Yesterday was too zany, I was trying not to miss a day, but it was non-stop from the moment I walked in the office until the moment I left (which wasn't until 7pm), then when I got home I went to bed about 9 since I needed to get up a 3am this morning to see our London users through their first day on our new application. Kind of a hectic schedule, but the good news is I'm logged in from home and can sign off about 1pm and take a nap!



Haven't finished talking about the trip to Illinois yet. We ditched the kids with Mom on Wednesday evening, our last night in Springfield, in order to have dinner with my one high school pal that I still keep in tenuous contact with, Russ Miers, who came with his bride-to-be, Jaime, and bought us dinner at a Mexican place downtown, the same place we went to with him last year. When last we saw Mr. Miers, he was just finishing up divorcing his wife Jennifer, who he'd been married to for 11 years, only to find that she'd rather be a workaholic than have kids, after he started feeling the paternal pangs as he closed in on the big four-oh. Never one to resort to placing an ad in the personals, he was soon entangled with one of his co-workers, who looks to be a good 15 years younger than he is, and who is gung-ho for kids asap. They've sinced moved in together and the wedding is scheduled for October, and promises to be quite the lavish affair, attended by everyone they've ever met (except us).



Russ and I go way back, we were always in the same grade but didn't start really hanging out together until maybe fifth or sixth grade, initially because he was a neighbor of Jeff Hagen, one of my circle from that era. Jeff eventually became a total wastrel and I didn't have anything in common with him, but Russ and I always had plenty to talk about, since our minds ran in the same circles on a number of subjects, although no one ever accused him of applying himself to much at that point in his life. After high school, he ended up in Chicago briefly going to IIT in the city for a while, and we got together a few times, but then he ran out of money or something and ended up joining the army, doing a tour of service in Germany on the GI bill. Resisting intense pressure from his superiors to stay in the military, he cashed out at the end of his indentured servitude and didn't quite know what to do next. He took his payout from the army and blew it all on a nice car, then after a little while decided there were better things he could do with his life. He trashed the car, collected the insurance, and enrolled at Illinois College, I think, got his degree, went on and got a Masters at Western Illinois (again, I think. Hey, I'm no Simon Schama), and worked at Macmurray College for several years as director of residential something or other. He was trying to break into being a dean somewhere, but couldn't get anywhere with it.



Meanwhile he'd married Jennifer, who was also doing something uplifting but not well-compensating. After several years of hand-to-mouth existence, they decided to go corporate and try working for money instead of for the greater good. Russ ended up at some software company in Springfield, I don't remember where she went. Not long after this, as I said before, Russ started wanting to have a family, something they'd agreed when they got married that they weren't going to do, and Jennifer avoided the subject by immersing herself in her work, to the point that they didn't want to be married any more. That was where we left off when we saw him last year, he was still fairly devastated by the whole thing, but already starting to rebound. Sounds like a in a year or two the Just the Grownups Going out to Dinner reunion will have to be replaced by the Family Cookout at Somebody's House, but that's ok.



Russ and I go way back. One day when we were maybe freshmen in high school we ducked out of school early to avoid some lame school assembly, and decided to head for Jacksonville with two of his older sisters, all four of us crammed in the cab of their pickup truck. As we headed out onto "the hard road", for whatever reason, the truck picked that moment to decide the tires were bald and we slid off into the ditch at 40 or 50 miles an hour and rolled over. Nobody was really hurt, but the truck wasn't in too good a shape.



The first time we met up in Chicago after he started going to school there, we decided to head down to the Museum of Science and Industry, and took the Jackson Park el train all the way to the end. By the time we got there we were the only white people in a five mile radius (or at least it seemed like that). It was the middle of the day and wasn't worrisome or anything, but Russ did suggest if we saw a white guy we should go up to him and say "Doctor Livingston, I presume?" Didn't have the opportunity, though. I don't even remember if we made it to the museum.



We were also part of the class trip to Washington DC when we were juniors. At the time I was lusting after a freshman named Regina Jokisch, who was also on the trip, and was about half way through a six month period in which I was working up to asking her out. Somewhere along the bus ride to DC, she and Russ started dating (as I said, the guy was not a late bloomer), but I handled it fine, and sure enough within a couple of weeks she'd already dumped him.



Oh, I could go on and on.