Still feeling a bit like I'm laying low here in Chicago--haven't called any of my friends here, kind of skulking around the edges of the U of Chicago campus like I really don't belong there, which I don't.

Made my first inroads toward legitimacy today, though: we dropped into the library to get me a "partner" library card: no picture, just featureless plastic with a barcode. But they won't give me an email account. Damn.

I'm sitting now on our one piece of sittable furniture, which is a kick-ass chair that flips over into a stepladder; the computer is sitting on a game table, which I used last night to beat myself twice at chess and once at checkers.

I think this is the best room in the apartment--it sort of juts out to form a corner of the building and so has three sets of windows in it, there's a kind of alcove where I'm sitting right now and the sun is coming right in through the trees and people even walk by on the street occasionally--yes, it's not California, people walk.