Fort Myers to Chicago

So, I would try and say more about the time we had with Brad and Kathleen, but when Kath has put together her own excellent description of the weekend, I'm almost tempted to just cut 'n' paste it and put my own comments in.

She is not joking about the room of wacko dreams, every morning I came out of there feeling a little shell-shocked, hair out in tufts, going 'what on earth was THAT?!?'. The annoying thing was that I kept getting woken up in the middle of these dreams and was completely forgetting them but for a few weird sensations of familiarity (they all must have had people I knew in them).

There was a really good dolphin moment for me, on the lack-of-sunset cruise. For the most part they'd been barely breaking the surface of the water, or jumping over the wakes of other peoples boats. The passengers were all pressing towards the bow trying to get a good shot and I was on the left (starboard?) side when all of a sudden a single dolphin came straight up out of the water right in front of me. Now that was cool.

We really had a lovely laid-back time, no rush to head off any place and we got the royal treatment, it was good to see Bradleen again!

Coming back though was quite the ordeal, the temperature dropped 60 degrees, literally. Its going to get worse this weekend I see. But who's going to worry about the weather when Liverpool will be thrashing Everton (Globe pub at 6:45am this Saturday, anyone?) and the Bears are going to intercept Manning so many times he'll throw up on his own center.

Speaking of which, I'm up late watching a typical ESPN show on the history of the Super Bowl. The one thing I've learned to respect about American football, I could drudgingly admit, is the ability for a quarterback (not all, mind you) to put the ball in a sprinting receivers' hands at 50+ yards. You can now get this amazing slow replay shot zoomed in on just the ball, hanging and spinning in the air for minutes before being caught. Its like watching Stephen Gerrard pass....man...

So, tonight I also finished 'ripping' the latest, greatest British comedy. Its surreal, not necessarily laugh-out loud but definitely keeps a smile on my face. My brother, Dave, had the DVDs and we had a laugh together this Christmas. I managed to get some episodes onto my mac with the help of a nifty application that I think Brad would like: 'Handbrake'. It actually made me a little homesick watching it tonight, its just inherently English.

This Friday, I'd volunteered to show some people around at Northwestern. Its the time of the year again when prospective PhD students come and interview faculty and get interviewed. I went through the process myself three years ago now and nothing serves a more acute reminder of my arrival in this country almost 5.5 years ago than conversing with these young bright-eyed bushy-tailed to-be-grads, most of whom I'll never meet again. It makes me wonder about what would not have happened in my life, if I never made the move. Happily, what will be is a new family member!

1am, time to go and snore in Erika's ear. I'll leave you with a post from one of the blogs I have in my Reader.