So so so, after a weekend enjoying Scolson's hospitality in Columbus (highlights included . . . a million things, but mostly a 6.25-hour-long interview and many unavoidable glimpses of the curious world of Auditors In Busy Season), I've landed in Chicago for a couple days to look for apartments and get a feel for the city's katrillion neighborhoods. Highlights here have been various and sundry, i.e. unprecedented hospitality (as above), a lot of driving, a powerful Mardi Gras celebration at Slobs's digs, a lovely if not much-interrupted phone conversation with Taylor, a trip to chinatown to cling to some nostalgic Asian Allure, a viewing of The World According To Garp* and, um, a little jaunt on the beaches of Edgewater.

The apartment search is mayybbbbeeeee completely overwhelming. At first and second and even third glance, the options seem to be simply bursting forth from the sidewalks and the pages of craigslist and chicagoreader. But, if agonizingly slow, they are indeed narrowing. Hooray.

Heart,
Eliz

*As go movies based on John Irving novels, this one is definitely the most bizarre of the three I've seen, and the adaptation leaves out ridiculously important portions of the book. But it's definitely worth watching to see Robin Williams in the bloom of tolerable youth, and John Lithgow as the bouncy transexual Robert(a) Muldoon. t-o-t-a-l-l-y worth it.