This morning, though it was raining slightly, I made a strong effort to not sell out Kim and Danielle by showing up promptly to Millennium Park Civic Yoga at 8:00 a.m. K and D, alas, were nowhere in sight and it was toooo rainy to lay out mats on the great, green J. Pritz Lawn. So intead our leader, a female analogue of SiVaVaJayJay minus the corpulence as far as I'm concerned, led us through a series of stimulating, psychadelically-mirrored¹ and sinus-clearing poses under the Bean.



¹ Kudos to Dave for the foto. Aw, Where were YOU one year ago?

After one particularly long (did I say long? what I meant was "started-by-leaving-the-hotel-at-3-pm") day in Tennessee, Vikki and I found our heels simply caked with the black filth of one-thousand immutable Nashville sins. Nothing -- not scrubbing, scraping, or pool calisthenics -- removed the smudges. Now, I have always had a problem with dirty feet, a lifelong hurdle caused largely by overuse of the sandal and exacerbated by rough soles and cracked heels from running/rock-climbing/etc. Only in Japan, where I felt it most appropriate to shod myself with closed toes, were my feet consistently smooth and clean throughout the four seasons. But Saturday's Nashville filth was horrifyingly unparallelled. Since then I've begun a daily regime of exfoliating, cleansing and moisturising with Emu Butter. And it's working! The end.

One thing I really like about Chicago is one can bike all over city and think it's a lovely day and then at a certain East/West dividing line -- say, going SE on Lincoln the line is Larrabee (sp?) -- the good smells and air announcing Lake Michigan proxmity become prevalent and it gets even lovlier. I experienced that feeling most mornings biking to work back in the day, and also running errands yesterday. Oh, and the day before. Tuesday I blitzed down to Chinatown to replace my phone charger (strewn somewhere in the Tennesean wilderness, I imagine) at sketchy but friendly Bee Gee Communications. Then yesterday I spent some time lazing with the tourists in Millennium Park and listening to the orchesta practice for some evening concert or another, which was quite peaceful. June is NOT a bad month to be between employment in the city.

Nashvegas, they call it, is a hot hot place. I miss my bicycle.

Hallo from Dayton, TN [edit: now Nashville]. Lots has transpired here. In no particular order: spelunking, cliff-jumping, mountain-stream swimming, rock climbing, buzzard viewing, mountain biking (on a cruiser), movie watching and hiking. Good times, except today [yesterday] I hit my head on a rock and got all scraped up, and a tick tried to burrow in me, none of which were positive experiences. Ew. Ugh.

[now] Nashville is the place. Calisthenics in the pool and continental breakfast transpire in 6 hours, yesterday's head injury hurts more than ever, and tomorrow promises to be a big d.a.i.y.e., soooooooo it's time for some zed. Night!

Yesterday instead of a forty-hour work week I clocked a forty-one-and-two-thirds-mile bike day, and trust me -- it was really satisfying.

For those interested, yesterday I also played frisbee for approximately 2 hours (I like the summer team -- a pleasant bunch for sure), applied for one internship, was in the same building as Al Gore for one red hot second, made a McDonald's employee smile after complimeting her incredible soft-serve craftsmanship, and got a Border's employee to readily admit he hates Al Gore Crowd Control.

Also worth noting, because of its rarity: two nights ago I got asked out by a fellow cyclist while blitzing down Clark, which was really interesting and only slightly awkward. I was completely unshowered and on my way to yoga, and the guy's bike was orange. Then yesterday, on my way to Al Gore's vicinity, a gentleman outside the post office gave me a long lecture about taking care of the smear of bike grease on my right calf, which was more than slightly awkward; I aborted the situation as quickly as possible. Then last evening, after the 41-mile blitz, everyone in the universe steered clear of me. The end.

It's rainin' hard -- drops the size of grapes is what it looks like from here. And you know what that means: good weather for this album.

Two-ish weeks ago Kim & I went to see 28 Weeks Later, which was shockingly gory, and the act of attendance went against all principles I hold dear. To round out the experience, then, yesterday evening included a rental/viewing of 28 Days Later. I enjoyed it more than its sequel for sure, but still had some creepy dreams. Ugh. No more of that. None.

The photo to the lower left documents my drive out to Palatine to retrieve Maoxie from Erin and Ollie. On they way back, Maoxie in carriage, a glorious rainbow bridged Foster at Western as I stopped by the 7-Eleven for some sodas. Lovely.