Went to Chicago this weekend to see the Strategist, and some members of her posse who I met during my visit this summer.

Drinking did in fact ensue. On Friday, after some preliminary wine-drinking at her place, five of us headed to a local wine bar and I spent waaaaay too much on half of a surprisingly decent bottle of Merlot.

(Since I've gone drinking with the Strategist in the past without breaking the bank, I'm beginning to suspect that her boyfriend is a "cashalyst," one of those people who motivates everyone around him to spend a little more. Hamlinites: compare Kevin.)

It's been a month of unlikely events, and so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised to find myself ice-skating late Saturday afternoon. I was not awful, but clearly I'd become a bit rusty in the preceding ten years. One thing I will never understand is why girls never seem to get bored of all that endless going around in a circle.

The music was good though: did you know that good rollerskating music is also good ice-skating music? It was a rock lobster! And I saw the requisite burly black guy having trouble on ice skates, though he was not swearing and making proclamations about what black people were not meant to do.

Saturday night was more drinking, though with a movie and Arrested Development — the call-forwards make it very rewatchable — instead of all that going out. The Strategist's boyfriend was around for much of the weekend, but I was a third wheel only during dinner; I can't remember the name of the place, but it had its own brand of Bloody Mary mix and claimed to be "bodacious".

Good times and all. The weekend tended toward hanging out and talking with small groups of people, which I am of course OK with. My last visit, shoehorned in as it was with Adam's bachelor party, was a bit odd and awkward, and while there was oddness to this visit (e.g. Dan on skates, above) it was generally pretty good, to the point that the previous short visit, in retrospect, now feels like a sort of preview instead of an anomoly.