There I go being tardy again. This week at work has been zany, as we try to compress six weeks worth of testing into two weeks in order to appease the egos of those who said it would be done by August 15. Surprisingly, it by and large went pretty well this week, but logged a lot of hours in front of the computer, making it less attractive of an option in the evenings, even though the TdF is over.



Tomorrow we're off to New York for an overnighter so I can take in the NYC bike race on Sunday. We're even staying at the team hotel, maybe we'll catch a glimpse of Jonathan Vaughters or something, oooh. Last year's edition was tempting, since Lance was there, but it's just as well we didn't go as it was about 100 degrees that weekend. This weekend has a threat of rain, but nothing too awful.



Here it is nearly three weeks since we got back from Chicago, and I never did recount the Chicago part of the trip. We convoyed up to Jill's house with Mom and her car on Thursday the 3rd, had about five minutes there before it was time to all pile in and head for the city so that the Mom and Beth could take the girls to tea at the American Girl store. Jill had Ashley and I had Justin and we had a couple of hours to kill, so we went across the street and went to the observation deck of the Hancock building. Justin has been interested in skyscrapers lately, and he was still free, so we went, it was kind of hazy, but I hadn't been to the top of a tall building probably since the Empire State building in 1986. After that we let the kids browse the childrens section at the Borders next door, and by then the tea was over. Chloe had brought both her American Girl dolls so Alexa could borrow one, and Grandma Linda got them each a few things, plus chloe had some gelt of her own to burn on the stuff, but, fortunately, not enough for a whole new doll, which is what she wants.



Meanwhile, Scott and Shelley were driving in from Columbus and got stuck in traffic, so by the time they were just getting into the city everybody in our group was done and ready to head for the hills. Bob ended up meeting up with them and going out to dinner at Harry Caray's, but the rest of us headed west and stopped at Eduardo's for the pizza pilgrimage. The rest ended up back at the Lemke abode and we stayed up late visiting. The fourth of July we headed downtown for Taste of chicago, minus Mom, Jill and Ashley, so we all fit in one car. We got there right at 11 when it opened, so it wasn't too hot or too crowded. By the time we were done eating at 1:15 or so it was extremely hot and extremely crowded, such that most of the offerings didn't sound that appetizing any more, other than ice cream. We came back to Bartlett and hung out for the afternoon, ordered out for dinner, then shot off a few fireworks in the backyard that Scott had smuggled in from Indiana. Most of them fizzled. So we went to the town fireworks display, which was quite a show and a big hit with the kids.



Saturday there wasn't much of an agenda. At some point we were going to take the kids to the mall to have a group photo taken, but Ashley never did take a nap, so Jill chickened out. We took some pictures of them all in the front yard, and Justin was typically more difficult than the two-year old, so Mom never did get a good shot all of them at once. We haven't gotten ours developed yet. That afternoon Scott whipped up some elaborate burger recipe from Bon appetit which took until mid-afternoon. Ordered out for dinner, although no one was particularly hungry, and just kind of hung out, got the kids in bed at a reasonable hour, talked about Hawaii a lot.



Sunday Bob Scott and I drove with Shelley to Elgin for an 8K road race, which turned out to have only about 100 participants. I had a bad feeling about it, although conditions were pretty good, not too hot or humid, and the course was mostly flat, but while I logged a respectable time of 56 minutes or so, I came in dead last. Actually Scott did, but he was just pacing me. Bob was about a minute ahead of us. We got back, and turned around and drove with Beth and the kids to Granger Indiana to visit the Stonehills for the afternoon. They've been wanting us to come visit for ages, so we took the extra day to make the drive out there. It turned out to be kind of a rainy afternoon, but we just hung around visiting and catching up while Hannah played with the kids. Karen let me play her Bosendorfer piano that Bill got her for a graduation present last year. She also grilled us some burgers and dogs for lunch (Bill was initially delayed by a Sunday morning surgery), and then Bill fired up the grill again at dinnertime for steaks. I wanted to leave by six but it ended up being close to 8 by the time we made our farewells, and drove through off and on torrential rain the whole way back, including a major traffic jam going into Chicago that stretched out the trip to three hours (instead of 2 1/4 it took to get there).



So it was a good trip on the whole, looking forward to seeing everyone again in Maui. Bob has just this week arranged for Scott's bachelor party in Vegas, but I'm abstaining from that one since it's only a few days before we leave for Toronto, plus these trips are costing me plenty already I don't really have the extra dough for another one, and Vegas isn't exactly my idea of a good time, since I've already seen the Liberace Museum. They'll have plenty of fun without me, I'm sure.