Brr

Okay, it's not that cold. I'm still running around without a coat, here...

I get off the plane this morning in Chicago and walked outside into 41-degree weather. Thanks, guys. I'm guessing you ordered that up special, what with me coming into town and all. Fortunately for me and my lack of real cold-weather anything in my luggage, this is more or less an extended layover.

Currently? 84 degrees in Honolulu.

As is typical when I'm here on a Sunday, I met up with my old knitting crew today. I am consistently struck by how familiar that group is, including the people that have joined since I left. I can plop down in that Panera, pull out my needles, and it's like I come every week. For all the irritating moments and bad credit that came out of working (for yarn - hence, bad credit. Funny, my loan company wouldn't accept that in payment...) at the yarn shop, there were some seriously awesome things that came of it.

Clearly, the best thing I gained were the awesome people who might not otherwise have made it into my life. We were a motley little group, there. Sarah (of Theories of String fame, see the blogroll) and I used to joke that our shop had a weird concentration of the most over-educated knitting teachers, ever (she's a PhD candidate, I of course had my MD by then, and the other woman who taught a lot had I think two masters degrees). Add in the group of regulars that hung around, the quirky shop owners and their even quirkier families, the hired help that actually worked for money rather than store credit (mostly in the dye shop; I'm not sure they actually "paid" any of us that worked up front), the Man in Brown, my lovable and goofy mutt, and the dyer's ridiculous five pound Italian Greyhound puppy who used to escape and run up to the front of the store and pee on things...

That place was really something. Usually in a good way.

It was also nice for me, because as the yarn-dyeing enterprise gathered steam, they more or less let me run the day to day stuff in the store. Which was really eye-opening, and I gained a lot of insight and interesting skills that I think could be really helpful if I ever run my own practice. And convinced me that if I plan on running anything bigger than a two or three person practice (say, a residential treatment center for trauma related disorders. On the beach, maybe), there's probably some merit in getting an MBA...

...and in having a facility dog. The tiny one was...well, kind of evil. But Mags, man, she had a blast there. She did so well. And I think she sold more yarn than any of the rest of us, to be honest. I should've had them put her on commission...seriously, though, I so miss being able to take her to work. Having that energy around, that soft peace and unadulterated enthusiasm, was so wonderful. She misses the opportunity to be that social, too, I think. And she also knows good people when she meets them, so she was a huge, huge fan of the Knit Night group. Plus, you know, people would feed her things....

I miss very few "things" from my old life. But I greatly, deeply, often miss the people.