Woke to sunny but very cold weather and dirt-swept wind that attacked Andi’s sensitive tooth as we walked to brunch at Beatrix. An Uber later we were among the trinkets in Randolph St Market, leaving with a vintage 70’s handbag for Spike.

Woke to this song in my head in our complementary hotel room on the 23rd floor of the Hampton Inn in Chicago’s west loop. After breakfast and a workout, we walked in the cold and grey to Morris and Sons, a solitary building on Polk St with the best collection of men’s clothes, and where a new messenger bag and scarf were to be had. Then Uber to Hyde Park to visit the newly opened and extensively renovated Robie House, a Frank Lloyd Wright treasure in on the U. Chicago campus. Lunch at Medici’s on 57th and skipping a planned bus tour, we went book shopping and took a nap instead. After a bitterly cold walk through the wind along the Chicago River, we tucked into Bar Ramone for drinks (“good luck tonight!”) and had dinner at Proxi, which had amazing food, but no service after the food order. Then 7-11 for water and returned to the hotel room to read our new books. Including a small one from David Foster Wallace called This is Water, wherein he says, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.”

With renewed readership interest, here’s a take on a busy weekend:

On Friday we banked mesenchymal stem cells in a process that involved coring into a lower back bone and drawing out 60 mL of marrow. There was local anesthetic, but still, there was no mistaking the sensation that your bone was getting bored into, and it was especially weird in a crammed little office in the edge of Rochester Hills. A great visit with Spike and the kids followed, probably a welcome break for her and her dislocated shoulder, while Eddie and I wrangled monsters in the upstairs bathroom and JoJo fell asleep in Andi’s arms Listening to the terrible story of one of Spike’s friends whose husband went on a guy’s golf trip and ended up dying in a Florida restaurant choking on a piece of steak. Then to Birmingham to get my new glasses, a drink around the corner that led to a kickstarter donation for a new bar in Detroit and then home to watch the new HBO documentary on Theranos. Which was great, but about as non-specific in the science as her own pitches to unwitting old white men investors. Then Saturday morning and the difficult conversation with Eric and Andi’s answer to his question about whether he could help in any way: to forgive himself. A session at the gym, a perfect coffee at home with Andi and then she ran errands while I walked the puppy under clear skies and temperatures in the low 40’s. Dinner at a dive Vietnamese restaurant, delicious, and a concert with Dave Boutette at crazy wisdom tea house. After the show, we were talking about the kewenaw and this story of friend of his who was talking to a 64-year-old Ojibwe resident about how the old man had no interest in anything south of the peninsula, no desire to see what lay on the other side. To which Dave’s friend said, “you’ve never been across the Macinac bridge???” And the old man said, “no, I’m talking about the Houghton Hancock bridge!” Then today I ran the Ann Arbor half marathon while Andi did the 10k, great showings by both of us! After brunch and a nap, and the newspaper and a walk, it was time for dinner and for me to fly to Gaithersburg, where I’m now in bed, a busy week ahead.

After another week of dispiriting climate news, the weekend was not at all bad: after cooking dinner Friday night for Nabs and Andi, I was able to practice drums a little. Then Saturday was great: John D came over for Andi’s breakfast of hippie hash and he and I took in the Michigan men’s b-ball game vs Wisconsin, a great showdown for my first time in Chrysler. We walked under the clear blue cold to Mani’s for late lunch with Al and Andi, then Andi and I went to the Michigan Theater to watch the 2019 Oscar-nominated live action short films. The four I was awake for were really great! Then it was home with a Venezuelan Uber driver artist and a sit to watch The Wife before bed. The number of drinks Saturday caused the next morning to be a little hungover, but it was still a great day even with the cold and the clouds: a personal-trainer-led workout at the gym, lunch with Natalie at Taco Bell (crunch wraps!!?!), band practice with the boys out at the K’s, return home, Andi cooking dinner, a chance to walk the dog, talk to david and do some work, then more practice after a delicious baked pasta dinner. I’m a very lucky man.

Writing from my seat on the plane to DC at the end of a long MLK holiday weekend, there is so much to be thankful for. The first real snowfall of the year started Friday night and lasted most of the day Saturday. On Saturday morning, I ran 6 miles then helped Natalie change a flat tire. John D came over at noon and we watched the Wisconsin men deliver Michigan their first loss of the season and afterwards, I picked up Andi from Discount tire where patience had run out on the repair of the flat. The frayed nerves lasted into the evening, which was a bummer, but after getting about halfway through the Netflix series “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” Natalie and I had a good late night conversation in her room. In the morning, she and Andi took off to Birmingham for brunch with the Gorga gals, and I walked Bruno in the woods, making some fresh tracks in the powder of a clear cold bluebird day. After a trip to Planet Fitness, I picked up Natalie from home and we went errands shopping, discovering the new Easter eggs in the latest Tesla upgrade. Josh came over and stayed for dinner and with Natalie sleeping over at a friends house, Andi and I walked into the front patio to watch the eclipse of the moon right after midnight. It hung full and red in the sky, the light switched off on the snow momentarily and in the zero-degree cold, outer space felt very close. The moon has probably seen the sun disappear behind the earth so many times over millennia that it was just bored with the whole thing, a good reminder that the earth has time to adjust to whatever we’re doing to it now.

On Thursday, returning to the airport, I realized I’d left my suitcase at the hotel. They’re holding it for me. On Friday night we went to the company holiday party and the event staff took the bottle of pear brandy I’d brought as an advance for some of Adam’s peaches this fall. They held it for me though. Then yesterday, I dropped acid for the first time, and it was really terrible. With a new lease on life today, I read the paper, took the puppy for a walk in the woods (sunny!), organized my closet, worked out at the gym, got a pair of headphones at Music Go Round, took the christmas tree to the city pickup site, made dinner and figured out how to load samples onto my new spd-sx.

In the hotel where I stay for work, one or more people are usually outside smoking, and in the winter, some stay inside, smoking in the stairwells instead. This week I noticed the smell of cigarette smoke in my room and thought it must be coming through the vent in the bathroom. If a hotel trying to maintain a smoke-free situation offered its smokers a complimentary Juul as an alternative to cigarettes during their stay, would that be ethical?