Real Life

Hey there!
Life's been very hectic for us ever since we got home. It seems like we run errands all day now.

We just got back on Monday from Chicago, where we went for cousin Tom's wedding to his longtime partner, Frank. It was a lovely event, and it was cool to be able to see all their friends and to visit that side of the family for the first time in over 20 years.

I shot a few pics while we were up there, but didn't shoot any of the wedding. I have this rarely-held (it seems) belief that if there is a wedding photographer shooting pics, it's not proper for guests to also be shooting pics.

Michael and I went up there on Thursday, driving the new white CRV up mostly on little roads. The hardest part was in the city of Chicago itself. The expressways were jammed up with traffic, so we stayed on the surface streets, taking over 2 hours to get from the Illinois border near Whiting up to our hotel, the Wyndham Glenview Suites. The day was beautiful, though, and the drive proved interesting.

Friday we went shopping at the Old Orchard Mall, an open-air mall much like Oakbrook. We liked it! We had a pasta lupper (lunch-supper) at Cheesecake Factory, and took 2 pieces of their cheesecake to go. These were our evening snack back in the room.

Saturday was the wedding and reception. There were several "high points" to this day. Of course we both loved talking to my Aunt Carola and my cousins Ed and Tom. I loved meeting Diana, Ed's wife of 29 years. (How wrong is it to fall that far out of touch with one's own family?? We could have been FRIENDS all this time!) Anyway.. we enjoyed that.

One high point was after the wedding, when the right-hand wall of the church opened up, revealing a bright and beautiful yellow-walled room, with a huge wedding cake and champagne-toting servers waiting for us.

Tom and Frank's house was piled high with lavish and delicious food, too. Thankfully, there were sufficient guests to eat it!

On Sunday, we drove around a bit, driving past the beautiful Baha'i Temple, and then making our way south to the Chicago Art Institute, one of our favorite Chi-town haunts.

Monday we drove back home, coming out of northern Chicago on Hwy US 45 to US 30 -- a great way to come!

Monday and Tuesday we got Michael's MRI and did the drive to Indy to the neuro-oncologist. Things are pretty much unchanged, and, with this illness, that's a good thing. There is scarring from the radiation, and that can look like tumor, but, since it has not changed, they lean toward thinking that it's just the scarring.

We were talking about our travels and plans and I actually made the doc laugh out loud when I said, "We're putting the glee in glioma!"