After my brother left last week, it really put a line through the holiday season.  January is ordinary time.  Days are getting longer but we are far from done with the snow and cold.  For a brief time, I can keep a routine.  This week I appreciated the ability to work out every morning, keep to a sleep schedule, make doctor’s appointments, load up my Kindle, go through my accounts, even clean my saved recipes file on NYT Cooking app. I joked with my husband that I am always either traveling, or I am embedded at home, there is not in between. The reality is the January lull is only temporary.  Now that holidays are over other invitations are coming in.  Because of my job, I get to attend events hosted in some of the most classic locations in Chicago, this week the Harris Theater and Union League Club of Chicago.   I see colleagues that I am close with, so they only feel like quasi business events.  I put in calls to some of my friends to get a date in the books to see new shows coming to Chicago; Cosi fan tutte and Theater of the Mind to start.  But for today I am embedded in this couch, finalizing February’s New York and San Diego itineraries and then making this cake and this for dinner tonight.