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.