Chicago in Summer

"Chicago, Chicago!  It's someone's kind of town!"

After four days in airport Wyndham, I can safely say that outskirts Chicago is not my kind of town.  I was in town for RailsConf and got to meet a lot of friends without the pressure that comes when it's my conference we're at.  But the surroundings: cultural wasteland.  Best meal we had was a 20m drive away, fantastic Indian food, but it made Rael ill.  That's the best that can be said for the area around O'Hare, other than: avoid, avoid, avoid.

Now I'm in downtown-ish for YAPC.  That's a Perl conference.  It's been fun moving between Rails and Perl worlds, but now I get to catch up with a whole new group of friends.  I hadn't realized how long it'd been (2 years) since I'd seen them last.  The food has improved with proximity to the city centre: great ribs last night and tonight I'm going to try my luck with The Best Chicago Pizza.  Fingers crossed.

The longer the summer goes on, the less well I deal with being away from my family.  I miss my kids.  I miss my wife.  I miss having a hallway that has no ice machine and no throng of badge-wearing disciples babbling excitedly about multiRAID failover strategies for transparent application blah blah blahs.  I'm ready for a day by the pool, a day with a book, a day without the laptop.

I think that day will probably be in November.