Playing Catch-Up

So, of course school starts and I absolutely neglect the blog. This is the story of the blog, and those of you who are regular readers know it by now. So I'll catch you up on the happenings around here since the end of August.

First, a few weekends ago, Mom and I had a lovely breakfast at the Palmer House restaurant, and then moseyed on down to the Gold Coast Arts Fair for some...art.

The lobby bar at the Palmer House

Mom in "front" of Buckingham Fountain (the mini-van snuck into the picture)

Me, with some art

Making a purchase

It was hot, so we only stayed at the fair for about an hour. Mom headed home and I went up to After-Words, where my friend Angie had just taken in bags full of Agatha Christie paperbacks. Of course, I left with quite a few.

The Choices

My Take-Home

Later that day we went to a Bears pre-season game against the Oakland Raiders. The tickets were thanks to Mr. Neill Power, and we brought along our friends Juli and Matt. The Bears lost the game, but we had amazing seats and a terrific time. Although the first interception/touchdown by the Bears caused the row directly behind us to fly into a frenzy, spilling beer down Juli's back (the guys responsible bought her a beer for her damp-shirted troubles), and dumping an Italian beef sandwich on Matt's leg (he was not bought anything for his wet-legged troubles).

The Crowd

Our Amazing Seats

 Matt and Trevor

Trevor, Matt, and Juli--celebrating our non-victory in the urban tunnels of Chicago

The next morning, we had the gang over to watch the Man United game. We had coffee, donuts, bagels, and a lot of cheering.

We spent dinner that night hanging out with new Bosco Bork. And a lot of other Borks. He's gaining a little bit of weight and his tiny cheeks are rounding out the tiniest bit. He's even getting big enough to sit in his own chair. Not very stably, but he fits!

Mom is not too thrilled that I'm making her do this to her new grandbaby

And although Bosco is much, much too small to wear this shirt, Trevor and I couldn't resist getting it for him. We'll wait until he's in kindergarten to get him License to Ill.

Uncle Trevor and Bosco

Grandma Nichols

 Labor Day weekend, Rachel came into town to surprise Pop Power for his birthday. We headed down to Bridgeview with Pop, Rae, Angi, and Sean (Sadie had a babysitter), and we met up with Fran and Neill for the Chicago Fire game at Toyota Park. The seats were in the "Party Deck" and we were practically on the pitch. The Fire played the L.A. Galaxy, so we got to see beady-eyes Donovan, although I was supremely disappointed to come back from the bathroom to find that I'd missed his corner kick about twenty feet from our seats. I missed my chance to heckle him from close range, so I made it my job to heckle him later on when he missed a goal attempt.

Stupid Donovan

I got to play on the practice pitch after the game. It's my first cartwheel in about ten years

We ended Rae's trip with some Smart Ass and Apples to Apples playing at Angi and Sean's. And Neill tried on Sadie's new NASA bib from Auntie Rae.

We finished up the Labor Day holiday weekend with a luncheon to celebrate Bosco's forty day blessing (who knew such a thing existed?!). And we got some nice pictures of the new parents and the new great-grandma.

The super attractive new family

Great-Grandma Bosco with...Bosco!

I'll leave you with a little something from my life as a commuter. Sometimes the bus is late to campus in the afternoon and I'm a few minutes too late for the train, which means I've got to wait about an hour until the next one. If it's not too late and the weather is okay, I don't mind doing this, and that was the situation the week before last. I'd gotten a Starbucks gift card for presenting at our fall faculty workshop, so I wandered through downtown Crystal Lake to the coffee shop for a totally gratuitous toffee mocha something awesome, and then I went to a fantastic little gift shop to spend some time...and some money. This was the result.

I'll make it an extra special point to keep the updates coming. For now, everyone enjoy the perfect weather, because as soon as we get used to the idea of Fall, it'll start snowing.