I went to Hyde Park today, the neighborhood I lived in seven or eight years ago. I've only been back once, when I helped a friend pack, and I didn't look around too much while I was there. Today I had a grand old time.

First I went to the Museum of Science and Industry. That museum is just ginormous. There was free admission today, and since it's a weekday, it was practically deserted. There was a certain kind of Mixed-Up Files air about it, but as if 20 strangers had all been inspired to run away today too, instead of just me. I saw the genetics exhibit, the internet exhibit, the amazing room where the tiniest whisper can be heard clearly 30 feet away, the train set, the astronomy exhibit, the fairy castle (no, I don't know what that's doing there), and some other stuff. Best of all was the Omnimax film, Sea Monsters. I need to have an Omnimax in my home.

After the museum closed, I went to the awesomest used book store in Chicago, Powell's, where I picked up How and Wells' commentary on Herodotus (volume 1) and Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passiond of Classical Athens. Good looking reads, both.

Then, possibly the best part: I went to the Medici. Once upon a time, I used to go there for the most delicious fizzy lemonade. It was the most perfect lemonade ever. In spite of the snow outside, I decided I had to have the lemonade. I spoke to myself rather sternly regarding getting my hopes up: there was no way it could be as good as I remembered. I'm just setting myself up for disappointment. I've idealized a moment long past.

Wrong! Suck that, common sense! It was, in fact, not merely as good as I remembered, but much better. They used to use a small crushed ice, but this lemonade today had minute ice particles. The lemon to sugar to water ratio was perfect overall, the balance between the three that of a tight rope artist dancing across a silk thread. It was amazing.

Walking around Hyde Park, I felt disturbingly like an amnesia victim. In spite of my year there, I remembered almost nothing of what I was seeing. The museum was a complete blank except for the fairy castle, the street names sounded vaguely familiar and I couldn't decide which one I had lived on, and almost none of the stores rang a bell. Powell's I did remember, and that was a relief, but I couldn't picture myself ever in it. The knowledge of how it looked might just as easily have been from pictures I'd seen as my own personal experience.

I freak me out sometimes. Maybe I never lived in Chicago.