I got back into Chicago yesterday afternoon and was welcomed back in good fashion by a few friends last night. It’s good to be back - I missed the comforts of my own apartment after living in corporate housing for 4 months. I woke up early this morning and got my hair cut at my usual place, then just kind of meandered back to my place enjoying the good weather. For lunch, I ran out to a great sandwich shop and sat down in some Adirondack chairs in a park across from the Sears Tower to enjoy my sandwich. As the Chicago Air and Water show is this coming weekend, I was treated to some fly-by’s by the Blue Angels as they were practicing for the show. I walked back to my place again with them criss-crossing in the sky above me and one flew by so close at one point that it set some car alarms off. A man next to me, his head craned to the sky, looked over at me with the excitement of a child in his eyes and said “Isn’t that so cool!”.  He was right, though, it was.  I declined to mention that the Blue Angels also did a fly-by for me when I was hiking up the Muir Snowfield on Mt. Rainier just one week prior…

It’s good to be back, but I already miss the mountains I’ve become used to in the distance.