Home Sweet Home

Good golly am I glad to be home. Chicago was great and all, but there is no place at all like home. In the Bay Area. With hills and tall trees and clear skies and the big beautiful bay.

I actually didn't get to see Chicago itself - I was in Rosemont/Des Plains, but there seemed to be no change in the topography no matter which direction I looked. That was weird.

Everyone there is SO nice. Very friendly, down-to-earth people. And I got to eat at the Steak & Shake! I didn't have the shake, but the steak (burger) was good.

There was a greasy-spoon type diner next door to the hotel that delivered, which was nice. The telephone in the room had three buttons for food service: "Pine Grove" (the greasy spoon) and two others that simply said "Mexican" and "Pizza."

I pressed the button for Pine Grove and a hotel employee answered and told me to just call the number on the menu. He must love having that job.

The folks at the restaurant were super nice and my food was good, especially considering how inexpensive it was. A roasted half chicken with vegetables, salad and baked potato, delivered for $15.00. Cheapest room service I've ever had.


When it was time to head home, my new colleagues dropped me off at the O'Hare people mover, which has a large parking area with a waiting area for those being picked up, where you can also be dropped off, aptly named the "Kiss & Fly" area.

We didn't kiss - maybe we'll be ready for that on the next visit - but said goodbye and I went up into the train station. There were two sets of tracks - one on either side of the station - and absolutely no signage on either side as to which track goes to the terminals.

There were electric signs above the doors and when the tram came on one side, the sign said it was going somewhere - not sure what it said - something about concourses - nothing about "terminals" or "airport" or "where the planes are."

I got on & figured I could always jump off & go back the other way if I was wrong. Turned out I was right, but again, no adequate signage or terminology about where it was going and where you might want to get off.

They don't seem to like the word terminal and instead, it's all about concourses - A thru M or whatever - and you sort-of have to know which concourse you need, rather than which terminal - the concourses are in the terminals...

But it looked like AA was in the third group of concourses, so I hoped for the best and got off the tram when I could see similar letters on the signs outside the tram - the announcer/robot never mentioned which airlines one might find at any one stop.

I guessed right and found American Asslines where I was checked in by a very nice woman. I then got to wheel my checked luggage down to an X-Ray area and leave it with some very large Union workers and piles of other bags that all go through the scanner before they go onto the magic conveyor belt.

The X-Ray area looked like an impromptu set-up, right next to the ticket counters with simple fabric dividers between it and all the passers by. No real security to it. I hoped my bag would make it onto the plane, and was very glad I opted to have all my photo equipment shipped.

After all that, I almost didn't make my flight because I got lost amid the dozens of AA gates, but when I found the gate I thought I needed, they'd made a gate change and I had to run from one rambling arm over to another and just made it into the last boarding group.

Once on the plane, it was hard to relax for four long hours - I just wanted to be home already. Flying is sooooo boooooooooring. Thankfully I was next to someone quiet and there was no annoying chit chat. I read my magazines and tried to sleep and took pictures - it helped pass the time.


ginormous maxi pads should be disposed of... somehow... they won't fit inside the washroom, that's for sure.


somewhere over a mountain range

Strange Dreams!

It could be the nog, or perhaps the soggy weather - my dreams lately have been all sorts of weird.

Early this week I had another flying dream, where I don't fly so much float... I needed to get home or to work or somewhere - I was somewhere in downtown SF, but it was smaller - the whole city was smaller and the buildings/hills much bigger, like an exaggerated cartoon city.

I didn't want to go a particular way, so I decided to fly, or float, to where I needed to go. I was able to do this by stomping my heel down onto the ground and that propelled me up into the air. In moments I was gazing past Seacliff at the beach where a large group of surfers were hanging out. I don't remember ever arriving where I was headed - I was too caught up in the great view.

Then a couple nights later I had a dream that David decided he did want kids, so we had a kid - it's just that easy! But then after the kid was several months old, he decided he didn't actually want a kid, so he left. And then I had to move and get back into an apartment I once had in Seattle. (I've never lived in Seattle.) To David's credit, after hearing about this dream, reassured me that no matter what, he would not leave!

The next night was another float/fly dream, this time somewhere in central CA near the aqueduct. I drifted over a bluff and was suddenly able to see a secret military air base where top secret (black ops!) planes were doing training exercises. I was freaking out in the dream about seeing all this. I do not remember where/why I was floating around over there. There's not much to do over there, especially if you're just floating around.

Then last night - the weirdest one yet. I was walking home from somewhere, somewhere in the south bay like Cupertino, but it was getting dark and I was about to head into a sketchy part of town (an area with only four starbuck's?). I crossed a street and ended up walking through the edge of a park area that looked like a quarry - rocks and stones were everywhere.

I started chucking rocks at shadowy figures as if to demonstrate I was a stone-throwing badass - don't mess with me (which always works). And then someone started talking to me and suddenly it was a forested area where a bunch of homeless people were living in trees.

Now I was there with a few friends, and we were asking the tree-dwellers how they stay warm & dry as they showed us their setups. One forest tenant had a single-wide trailer suspended in the trees. We all went up to check it out.

We sat around the living room, which was a good-sized room, bigger than the trailer itself, talking and watching TV. A little while later we decided we'd better take off so we could catch the bus home. I thought it would be smart to make a pit stop first. I dashed across the hall from the living room and sort of crashed into the bathroom, unsteady on my feet.

The trailer bathroom was tiny - like an airplane bathroom, but even more narrow. You had to fold the sink up, like a Murphy Sink, out of the way, to get to the toilet. I sat down on the toilet and just as I sat down, the whole trailer felt unsteady below me, and I thought, "could this thing fall out of the tree?"

And then it did. It was falling, and there was no way out. I held my breath and braced myself as well as I could. I knew if I didn't die, I'd have to be dug out, because the sink had me totally blocked in. And I'm a tad claustrophobic. But what can you do?

I woke up. I woke up and man, did I have to pee.