Broseph.

My broseph came to visit this weekend.  He lives in Colorado and makes infrequent appearances outside of the Denver metro area. He came to Virginia and Texas to see me graduate.  After seven and a half years in Chicago, my bro finally realized I would not be graduating from this location and booked a flight.  Actually, he went to visit our grandmother in Milwaukee for three days and then took the train down to Chicago for a day. 

I suspect my day or so with him has left him with the impression that my life is just non-stop fun and fancy.  To be clear, it is not . . . just the non-work part is.

We went to Theory for a snack.  I walked him over to  Millennium Park to see the Bean and the Fountains o' Faces.  We stopped to Garretts on our way back to the office for happy hour.  From there, we headed home to change and then walked down to dinner at LuxBar.  We ended the night with drinks at the new and improved Pump Room.  (Side note: so happy to have the new Pump Room in the neighborhood.  The space is lovely.  The drink prices are not unreasonable.  The servers are friendly.  All that and only three blocks from my house.  Love it.)

On Saturday, I may have broken him a bit.  We went to the gym where he survived 45 minutes of a strength and conditioning class before I treated him to a spa service, while I finished the class and went to spin.  We went to old faithful, Butch McGuire's, for lunch and then walked down Michigan Ave.  We didn't get all that far when he asked to head home.  His suburban feets just are not used to walking more than a couple blocks.  He sent me a text when he arrived home today saying that walking was painful.  Whoopsy.  So, we headed up to Milwaukee that afternoon, where we had dinner with our grandmother and aunt.

I don't think my brother and I have ever spent that much time together, just us, as adults.  And, we are very different people.  He said that he has all the nice genes and I have all the brains.  I don't agree with that statement but he is a very nice guy.  He believes the best of people to the point that he ignores the reality of the present in the hopes of how they will be in the future.  Despite how different we are, we generally get along very well.  That's probably true because we have long been set in our roles and those have not changed much in thirty years.

What has changed, most significantly from my perspective, is that my brother now cooks.  In my mind, my brother is the kid who made cinnamon pancakes so bad that our dog would not eat them.  Now, he identifies spices in foods and makes cheesecakes for fun while on vacation.  I still have not wrapped my mind around it even though I had no problem wrapping my fingers around my fork.