…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.”