Return

Here I am, back at the apartment and slightly restless. For someone who is not the hugest fan of change, it barely took a day for me to not only get comfortable sleeping in River Grove, but in no time at all this committed cat lover took to his temporary canine ward like a bee takes to honey.

Restless still as I know I will be ensconced in Park Ridge in just a few weeks and of course I've done nothing in terms of packing. Hell, all I know is that I need to be up that way; I'm still looking at places, including a 2BR condo for rent that I'll be checking out later today. I never did much to make my present apartment all that "homely", as anyone who's popped up here within the past year and a half can attest to.

My return Northwest should only be seen as a positive change. The Boy will be in a great school district, I'm still relatively close to public transportation (which I plan on relying on more and more for work), and hell, it's an area I am comfortable with.

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In lieu of his family's cancelled trip to SC, I'm flying my son home for a week. His plane gets in early Saturday morning and I think my ex believes I bought such a ticket intentionally so she would have to get to the airport at the ungodly hour of 5:30am. He is flying as an unaccompanied minor which causes no small amount of anxiety on my end, but I figure this will be the first of many trips from here to MN, and naturally his initial flight solo will be the most worrisome.

This Saturday is Day 2 of Taste Of Randolph and I'd very much like to catch Bobby Bare Jr. and Drive-By Truckers. Guess we'll see if we're up for it. A co-worker of mine has a place just a stone's throw from the festival and will most likely meet up with us.

With the Lollapalooza's schedule finally being released this week, I've run into little to no scheduling conflicts. Rather, the main conflict (Gutter Twins vs. Foals, Broken Social Scene vs. Battles) will be solved with the Foals/Battles aftershow at Double Door. Whew. Much as I love Explosions In The Sky, I've seen them already and I refuse to miss Brand New. So there. Oh, and RATM vs. Wilco? No contest-the AT&T Stage can have all the angst/beer-fueled boneheads; I'll be seeing Wilco, thanks.

Lollapalooza (and Pitchfork Music Festival for that matter) should prove to be a different experience altogether this year as there will be zero regrets concerning who I end my nights with. There will be no kicking myself for compromising when I swore I'd never go through that again, no nagging thoughts in the midst of temporarily satisfying companionship that I am making a colossal mistake. I am fully aware that in the midst of several thousand people, I will be reminded just how small of a city Chicago is, and that's fine. If I can run into my ex-fiancee after 5 years (as I did at the Mark Kozelek show recently), I can handle anyone. Who knows? I may just find the whole thing amusing.