The last few days have been the idyllic sort that make me live this state. Warm to hot days, walking the dogs in the woods and then going to the river to swim. Freezing cold water that feels refreshing for the minute it takes for your body to start going numb, then standing up to get warm and skipping stones, wallowing in the joy of nature (and of dog joy).
Evenings are cool, nights are chilly, and sleep is heavy.
Drove to New Hampshire to pick my sister up from the airport today. We went to Portsmouth for a late lunch and walked around for an hour or so before heading home. Tomorrow I work early and Wednesday we're off to Montreal for a final visit. Very excited. I can already taste the date nut bar I will be buying first thing at the pastry shop in the Jean Talon market. Mmmm.
On that note, off to bed.

The rest of my Chicago trip was also fairly hectic. Did I mention that we're moving back? Oh, yeah- so we're moving back. In three weeks. I just gave my notice at work, so now I can officially talk about it without fear that I may have mentioned this sill blog to some random co-worker a year ago and they are out there, lurking, waiting for me to admit that I have been interviewing for jobs back home since January and that oh yeah- I'm out of here.
So there's that. I will be working at a Large Natural Foods Chain, also as Wine Buyer. The money is not great, but the benefits are, and there is no Oddfellows Local 151 and therefore room for growth and an opportunity for merit pay and some bleeding advancement, for the love of gods. Mostly there will be live music and ethnic food and non white people and friends and family. We are scrambling to find housing at present. It is not fun.
Kilgore has apparently lost his mind. He has broken through three window screens in the past month, the last one being the one in our 2nd floor bedroom. The b.h. got a call from our landlord while he was at work. The message said that the dog was on the roof of our porch. The b.h. ran home to find Kilgore lounging on the roof in the shade or our maple tree, without a care in the world. This does not bode well for our move. It's one thing if the five neighbors that we have known for three years have to deal with him, and entirely another when we're the new kids on the block. *Shudder*

The conference I attended vacillated between mildly interesting and wildly annoying. My roommate was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties (going on a hundred, I'd say). When she walked into our hotel room, I was sitting on the bed sending text messages. I couldn't see the door from there, so when she said loudly
"Oh, she's here now," I was not aware that she was alone.
When she came around the corner, I stood up and stuck my hand out to shake hers.
"Hi, I'm Heybartender."
She looked at it as if I had offered her a wet turd and said
"Yeah, I put that together."
She ambled over to her side of the room, plopped into the chair, and asked what time I had gotten in.
"I got in last night at about one in the morning."
"Then where have you been all day?" she demanded. I wondered if I was about to be grounded. It seemed as if she hadn't noticed that I had dropped my suitcase off at noon before I went out with my tour group, and for some reason it made her suspicious. I answered her very curtly, and then her phone rang. I texted my sister saying I was going to need a place to stay and left the room without another word.

There were seminars and a dinner, and after everyone was going to one of three get-togethers, all of which promised expensive drinks and terrible company. At the end of dinner, I sprinted up to the room, packed a small bag of overnight essentials, and headed directly to the parking lot. I left my suitcase on the bed, hoping The Roommate would sleep fitfully without the chain lock on the door.
My sister hadn't answered my texts, so I got in touch with my friend T, and headed down into the city to crash with him. He made me some pizza rolls and other various frozen veggie fare (another lovely aspect of the Airport Hotel is the fact that there were exactly two places to eat, one very expensive sit down place and a sort of grab-and-go sandwich counter area that was also incredibly expensive, as well as having almost no vegetarian food and always, always a line thirty-odd people long) and we talked for an hour or so before I finally had to go to sleep. I was up very early the next morning, bright of eye and bushy of tail as I often am when I wake up in a city. I dressed and washed up quickly and tip-toed out so as not to wake T. I went to a bakery right near my old apartment and got a huge cup of delicious coffee, an egg and spinach and feta sandwich on a croissant, and a dessert pastry, all for the same price that I had paid for a small cup of coffee and a shitty bagel at the hotel. It was glorious. I drove back out to the airport feeling fabulous. The day went fairly quickly, and the seminars were interesting. The Roommate was in my second one, and slept through the bulk of it, at one point waking herself up when she started snoring too loudly. At the lunch break I left again and drove a couple miles down the road to an Italian place, where I bought a big bag of fries and Ravioli with marinara from a guy who looked like an extra from Goodfellas. I caught a couple people eying my greasy fry bag hungrily during the next seminar, and ate them slowly and smugly at the next break in front of a long line of people waiting for their seven dollar pizza slices. Saturday night I pulled the same trick with The Roommate, leaving for my sister's without a word and my suitcase still on the bed. I slept soundly again, and again woke up feeling refreshed. Sunday was a short day, with only one seminar and a longer presentation on the Global Economic Shitshow.

My flight was cancelled, and for some reason no one bothered to announce that fact an passengers were not alerted until we approached the desk at the gate fifteen minutes after we were supposed to begin boarding. I walked up just as the young lady in front of me was simultaneously bitching at the woman behind the counter and the person on the other end of her cell phone.
She was probably nineteen or twenty, and acting like a complete asshat. I went downstairs to the other desk and got in line. After several minutes, I got to the front of the line and the man behind the desk put me on a flight to D.C., where I would then hop another flight to Chicago. I would be landing four hours later than originally planned. Fine.
I killed forty-five minutes, then boarded without incident.
On the flight to DC, the nineteen-year-old sat behind me next to a British guy. She proceeded to talk at him for most of the flight, which is how I learned that she had been sent to Ohio, where her parents would drive five hours each way to pick her up.

So I'm at the airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago. There is a conference there that I am attending as a member of Oddfellows Local 151.
I have other irons in other fires there as well, but more on that later. For the time being, I am focusing on beer and food and family waiting on the other side of this flight.
Work has been a bit trying lately. The weather has been mostly shit, too, so I haven't had much to say lately. Hopefully there will be fun stuff to report this weekend.