I'm feeling a little homesick this afternoon.

I've been working on collecting climate data - ideally, one data point for each county - for Illinois, and running across some of the names makes me a little sad.

(Hoopeston! Where there was some kind of a quilt shop that supported one of the quilt shows on PBS. I always liked the way the announcer said "Hoopeston," almost like there should have been an umlaut over the double o)

(Gibson City! Where there was that wonderful German restaurant I only got to eat at once in the whole time I lived there)

(Freeport! I remember going there to sample a prairie! It was a really cool prairie too.)

(Mason County! I remember a long hot day in that county with my mom and my friend Deb and we sampled three of the prairie sites I needed to sample, and then we invited Deb over to our house for Chinese food after we were done, and I got a migraine and couldn't eat)

(Morris! Where we always used to chuckle about "Morris Moose Lodge" because of the children's book character)

(Shabbona! Never been there but it's a cool name)

I'm also a little homesick writing down the average maximum July temperature - most of them are in the lower 80s. That sounds really good right now.