"The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world."

I crammed a lot into the past week – I think I’m secretly hoping to be so exhausted for the excessively long plane journeys ahead that I just conk out. (More on that later.) Back on Saturday night, we celebrated Nolan’s birthday for what I counted as the third time, but admittedly it was a significant birthday and he is a significant individual.

The next afternoon, I was lucky enough to get invited along to a pub crawl hosted by the League of Chicago Theatres. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “oi, Dominic, you don’t work in the theatre. Why are you crashing their events?” To which I would reply, defensively, that I was invited – and more effusively, that Chicago’s theatre folk turn out to be an extraordinarily lovely bunch. I mean, no offence to – say – lawyers, but I have trouble imagining the League of Chicago Lawyers’s pub crawl would be anywhere near as fun, or culminate in such good cabaret either.

I’m not senior enough for a black jacket, yet

This week included a free screening of The Blind Side in the park after work with Suzanne and co. Now, if we’re being honest, we should acknowledge that this is not a good film. I mean, if we were really being serious we’d say it was a patronising white saviour narrative – but let’s just settle for it being overflowing to the brim with cheesy American schmaltz.

All true, but there was also fair amount of wine, a generous spread of picnic food and excellent company. And I learnt a teeny tiny bit more about American football. So.

Sunset from the lake

The next evening, Lauri invited me to come sailing with her friends on Lake Michigan. I’m not great with boats – it’s the same kind of headachey problem as the banana variety – but I must say it was worth it to see the sun set over the city, and watch the beautiful red harvest moon rise over the lake. I may have to wait another year for peak summer temperatures again, but I really would like to try swimming there too.

And then tonight I made excellent use of my free pair of Theatre Thursday tickets (acquired at some point during Sunday’s drinking) to go see a musical version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. I thought it did impressive justice to a memorably creepy book, and (icing on the cake) it was nice to spend a night listening to British accents use words like ‘flat’ and ‘telly’ for an hour or two. (We had a tasty Indian meal beforehand, actually, so it was quite the Dominic-friendly night.)

Tomorrow I am going to a baseball field again to actually watch baseball: White Sox vs. Blue Jays, if you’re interested. Todd has instructed me to cheer for the latter, which I’m more than happy to do. Especially as they are Canadian. And then I should probably pack or sleep or something, because I have a 6am flight to Kuala Lumpur the next morning. Yup, I’m going to Malaysia! For work, for two weeks, which is just as well given the flight takes approximately six thousand years. It’s just you and me now, Kindle.

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