Hey, I have a blog!

Somewhere around November of this year, our lives kicked into overdrive.

Chalk it up to our international travels...

Or maybe our domestic ones...

And craziness at work for me...

And Mason...

(No, he's not a mason.  Ok, he IS a Mason but not a Freemason.)

And what you're left with is a woefully under updated blog.

And, if I'm really honest, it's been an emotionally, spiritually and physically exhausting few months, with lots of internal processing, thinking, wrestling (figurative, mostly) and trying to understand the realities of the things I face every day at work.

But I'm back.  I can't promise much more than a few posts a month, and I don't even know if anyone is still around to read this thing.  But more posts are to come, many reflecting on incarceration, poverty, funny stories and other lighthearted moments.  

Because seriously, if you can't laugh, you might go crazy.

We've Arrived

As of 2 pm on Monday, August 31st, we officially became Hyde Park Heroes.

The trip was incredibly smooth and easy (minus a little mishap in which the rental truck keys were locked in the rental truck as it was running. Thankfully my aunt has AAA!), and we only got lost once. Unfortunately for us, it was in Gary, Indiana. Not the brightest spot in the area.

I'll write more later, including a fun game of "Guess the State" from a selection of pictures taken on the journey. But for now I'll leave you with this: we love our new apartment, we love our new little neighborhood, and Mason almost sort of loves math camp. No, seriously. And avocados at the local produce store cost 69 cents each. YES I SAID 69 CENTS. And a red pepper? Oh, it's only $1.50 a POUND. A POUND!!!! That's practically free.

Stay tuned. More to come later today or tomorrow.

And so it begins...

Ok, I'll admit it. I've always felt a little remorse over deleting my blog back in 2007. I know, I know, blogs are narcissistic and ridiculously trivial. But....!

There's something about sharing your thoughts and opinions on life with friends and family all over the world that makes you feel more connected, more insightful, more witty and more intelligent. I mean, blogging is the 21st century version of 18th century letter writing! I bet Abigail Adams would have had a blog, for instance ("I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic. On his blog.") and I'm certain that Thomas Jefferson would have had two or three (I'll leave it to your imagination as to what HE would have written about...).

Narcissism aside, it seems like our big adventure to become Hyde Park Heroes (ie, M to get his MPP at the University of Chicago and E to get a job) is the perfect time to pick up blogging again. And so here, reader, you'll find the following things:

1. Insights on leaving Washington, DC.
2. Plans, expectations and real-life adventures for, and in, Chicago.
3. Other cool things I come across like recipes, random pictures of me with famous people (read: Oprah) and such.
4. Let's be honest, mostly me talking about random things.

And so I give you Hyde Park Heroes. Check it frequently, read it often, and post only when you have glowing things to say about the author. I'm kidding. Sort of.