Back in the Mini Apple

9 years ago, we, Martha and I, moved back to Chicago after living in Minneapolis for 5 years. For the past week, we've been back in the land of 10,000 treatment centers, staying with friends. We came with a purpose, to mourn the loss of a good friend. After that, we decided to stay an open ended amount of time to try and reconnect with old friends and enjoy a mini vacation. This has been bitter sweet for us. On one hand it was very difficult to walk into a funeral home and church the next day to say goodbye to a close friend. Having to see people you love hurting and knowing you sill never see some of them again is an excruciating thing. On the other hand, reconnecting with people you love and feel loved by is a very special thing that can be a great by product of death.

On the one foot, the grass is always greener and by spending a week, you really mostly experience the good and not the reality of living someplace else. We loved living in Twin Town for a while but by the time we left, we were badly missing Chicago and felt awful about missing our nieces and nephews growing up. 5 years makes a big difference when their whole life is made up of just 10.

On the other foot, there is a lot of bad mojo for us in the city of big pizza. We seem to have a love hate relationship with our families - we love 'em, they hate us (passive/aggressively). We also don't have many friends there anymore. In the granola apple we have very close friends that are a real support system for Martha and not being around it makes life very challenging. Close friends are hard to come by and after being so isolated by our store for so long we really feel behind the eight ball. Most of our closest friends appear to be in other cities; Minniappolis, Cleveland, Miami, Annapolis and the rest.

I guess something needs to be done and moving is not the answer (even though Martha always thinks it is). I think we need to re-invent ourselves again and figure out how to see the people who loves us more and to find a way to get real friends right where we are. I'm no help in this area since I don't think most people actually like me. I'm more tolerated than liked and that makes finding friends as a couple a real feat.

On the phantom limb, boy I sound like a whiny puke in this post, don't I?

My name is Mark, I'm here to rescue you...

My ubergeek friend came over this weekend and fixed my LAN for the price of 3 Mexican Cokes. Mark is the best. Now, I am not a slouch when it comes to fixing things. In fact, I'm usually the go to guy when friends are having issues with their electronics and computers. But when I have a problem, it's always a doozy and Mark is my guy. Thanks to the fine folks at Comcast, my network was down for over a month. I tried everything I could think of, and then some, but nothing fixed my issues. Mark comes over Saturday and within 10 minutes, I'm back in business. He then spent the day updating my software, reconfiguring things and generally making me feel that my patchwork mess of computers and various other hardware is usable and that I''m not so dumb. What a guy. That's all this blog post is, a pat on the back to Mark. Thanks Mark. You're the best.

Enjoy your Mexican Coke in the bottle.