Chicago!

I've gone to Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me in Chicago. I've been to my friend Andy's office in Chicago, when he threw a fundraising party for the film Josh and I have been making for a very long time. Once a long time ago I drove through one tiny part of Chicago on my way to the National Folk Festival in Dayton (and mainly I think we were really in Evanston) but I have never actually walked around Chicago, and I have never seen any Chicago neighborhood other than a couple of downtown blocks. Until now.

I had a whopping 38 hours in Chicago. And most of that was actually in the burbs. But Friday morning Karen and I drove into the city, and she went to work, and I took my first trip on the L, went to visit Brett, checked out the Onion offices, and laughed like I only laugh with him, interspersed with the serious and the quirky.

Then Karen and I walked and walked and walked and walked. We did stuff that people do when they go to Chicago, like walk through Millenium Park and along the waterfront of Lake Michigan and past the peanut, and past some very cool public art, and also I got to see Tracey's name on the Goodman Theater marquee, and we drove out through Lincoln Park and through other neighborhoods and over to Lincoln Square, which is different from Lincoln Park, and I got to see Karen's house they are going to move into, and then we drove over to the lake so I could go swimming, but we never did go swimming—we just walked and walked and walked, mostly barefoot, through an Important Bird Area (and Karen decided that it was actually a Self-Important Bird Area, and around the lake to a marina where their friends have a boat, and we fantasized that they would be on their boat, and we would walk up and surprise them, but they weren't there, and we had left our phones way way way back in the car, so we didn't photodocument any of this, but we felt like kids on a barefoot adventure, and when was the last time you walked barefoot through a part of the city?

And then we went back to her house, and Andy had cooked an outrageously gorgeous shabes dinner, and I had my last meal in the house they've been in since 1995, and then we snuggled on the couch watching Colbert, and Katie put my hair in pin curls, and this reads a little bit like a teenage girl's journal of the Best Day Ever, and that's because Karen and I are teenage friends, and it always sort of feels like the Best Day Ever when I am with her.