back in chicago i am. it feels good. sometimes it's hard because it's like no matter where i go, it never quite feels like home. i never quite have that feeling of THIS-is-where-i-belongness. i would assume that this is mostly due to the fact that i drive around so much and in the summer only tend to stay in places for a few days at a time, so there's never time to get settled in. i think the day when my car is completely empty is when i'll know that i'm home. i keep everything in my car. so many of you can attest to this. all you have to do is look in my backseat to know that i am a slob, a packrat, and a perpetual traveler. but maybe there will come a day in the not so far future when my car will be empty. that means that i have a home to go back to because all my stuff is there.

it was so good to see helen and ara again. i've missed them both muchly. the three of us went to yerkes observatory in wisconsin on tuesday night to go see mars, which i was promised from the new tom green show to be huge. like as big as the moon. i must say now that mars disappointed me. i mean, the experience of going to the observatory and gathering with a hundred other people who wanted a closer look at mars was fun. and just the fact that there were no bright lights around the observatory made looking at the rest of the cosmos much more exciting than in a chicago backyard. but mars itself was, well, blah. we looked through several powerful telescopes at the red planet and all i saw was a whitish circle. looked like a star or... um... a two-dimensional white circle. the hubbel telescope got some excellent pictures of mars i hear, but our view was sort of ho-hum. that's okay. it was a good time.

stuff with ara is... better. not nearly as awkward as when i was gone. course, it's only been two days and we have not talked about family stuff yet, but i have wanted to wait on that anyways, just to give us some time where we need not worry about it. we'll see.

helen and i are moving in to our fantastic apartment in t minus we-don't-exactly-know days. hot dang it needs to be soon, though. that's right.