city life

i was awoken this morning by a small dog barking at my face and by two very cute children (dan's cousins) staring at me and asking dan "why isn't your friend waking up?"

after breakfast (DIRT cheap) at the camp and a shower in the camp bathroom (very much reminiscent of hostels), we took off for brunch at the seven seas restaurant in waukesha, wisconsin, for dan's graduation. lots of family that i didn't exactly meet, but the food was good and plentiful. they like to serve you meat for breakfast in wisconsin - pork ribs, ham, sausage, brats, bacon, AND baked chicken. miguel and i spent a lot of time discussing my ineptitude with money and how i should have (apparently) refinanced my student loan sometime in june. good to know.

we spent the rest of the day at dan's aunt's house, chatting and reading harry potter. we were in large part stalling for orges to arrive in chicago, which he did today in the late afternoon. after finally getting ahold of him we agreed to meet at harry caray's at 9, where we had a late pseudo-dinner and some beers (for some reason mine was larger than everyone else's, which i don't understand). the waiter asked me if i was going to eliminate one of the three men i was on a pseudo date with. too bad we had no tv cameras. i liked that joke. afterwards we walked through chicago. it's still weird to think that orges is LIVING there now. to think that every day you could wake up and walk to work or to lunch or shopping through giant skyscrapers. that's still weird for me. i definitely have to live in a city sometime, just to avoid being overly provincial. orges is calm as a cucumber about moving to one of the biggest cities in the us, and i'm still one of those people who looks up at all the buildings while i walk through the place.

we had another drink at some "irish pub" which really became a lot more irish when last call turned out to be at 11pm and we left by 11:15 to walk around some more. we didn't really have anything to do, but we wanted to hang out with orges. it was good to see him, no matter how much extra driving we did to get there. it was also kind of surreal (surreal, but nice) because of the fact that he is now LIVING there. indefinitely. the way i'm living in palo alto, but like i said, in a place where you walk through a forest of skyscrapers to get to work.

the drive back to madison was peaceful, partly because i slept through it. tomorrow, it's all about the long push to south dakota... the life of a road tripper.