Top books about Chicago
This time of year, it’s easy to forget that there’s anything I like about living in Chicago. I mean, I love scraping off my car and bundling up to my ears as I race from home to auto to work with as little exposure to the pulverizing effects of Chicago’s January winds, but…
Here’s a cool list that reminds me that this adopted home of mine actually isn’t all bad (from TimeOut Chicago, which did a profile on me last year):
Top books about Chicago that aren’t Devil in the White City – http://bit.ly/6VmKPe
Moving to Hyde Park
Three years ago, my (now) wife and I got engaged and almost immediately afterward both decided to dump freelance music in favor of other career paths. I opted for music education (a transition well-documented here on the blog) and, after a few years spent slogging my way through a handful of undergrad courses, now find myself as an orchestra teacher in suburban Chicago. Better pay, better hours, and both more fun and more satisfying than my previous “career” (though I’d never have believed that would be the case a decade ago).
My wife, on the other hand, opted for a much more radical career change: from harp performance to pre-med. Like me, she also had bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music, but she went back to school at Northwestern, balancing teaching harp, playing gigs, volunteering at hospitals all over Chicagoland, and working in a research lab with courses like (gulp!) organic chemistry.
How’d it work out? Well, after getting a great MCAT score and getting invited for interviews at prestigious medical schools all over the country, she has started to get a bunch of acceptance letters. The first acceptance to come in was, in fact, our #1 pick: the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine!
I’m pumped for this for so many reasons. For starters, this is one of the top med schools in the country, and it is the place that most resonated with her throughout this interview season. Also, though I won’t mention the exact deal she’s being offered, let’s just say that they’ve put an outstanding package in front of her. Most people going through this process would kill even for an interview from this school (it was the third most selective med school last year, and they’ve cut their class size for this coming year, meaning even fewer available spots), and if they knew the deal she was getting they’d probably faint.
So we’re moving to Hyde Park–Obama’s neighborhood (OK–he’s technically in Kenwood just to the north, but that’s splitting hairs), the home of one of America’s most acclaimed academic institutions, next to Lake Michigan and the Museum of Science and Industry. Will we miss Evanston? Sure…but life keeps moving forward, and We’re both really excited for this change.
Triple Fire Plug: Airline Travel with Your Bass
Here’s a good post featuring some common sense tips for flying with a bass, which is a task about as fun as pulling out your toenails with pliers:
Triple Fire Plug: Airline Travel with Your Bass
Vacation time
I’ll be heading off for a much-anticipated vacation these next few weeks. My wife and I are headed out to South Dakota, first to visit my folks and then heading out to Hot Springs in the southern Black Hills, and finally heading down to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’ve done this trip pretty much every summer for the past few years, and it is definitely one of the highlights of the year for me.
Along with this physical vacation comes a vacation from blogging. Thanks to the magic of WordPress, you’ll be seeing daily posts here on the blog as well as podcasts on the weekend, but I will only check in every few days (if at all) to moderate comments, respond to email, and the like. I’ll get back to blogging the second week of August, so I hope you all have a good few weeks and enjoy the content I’ve got coming out on the blog during my travels!
I’ve got a thing for spring
The month of May has to be, hands down, one of my favorite times of the year. Every day, as I go on my run along the shore of Lake Michigan, I see boats returning to the harbor after a long absence during the brutal months of Chicago’s winter; tulips are in full bloom everywhere I look; people are actually out in the the lakefront’s recreational areas, giving me some company during what had only a few weeks earlier, been a lonely run in the punishing wind, rain, and snow.
Though I frequently yearn for a warmer climate, having spent my entire life living either here in northern Illinois or in (gasp!) South Dakota, a place that makes Chicago look like Miami, weather-wise, I do enjoy watching this city come back to life each spring. When you only get a few months of decent weather each year, you probably appreciate them more that you might otherwise, and for me May marks a real change in my attitude about this city. All of a sudden, I forget about standing knee-deep in snow, scraping ice off my windshield and digging my car out of a plowed-in snowbank, dreading my treacherously slippery commute and praying that I don’t wreck my car and bass on my dangerous journey out to my gig.
I remember sitting on a bench down at the University of Chicago at this time last year, waxing poetic on how much I love blogging outside, and I also remember blogging out on the beach (undoubtedly looking like a crazy person, or at least someone who’s got his priorities seriously out of whack) up in Door County several times last summer. For me, this time of year is an opportunity to slow down, kick back and relax, and take stock of how things are going in life for me. Summer is when I decided to really start developing this blog; it’s also when I decided to return to school.
Summer is also cat-walking season for me, and I think that some more videos of cats in action in north Evanston are long overdue. I’m also looking forward to heading up to Door County again for some chamber music, and I can’t wait for the International Society of Bassists convention in June, of course–hope to see you there!
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