In Chicago for a 3 hour layover. I’ll land in Socal by noon PST, so while it’ll be a long day at least I’ll get there with some daylight left.

This visit to my adopted city of Louisville was…interesting. Eventful. Saw some old friends and family, spent time with the grandsons, ate some great meals. All that is normal. A few things that weren’t normal:

• Spent a weekend at a writer’s conference. Enjoyed it a lot; accomplished most of what I wanted. Now I have to just carve out time to write.
• Went to a funeral visitation. At my age that is likely to become a more common occurrence.
• Shared the Louisville house with family. Loved seeing them, but having a couple of extra people around highlighted the need to furnish the upstairs so we have two full areas where a person can stretch out and relax. One of the reasons we bought the place was to be able to host visitors there, and with the upstairs empty that’s not practical. So off to the furniture shops on the next trip.
• Spent a lot of time dealing with my Dad’s progressive illness and lack of care. We’ve got the MDs now focused on him and taking some action. We’ll see where that leads.
• Spent about double what I’m used to spending for a rental car over the two week period. Rental cars have gotten *expensive*. That may change my calculus on keeping a car there versus renting.
• Played a round of golf with a new set of senior-flex graphite clubs. Didn’t like ’em much. At least they were cheap.

So…interesting couple of weeks. The best meal of the trip was a tie between the bison burger at Brix and the shrimp and grits breakfast at Big Bad Breakfast. Best new food item was the olive bread from Blue Dog – my brother Mark discovered that, and it’s spectacular. Man could actually live by bread alone, if it were that bread.

The schedule for my next visit is up in the air – a lot depends on findings from Dad’s next couple of MD visits. Hope for the best, plan for the worst – that’s my typical approach.