Home again Monday

We arrived back at home tonight after spending a long weekend with my family in Chicago. We were there courtesy of my parents, who gathered us all to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and of my brother and his girlfriend, who live there and are always kind enough to open their home to us and show us a great time in their big city.

I never find the time to post while we are there because without fail our time is packed with fun activities, good company, and delicious food. This weekend, it was a matter of grilling on the rooftop while an orange evening sun lit up our city view, of sipping wine at a sidewalk wine bar, of Italian, and sushi, and when we weren't eating we were at the Brookfield Zoo or the Field Museum, and today we even made sure Calvin had his chance to ride the El before we headed for home.

We spent Saturday at the Brookfield Zoo, which is a beautiful zoo in the suburbs. Lots of room to move, for both animals and observers, and a few more exotic species that i have seen only rarely in the zoo setting, like Mexican Gray Wolves, and the Okapi, which happens to be one of my favorite animals, thus it gave me great joy to be able to share him with my son and my family. Sloth bears are pretty cool, too, and they had unique and enjoyable desert and rainforest buildings with even more animals I haven't seen since I studied their skins and skeletons back in my college days (and they are oh so much more fun alive). We ate bison burgers outside the bison enclosure, and Calvin played with a seal through the glass of her underwater exhibit. We spent hours there under a warm sun and blue sky and came home deliciously exhausted.

Slide Show—hover over the sides of the photo to reveal slide show controls, then click through to see the pictures from the Brookfield Zoo. Vertical pictures don't render properly yet (this is a new feature from Squarespace), so click here if you want to see the photos in the Chicago 2011 gallery.

Sunday we spent at the Field Museum. The hours we spent there are another example of how much Calvin has grown. The last time we were here he was not quite two yet; he sat in a stroller for what ended up being a disappointingly brief dash through the museum while we balanced our own interest with his toddler sized patience. This time around he walked the museum for almost six hours, and while his attention wasn't rapt for the entire time, he had enough pre-seeded information to give him at least some interest in every exhibit, from the taxidermy section, to the walk of Evolution, to Ancient Egypt, and finally to the Native Americas. To do it right, of course, we would have to spend several days there, visiting just one exhibit per day, and preferably over time. I guess that means we will have to visit each time we start to explore and study any of the subjects for which they have a permanent exhibit.

Slide Show—hover over the edges of the photo to reveal slide show controls, then click through to see the pictures from the Field Museum. Vertical pictures don't render properly yet (this is a new feature), so click here if you want to see the photos in the Chicago 2011 gallery.

And our quieter moments were good, too; Oregon Trail on the iPad, grilling on the roof in delightful weather, celebrating 40 years and the family they created with toasts and dinner.

Wine before dinner, celebrating 40 years and the family they created

Sushi on Sunday, learning to use the chopsticks

coloring with Uncle curtis

Riding the El...in the front car nonetheless

And now we're home and attempting to get back into the swing of things. If we're lucky we'll actually get there some day, or maybe the point is avoid that kind of mundane existence after all.

Into our vacation a little rain falls

From our retreat in Northern Michigan I've been watching the heat wave hit the southern half of our lower peninsula. Every time I visit my home weather bookmark online I am bombarded with bright red and orange warnings: "heat advisory," "air quality alert," "excessive heat watch." I'm not sure how all these are different, but they make me even more thankful to be on vacation, a trip that was planned when the temperatures at home were still in the 80s, the kind of days we are enjoying here now.

Blue skies, intermittent clouds, a soft breeze to cool our warm days, I wish I could share them with the friends, family, and pets we left at home. And the rain we got today—sweeping in with showers and sprinkles, sending us to town to enjoy books stores and adventure golf before sweeping back out again in the evening—that rain would have been appreciated at our house, too. We didn't mind it here either, though. It gave us a break from the sun, a chance to play golf, some reading time at the house, naps, daydreams. These are the traditions from my own childhood vacations in this area, and we're soaking up as much of this relax time as possible.

For more information:

Petoskey (Chamber of Commerce)

Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf

Vacation edition, take 2

for more information: Harbor Springs (Chamber of Commerce)

Rolling Sculptures Auto Show

It's that time of year again. Jon and I have been feeling a little out of sorts; besides the strange weather throwing things off, we are missing out on three summer staples this year—Top of the Park, The Townie Party, and the first day of Art Fair—and that leaves a big hole in the middle of our season. There are still other events to be had, of course—we'll be catching a Friday Nights in Dexter one of these days, and last night was the Rolling Sculptures Auto Show in Ann Arbor.

It was warm, but not a bad night to be downtown. Calvin had asked for a redo of the scavenger hunt we took to the NAI Auto Show in January so we worked that out together and he looked for things like pink cars, glittery cars, a variety of engine make-ups, and even a rumble seat. I was disappointed that the old fire truck was not there this year (someone else is missing their summer staples, I see) but the fairy car was there to serve as an alternative fueled vehicle (because nothing is a more alternative fuel than Vernors).

We enjoyed shakes at Frita Batidos, and later had dinner at Grizzly Peak—some old stomping grounds and some new. We went with Gram and Grampa, we ran into some friends, and we got a call from Jon, who had been in New York for two days, saying that he'd been put on a different flight and would be home before bedtime, and that equals a good day.

The future is electric!

Austin-Healey, the happy car

Being the car...

Isetta, the other happy car

Discussing the oddities of the Isetta

Smart selling, at my favorite book store

Broccoli and cauliflower

I don't trust the weather forecast anymore. I feel that in previous years it was more reliable than it has been this year, but in May they kept promised respites from rain, and now that July has arrived (and even in June) they keep promising rain that fails to materialize. Thanks to sprinklers, and copious amounts of time spent positioning hoses and timing waterings, our gardens are looking pretty spry, but corporate lawns along the outer urban road lines are looking pretty dead these days. In fact, it looks a lot like August around here.

And rain or no, we took the opportunity of previously promised rain to hide indoors from the heat (making little sense since don't use air conditioning) to play games and read books.

It was hot.

Speaking of gardens, Calvin and I learned something today. A month ago we planted our square foot garden plots with tomatoes, chart, kohlrabi, beans, egg plant, peppers, onions, and cauliflower and broccoli. Since then we've harvested the chard several times, and waited patiently for the rest of the plants to grow and mature to the harvesting point. I've never grown broccoli or cauliflower before, but I know what it looks like in the store and the little heads of white and green that sprouted weeks ago were like miniatures of the real thing, so we thought the thing to do was to let them grow. Since then we've watched them grow, and grow, and grow, and for some reason it wasn't until today, as I harvesting chard for dinner yet again, that I decided that, from their current state, they could never grow the heads we are so used to seeing at the market. By this time they were tall and gangly...and flowering. For shame. It took only a very brief internet search to realize where I'd gone wrong—harvest the baby broccoli head and next week you'll get more of them, eventually leading to a full, market worthy, head of broccoli. No one told me.

I wonder how many things in life we fail to research and thus let pass us by. I remember reading once that intelligence isn't so much how much or what you do know as the state of recognizing how much you don't know. Calvin laughed with me at over error, and I cursed myself for not taking the time to look into the art of growing cruciferous vegetables. And because I couldn't let the flowers go to waste, and because they had a sort of rustic charm to them, we made bouquets of cauliflower and broccoli flowers and took one to my mother when we stopped by to share dinner. I'm not sure she was amused, but any gift from a grandson is enviable.