The past week has been spent helping out the company I used to work for. That meant getting some new application environments up and running, debugging issues, re-learning the lay of the land, and so on.

Things have been going fine and we’ve been getting a lot done, but every night I come home exhausted. It’s a good reminder as to why I left corporate America in the first place. As Evelyn says, it’s a succubus, draining the life out of you.

We’ll be up in Chicago for another couple of days, then down to Arkansas for a bit, and then hopefully arriving back in Austin about mid-month. I can’t wait to get away from the overly-stressed madness that is Chicago (or any big city). I’m really starting to believe that the long winters take a serious mental toll on people.

On the bright side, we’ve been able to meet with family and friends. Today we took my Mom & Dad down to Starved Rock State Park. We were able to have a pleasant day away from the city. Evelyn, as always, took a bunch of pictures.

Speaking of pictures, she also snapped some good ones of Chicago’s 17 year cicadas. While you don’t hear them at my brothers house, they are all over my parents area (less than 5 miles away). Plus, there are tons of sea gulls there eating them. It’s like a scene out of The Birds. More picture in our Photo section.

The cicadas are really loud. You get a bunch of them making that typical cicada “buzzing” sound, but you also have a really weird droning noise. It sounds almost exactly like the sound of a Star Trek phaser. Imagine that sound being made all day long. You almost can’t work outside it’s so loud and annoying. I need to figure out a way to get a recording of it.

It’s very interesting how they are very prevalent in some places, but not others. My theory is that it has everything to do with the age of the neighborhood. My brothers live in places that were built in the 1950′s. Very likely the construction of the area dug up a lot of the larvae. Whereas my parents house is around 100 years old, with very old trees and very large yards. I’ll have to check on some of the cicada Google Maps and see if my theory holds.

Enough for now. I’ll try to write more later this week.