sporting events, but the older I get the less interest I have. Who knows why...

I also had probably the best meal of my life, in the hotel restaurant. Osteria via Stato stresses family style Italian dining, but we opted for individual plates. I had a caprese salad, sea bass with green beans in a sweet corn broth, lots of bread, and chocolate/hazelnut gelato. It was absolutely outstanding and not too much of anything. We all tried everyone's dishes - pesto pasta, ricotta gnocchi, and zucchini risotto - and nothing about the entire meal was anything less than awesome. Even my mom's coffee with amaretto, which is nothing remarkable, was better than usual.

I have no big plans for the week - just to enjoy being home. I always find it hard to spend as much time with everyone as I want to, because there's just never enough time, but I'll do my best.  It's so much warmer here than Chicago and I have no warm weather clothing anymore, quite the conundrum. It can gladly stay in the 80s for Lollapalooza.

The Pixies are karmically in tune with me - they'll be in Chicago during my birthday week, on November 20-21, with the former date being the 2 year anniversary of Frank, my tattoo.