…I’ll find everything I need.

My parents arrived in town on Friday morning, so the next couple of weeks will be wonderfully full of family. We’re going to get to know the city together and I can’t wait. Chicago in the summer is all kinds of fabulous; it’s absolutely thronged with tourists and convention-goers, festivals of one kind or another are going on on every corner, and never do the buildings seem taller or shinier or more overwhelming than when the weather is warm.

On Saturday evening we had a picnic dinner on the lawn of the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park while Orchestra Baobab played a gorgeous set under the clouds and the open blue sky. The lawn is large enough to seat thousands in comfortable proximity, and because of the astonishingly good acoustics, no matter where you sit it’s as though you’re listening to the performance from the middle of a concert hall. It’s true that the city generally seems to ignore places where its money needs to go, but as far as I’m concerned the Pritzker was two billion dollars well spent, Chicago.

I did miss Jenn and Ben especially last night—I wished so much you were both there to dance with me. Ross suffered me dragging him to his feet very amiably, though. Yay.

This morning we had an extremely spicy (and delicious) lunch in Chinatown, and then my folks went back to the hotel to recover from their jet lag and Ross and I came home to recover from our sleepiness of unknown origin. Right now the air is incredibly cool, the floors are incredibly clean (Hello, mop. It’s been a while since we’ve danced), and chai is brewing on the stove.

AND. On the way back from the store where we were picking up milk for the chai, we saw FIREFLIES (we’d already seen a bunny on the way there). Sarah, I wanted to jump in the air and call you to tell you that they live here too! Neon green and amazing, they were, and they made us even more glad we made this big, brash, beautiful place our home.

It pretty much wiped us out.

I’m really sorry I haven’t had much to report here lately, but that’s because I’m entering my summer slowdown; it happens every year, as you know, when body and brain start to ease into the languid pace of warmer weather and thoughts run slow like simple syrup. I’ll get over it (maybe) and post more (hopefully) and you’ll forgive me (definitely?).

The Wordpress upgrade was absurdly simple and easy, because my customized theme worked right off the bat with no tweaking required on Ross’s part. Despite not having earned it, we ordered a large pizza anyway. We will be eating it until tomorrow.

Thanks to one of my current assignments, I am learning more than I ever thought I would know about various world leaders; given my almost complete lack of interest in the political life of the universe, this probably means I am approaching the level of general knowledge that everyone else takes for granted.

Summer is short. So also summer blog posts.

…is pretty hellish for people who dislike crowds in general, and screaming crowds of children in particular. I really ought to have realized that; it was the same when we went to the free day at the Field Museum a few months ago (winter is just as bad as summer, come to think of it). Oh, well. We got to see Michelle Kaufman’s gorgeous Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit in relative peace, since they limit the tours of the house (which induced in us a never-before-felt urge to buy shiny property) to 20 people. That was yesterday. Also yesterday, the baking of the second iteration of the banana-chocolate bread we made last month, and the watching of Miller’s Crossing. I can’t tell you how much I love that loaf pan. Well, maybe I can: slightly more than I love Gabriel Byrne.

Today was gloriously quiet. I worked. I went out in the afternoon to take a break on the swings and ended up next to a frickin’ cute little boy being pushed by his mom; I glided slowly so as not to shake the swing frame too much, and it was probably the most relaxing thing I have done in weeks.

I have done many, many relaxing things in the past few weeks, including drinking six glasses of wine while sitting on grass listening to an orchestra and chatting with a bunch of friendly folks. So I know from relaxing.

In a minute we’re going to have more banana-chocolate bread, and tomorrow we have a Wordpress upgrade scheduled that may cause Distances Between Ports to go down for a while, but to make up for how complicated it may be—we’ve skipped a couple of upgrades, so it might be kind of tricky to convert all my incredibly stylish touches to the new platform—we’ve promised ourselves some deep dish pizza and soda. So if you do come by and notice that my blog has disappeared, just imagine that there is a post on it that says, “Upgrading Wordpress. Very full.”

Did I already tell you the aroma of chocolate in downtown Chicago is very, very real? Ross and I have smelled it many times now, walking under and amidst the towering buildings of the Loop.

Today I noticed that there was a scent wafting out of some of the buildings—including the one pictured below—opposite the hospitals on the University of Chicago campus that was reminiscent of nothing so much as coconut sticky rice. This city must like being perfumed with dessert.

Unfortunately, the rain we’ve had lately seems to have caused some amount of sewer backup in Hyde Park, so not every walk I take these days is that fragrant.

I drink in the summer, drink down Surly Benders, drink up sour Madhur-Jaffrey chana masala gravy (thank you, Sarah!), drink from the well of science. And still I am thirsty for more.