more midwest.

i completed my move to chicago on monday and have been settling myself in ever since. moving in and of itself is a pain in the ass, much less to a different city. however, the apartment is looking pretty well put together, which i attribute to not having a job. oh, by the way, i absolutely love our landlords. they're eccentric old polish people (i basically live in the heart of polish chicago) who are EXTREMELY accomodating and really have nothing to do except for go to church and make sure their little community is running like a well-oiled machine. good people. i think i genuinely enjoy listening to people talk in abrupt, halting languages. that's probably why i took german in college. you can make a couple of simple words sound like a death threat. it's all in the attitude.

anyway, my first evening here i made plans to meet zach and allison for dinner. i don't remember where we were going to meet, and it doesn't really matter. i had zero concept of direction or destination because it takes me a second to process a new location and realize what's north, south, east, west. i bascially equate it to not being able to figure out percentages in your head at the drop of a hat, which i definitely cannot do. also, i didn't have the internet, which only perpetuated my problem. it's amazing how helpless one feels without the internet. i mean...how am i supposed to get around without google maps? guess? please. so i got viciously lost and wanted to kill the world because i was fucking starving and because i had no idea which direction to go. i willed myself back to my apartment somehow, ate plain couscous by itself, and went to bed completely unsatisfied, from a hunger standpoint. i love zach to death, but we both later agreed that we probably should have met somewhere a little closer to my residence.

i have since realized the glory of the grid system and feel more than semi-confident in my ability to navigate the city.

that was my monday adventure. tuesday i spent most of the day unpacking and setting shit up. later on, i met zach for dinner. we drank and held hands as we walked along the beach of lake michigan. it was sublime.

yesterday, i went to wrigley field to watch the cubs slaughter the reds. the stadium is amazing, and i was pretty much in awe of it. no jumbotron. no cushy seats. no plastic, superficial feel. pretty damn authentic, right down to the barrage of obnoxious cubs fans. man, this city absolutely fucking abhors dusty baker. for a team who hasn't won anything in like a millenium, you would think that they'd be somewhat appreciative of a manager who took them to the NLCS five years ago. i don't get it. it just seems irrational to me. but then again i'm the most level-headed, rational person i know, so i understand the intricacies of the situation and am willing to take a few steps back and view the situation objectively. no?

regardless, the whole experience was awesome. the energy coarsing through that stadium is knee-buckling. now, if only the reds could have stayed in it for one inning. man, that would've been dynamite. i love going to other stadiums, though. i'm one of those guys who wants to make a tour of every baseball stadium at some point in my life. it's all about the atmosphere. definitely.

so...i'm here now. still in the initial shock phase. you'll have that though.

minus a select few, i'm pretty sure most of the others that read this thing live in cincinnati, so just wanted to say that i miss you guys and expect to miss you more and more in the next couple of weeks. that's why i'm going to come back like three times in may. well, that and weddings, but we'll just pretend.