I'm behind but I'm trying -

So Chicago - we got there Thursday night, and got into the room, and watched ER and ordered Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza - which wasn't as good as I remembered, but I think that's only because I made really delicious deep dish pizza, using up School Woods' 1st b-day leftovers, with bell peppers from the farmers' market and Willow Creek sausage. And got nice & frustrated by the slowness of the hotel's WiFi - Mark made them give us a device that plugged into the USB & ethernet cable ports in our laptops, to improve the connection.

On Friday morning, Mark went off to meetings, and I got coffee and worked in the room, on an upcoming online course I'm teaching, and filling out my app to Dane County to be a foster parent. I met Linda, a Chicago Historical Society friend, for lunch, for Thai - I got Masaman tofu - it was coconutty and creamy and good. Then I headed up to the North side, for shoe shopping, and Linda said to check out the Lush soaps. I'm glad I went - it's a pretty amazing store - a lot of the soaps are cut to order off big blocks that look like fudge or cheese and wrapped in butcher paper, and they have seaweed gel soaps, too. I got some almond for me and two little hearts for Rach. I got a pair of nice girly shoes for me, and 2 pairs of Hue tights.

Then I went down to the MCA - they had a show about the art of rock & roll - I liked this one piece where the artist had recorded 4 different musicians, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, and I don't remember who all else - 2 guys on guitar and a woman harpist, and projected them on screens at angles to each other in a little alcove - so they seemed to be performing together. And there were Andy Warhol screen tests, and the Velvets were playing Heroin, and there was a book by Ray Pettibon. I walked into one gallery and there was a stack of posters on the floor that said "What would Neil Young do?" and I read the label and it said visitors could take one, but just one, please, and when I bent down to get mine all these people looked at me, like "is she allowed to do that?"I think that was the main point of the piece. And of course in the gift shop, there was a graying, paunchy, my age baby-boomer guy, just gushing, "whatta show, man!"

It was fun walking around in Chicago - big city, all kinds of people - they all looked so much more interesting than Madison, where everyone is a 19 year old college student from LaCrosse.

On Sunday morning I got up and went down to South Michigan to this place called Yolk, to meet another librarian friend for breakfast. On the way back I walked through this sculpture of torsos.
Then went to the Art Institute which was a little disappointing, because they are re-doing the American wing and everything is in storage - I wanted to go to the room with all the Joseph Cornell boxes, but it wasn't there. I did go look at photos by Richard Misrach, huge views of tiny people in the water - the people look like discarded floating baby dolls, and you wonder how the hell he got that vantage - my favorite one had one corner where you could see the lacy edge of a wave on the beach; it was the only one that did not have four square corners.

And I missed the Halloween parade, but I merged in with the mob of kids to see the haunted village and orange-dyed water in the fountain at Daley Plaza - they do like dyeing the water for holidays in Chicago.


And, oh yeah, I jumped on a bus going up Michigan, because my feet were getting tired, and it turned out to be the day people bring in their sail boats - so we got stuck by the drawbridge - I had to get out and walk, but I got some pictures.