Early Parole

Got official word yesterday that I'll be able to cut my stay in Chicago short by a month, so I'm planning to ditch the apartment July 1 instead of being here until the end of the month. My initial reaction was basically "woo-hoo!!" but that was oddly followed quickly by some regret. Even though Lady J was planning to be absent from Chicago after June 9 in order to do a second-session grad school course, I have to say that I was kind of looking forward to being here in July when presumably the warmer weather that I've been promised might actually materialize.

I'll still be coming up every 3 weeks or so, but of course I'll be in hotels instead of this apartment. And I won't be here on the weekends unless J comes up with me and we decide to add a day or two. There's a lot that we've planned to do here that we haven't gotten around to and now probably won't. But when I step back, I realize how much I really miss working from home and how much more productive I can be.

There's a lot that we want to take away from this experience (I shouldn't make it sound like it's over 'cause there's still a month to go). We've talked a lot about things that we've found, done, discovered, etc. while we've been here that we'd like to incorporate into our lives back home. Like walking to get places (tough in the 'burbs, but we can be creative), ridding myself of some bad work habits I realized I picked up over the last couple of years, reducing the amount of junk in my office (I'll be filling a number of large brown trash bags throughout July and August) and more. There's no question that this has been a really good experience for me (and I think for J as well).

I'm not sure when we went out to Jake Melnick's for dinner last night and then wandered up to Rush and Division to have a couple more drinks at McFadden's if we were celebrating or trying to soak up as much of the neighborhood as possible. Probably both.