§ Tuesday morning I flew into Milwaukee for a brief work trip. I was in the city for less than 24 hours so it wasn’t nearly enough time to form a complete picture of the place. I did thankfully get a chance to pop in to Public Market which is Milwaukee’s take on Cleveland’s West Side or Van Aken markets. I got a great bratwurst.
We spent one night there before taking a shuttle bus to Chicago. I was hit with instant, powerful nostalgia as soon as we started driving down streets filled with the quintessential Chicago-style bungalows that are ubiquitous outside of the city center.
For some reason Chicago still feels more like ‘home’ to me than Cleveland despite both growing up in Cleveland and, by now, spending a majority of my adult live there. Perhaps I spent a certain critical formative period in Chicago which left a particularly indelible impression on me?
§ Halloween was Friday. After getting increasingly disappointing numbers of trick-or-treaters at our house in recent years, Caroline and I finally decided to give up and instead take part in trick-or-treating at my in-laws house in their much more kid-centric neighborhood. Unfortunately, we may have brought the curse to them because this year, for the first time ever, they only had a handful of trick-or-treaters.
§ Yesterday it gradually became apparent that I’m coming down with a cold.
§ Daylight savings time ends today. As has become tradition, I’m once again using it as a chance to push my morning alarm earlier. Back in 2023 I stole 30 minutes, waking up at 5:30 instead of 6:00am. Last year I moved my alarm back another 15 minutes and have been waking up at 5:15 every day since.
Why do I do this? I guess because this one opportunity each year—moving the clocks black one hour—feels like the only chance you are granted “additional” time in the day. I realize this isn’t truly the case, but it is the feeling that matters.
So a couple of years ago when I first moved my alarm back thirty minutes it sort of felt like I was giving myself both an extra 30 minutes of sleep while also giving myself 30 more minutes to get ready in the morning. Magic.
Anyway once again I’ve moved my alarm back another 15 minutes, this time to 5:00am. I think this will have to be the end of the road for this particular tradition though. Something about voluntarily waking up in the 4am hour feels absurd to me.
