A day or so after Thanksgiving I noticed that Mary decided to make an appearance in the dried water droplets on the faucet of our Chicago rental. You may speculate as to why she chose this location, but I’m certain it was to ensure that my whites were as pearly as the gates.

Seems that we never tire of a trip to Chicago in the summer. We popped into the Swissotel to take in the views and enjoy our kind of town. We have to recommend the rooms ending in 04. We had a corner room with a panoramic view from the Wrigley Building to Navy Pier.

We came to Chicago for celebrations. Janny had an engagement fiesta down in Olympia Fields. For a change, Leslie went out to socialize while I worked on quesadillas in the kitchen. Once I swapped in some real cheese for the artificial stuff things went pretty smoothly and my Taco Bell skills shined through. Janny’s wedding will take place in March. Cancun here we come!

Josef, my friend and client, was also having a party to… well, I guess we’re celebrating his departure. Not that he’s a bad guy, we just don’t want him getting cold feet in the Chicago Winter. He’s flown off to Maui to be with his fiancée. Joe’s wedding will take place in December in India. That’s going to be an interesting trip.

Leslie’s been back at work since July 1, so have I for the most part. We have drastically different ideas about a full work day though. For her it’s the late afternoon colicystectomy. I don’t even know what that is, but apparently there’s a lot of fun for everyone but the patient. The patient loses part of their something-er-other. I checked with Google, it only returned 20 pages. Maybe Leslie made up the word to sound cool ’cause all she’s really doing are colorectal resections. I guess we all take hyperbolic liberties to make our work sound exciting from time to time.

While she’s “working” I guess I’ve been playing. I went to Chicago around July 19th for a three day stop just to hit the WhirlyBall courts with the Big City team, Joe, his crew and Jeff Z. As usual folks went home drunk and bruised, mostly drunk.

Then I came home for a week, we painted the foyer and bought a new bedroom set. For the first time in my life I have a night stand. These things are brilliant, I set my alarm clock and my lamp on it. Pretty clever that someone thought of a piece of furniture to put beside the bed for such nick knacks.

Oh, then I went back to Chicago for ad:tech and a Cubs game, why not? Cubs lost, but ad:tech was a good show for Big City to meet new clients and vendors, it’s all about Internet advertising. It went on for two days in Chicago, unfortunately the first day coincided with the great Chicago cab strike of 2007. Well, we managed to get a cab after awhile so it wasn’t all that great.

Anyway, I’m back in Springfield and getting to know my wife again, life is returning to . . . normal?

Our latest trip to Chicago found us below street level in a restaurant called The Melting Pot.