Friends and Family

My sister, the high-powered business woman, came and went last week, and a good time was had by all. Although she's more of a Naperville kind of person, I think she appreciated the kind of urban lifestyle that Oak Park has to offer.

While at dinner we caught up with the goings on of her life. The funniest story she told us involved her daughter (who is not yet in high school). My niece apparently wanted a fairly pricey swimsuit (she swims competitively), but my sister was balking at the cost. So what did my intrepid niece do? To convince her mom, she had to think like her mom: She wrote a detailed business plan including a cost/benefit analysis demonstrating why the purchase, albeit initially expensive, would make financial sense in the long run. To make a long story short, it involved faster swim times resulting in more victories resulting in big athletic scholarship to college. If you figure a $150 swimsuit potentially leads to a free ride at Harvard, its a pretty good deal. Aside from this specific example, I think its a great idea to have kids learn how to make and present to others these kinds of decisions. Definitely a useful skill to have for the future. I'll have to remember this in the future for my own kids.

On an unrelated note, Kelly and I were down in Hyde Park last week to visit some friends of ours. Ann and Evan moved from Boston about a month before we did to start medical school at the University of Chicago, my alma mater. We had been meaning to meet up with them since we'd moved here, and they were also being visited by Shawn and Diane, also from Boston. It was a nice little Boston reunion.


We went to Java Jive and danced a bit, but gave up after a while due to the heat and humidity. We went back to their air-conditioned apartment and admired the furniture and shelving that Evan had built. Kelly tried to persuade Evan into building us some furniture, without much success.

-Brian