"It's Been a Long, Long Time"

I'm a city girl -- a prissy city girl who doesn't do camping or tents or hikes or any of that other outdoorsy stuff. I was born and raised in New York City ... Honey, I want things to do and people to watch and street food and all the other fabulous things that the big ol' metropolis offers!

I truly love Ann Arbor, and have lived here for most of the past ... ahem (God, it makes me sound old!) ... 29 years since I first came here as a freshman at the University of Michigan. While it offers the warmth and familiarity of a small town, it also offers many of the cultural and intellectual amenities of a large city. But every so often, I still need a fix of skyscrapers and bustling and novelty and everything else a huge city has to offer.

So Jeremy and I have scheduled a trip in honor of his graduation and because I deserve a vacation, as Jeremy puts it, "more than anyone else I know." Can I get an "Amen"???

We're going to take the train to Chicago, to eat ourselves silly and then walk off the calories as we schlep up and down Michigan Avenue and peruse the Art Institute and The Bean and all sorts of other amusements and entertainments. The weather is supposed to be cruddy, but whaddya gonna do??? I went to Chicago just for a day with my exceptionally good friend Wendy last year, but Jeremy and I haven't been there (or anywhere) on a vacation trip in several years ... a long, long time.

Of course, there will also be the mandatory trip to Intelligentsia Coffee for my morning fix and for goodies to bring home! Life is not complete without coffee, and this is some of the best stuff there is ... :)

So on this Music Monday, I offer the following song. It's not the same one I'd originally planned, which was Barry Manilow's "New York City Rhythm" along with a notation to change the lyrics to "Windy City Rhythm." I had picked that one at first because it begins with the line "When my heart is torn apart by love I wish I had, then I spend my nights in the city's lights and things don't seem so bad."

But then, there was the weekend ... and a loooong talk ... and lunch yesterday, followed by an afternoon in the park, followed by iced tea (vs. the hot tea we drank at Sweetwater's on our first date) ... and most unexpectedly, completely out of the blue, my heart has been happified ... :)