What did we do today? Got up too damn early, mostly. I sprang out of bed when the alarm went off at 4:40, and had the rare delight of nudging a sleepy Earl awake. We showered. I bounced around the apartment doing last minute packing and having breakfast, while Earl gave me extremely doleful looks. Eventually I relented, and calmed down enough that I was bearable in the car.

The traffic on the way to the airport was insane. What on earth are all these people doing wandering around the roads at 5am? It took us forever to get to the airport, and then another eternity on the shuttle bus wandering through long-term parking. We sprinted through the airport, finding our gate in record time, and made it onto the plane with only seconds to spare.

I ranted for a while about the incompetent morons in this world (the ones who drive shuttle buses as well as the ones who can't figure out if they want to be on a particular shuttle bus) until I was calm, then settled in and finished Interface Masque. It disintegrated horribly as it staggered towards a conclusion. I now know what lack of coherency does to a novel. It's not pretty. To save my sanity I read The Stars Dispose by Michaela Roessner, which is just full of food. The main characters are cooks during the Renaissance. Not a good book to read on an airplane, let me tell you. Just thinking about the lavish descriptions makes me hungry.

Eventually the plane landed. We found our rental car with a minimum of fuss, and quickly escaped onto the freeways of Chicago, where we got lost about four times before finding the correct surface street to take to Evanston. Chicago is seriously lacking in freeways.

Once we got to the hotel we were pretty much immediately whisked off to lunch with my father and stepmother. Unfortunately, the place we picked for food was already filled with Adam's family -- Adam being the person my sister is marrying. Thus instead of the restful family lunch I expected there were tons of New England strangers asking questions I had no idea how to answer. Have you ever tried to explain system administration to someone who doesn't know there are computers other than PCs in the world? It's tough.

After lunch we zoomed south along Lakeshore, which as one might expect takes you right by Lake Michigan. Good grief, it was big. When I hear the word 'lake' I think of Lake Thunderbird in Oklahoma, which is a medium-sized body of muddy water. Lake Michigan is huge and blue and has waves. It's an inland sea.

We wandered around Hyde Park. I saw the apartment-thing Earl grew up in, and the place he went to elementary school. We stopped by Powell's Books (no relation to the one in Oregon) and shopped for a while. Earl kept pointing out things to me that were familiar to him, and I kept trying to work this strange place into how I think of Earl's past.

It _was_ strange. I'd never been in a city before, not like this. Narrow streets, lined with trees and four-story brick apartment buildings with rusty fire escapes. Rambling stone churches just down the street from tiny brick liquor stores. Brick jewelry stores and restaurants and boutiques, with staircases leading up to the apartments above them. It's like the picture I had of New York when I was five or six and and reading too many children's books written in the 60's. It fit that image exactly, and I found that much more disturbing than if it'd been altogether strange.

After shopping we wandered around the University of Chicago, which is absolutely gorgeous. More stonework, including gargoyles and ivy and unexpected ponds covered with lily pads. Trees. Weird modern art, including a 1-hex object. Locations I recognised from Earl's infamous juggling video. Archways. I felt like I was walking through the set of Flatliners, unsurprisingly.

We had dinner with his mother at this neat place called The Medici. They serve a variety of sandwiches along with some pasta/salad/soups -- and really good coffee. The dinner itself started uncomfortably, but by the end I was able to relax into the role I was playing, that of Interested Girlfriend. I listened to her talk about geneaology software, her job at a hospital, and about her trip to China. I made interested comments and admired her pictures and was polite and cheerful. Eventually it got late and we left.

Earl and his mother exchanged maybe one hundred words apiece all evening. He stayed tense the entire time; she relaxed some when it became clear that I was serving as a filter. No, no need for you two to talk to each other. Talk to me instead. You're family, I'm a stranger. I'm safe.

It worked, but it also left me so keyed up and restless that I was piano-wire tense all the way back to the hotel, and am still, even now. And so is Earl, and I can't blame him. I can't imagine having family that I interact with like that. I do have relatives that I don't get along with, but they're simply not a part of my life. I haven't seen any of them in years.

I seem to have packed several weeks worth of experience into today. I already can't wait to be home.