Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Yay! Spring! I'm a big fan of Spring!!!

Back from Chicago. I was tempted to pretend I took that picture of the Chicago Skyline up there, but I didn't... Instead, like a noob, I snapped a couple pics from the back seat of the rental car as we passed by the city, but the pics I took are all pure weak sauce...

See? Sad.... so I grabbed that first snap up there off the internet somewhere...

All things considered, the weather wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. We hit those three good (snowless) days in a row, as I'd hoped. Got to see my brother Johnny graduate boot camp...

See those little white hats in the background, by the door? One of those is on Johnny's head.

Here I am, with my freshly-graduated brother. I kept wanting to sing, "Anchor's Aweigh"...

Don't you just love a guy in uniform? Here's Johnny and his mother.... who happens to be my mother as well!

And this was my hair when I woke up Friday morning.... I saw my reflection and said, "I have to snap a pic of this..." Yeah, someone needs a haircut. It will have to wait until my wife likes me again... she cuts my hair... I don't want her near me with scissors when she's angry at me...

So it was great to see Johnny. He lost 15 pounds during training, because he said they weren't fed very well, and didn't sleep much. But he's looking forward to putting the muscle weight back on. In fact, he said something inspirational about it, I wish I could remember the exact wording... it was something along the lines of "the joy is in the journey", or something like that. He's looking forward to the process of getting back into the shape he wants. It made me think differently about this gut I'm wrestling with...

Speaking of eating too much, we got to go to a great Italian restaurant and have real Chicago-style deep dish pizza after the graduation. It was very good. I took a photo of the restaurant with my sister's camera, but forgot to get the pic from her to post here. Anyway, very good.

I also went to see a terrific movie with my stepdad while there. A movie called Dead Man Down, with Colin Farrell in the lead. It was much, much better than I had anticipated. Great shot choices, solid main storyline and several solid sub-plots, some great dialog. A smart action movie, I thought. I admit, when I saw the WWE logo at the beginning of the movie, I lost hope that it would be a decent film... usually their films always have a wrestler (or more) in the cast. This one did not. It had a terrific cast, and I recommend it.  It's getting very little love from the critics, but don't let that sway you. I thought it was very good.

But I'm glad to be home. The last day was quite long. We got to the airport *really* early (like 4+ hours), and then the plane got off late. And it's a 4+ hour flight, so yeah, that last day was long, but worth it to see my bro.  He's off to Pensacola FL now, for five months of additional training, then he's going to deploy somewhere. I'd like to go back to Chicago at some point, and check out the city. I found the city to be imposing and intimidating, for some reason... like it glowered at us as we drove past it or something... anyway, lots of history there. I'd like to go back and explore it a bit more, in the future.

I did get to read a couple books while on the trip... I think I'll make a new post with reviews of each, instead of tacking it onto this post...

I guess that's that for now. Adios.

Dave the World Traveler