Almost Home

Neil, Nijmegen's tour guide extraordinaire, also pointed me to the best place to layover in O'Hare:

He was right, of course, a byproduct of the fact that he appears to know everything. The beer was tasty, and the bar was a good place to stage this photo depicting le chat losing one of his last legs:

Misunderestimating Intelligence

It took me until 10 hours after I got to the airport to find out that the reason I was going to have to stay as much as 36 more hours was not, despite the claims of several fellow passengers and at least one gate agent, the result of George W. popping in to Chicago for a visit. Turns out they had planned for that. No, what they failed to plan for was the fact that THE WINDY CITY might not be the best place to put the BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD, since it may lead to the occasional weather delays. Like if they might occasionally have weather that's bad for planes to take off and land in. Like wind.

!!!!!!!!!!

What is the matter with me! I'm looking for a bookstore all weekend, and the whole time there's a perfect used bookstore where they don't sort their bulk paperbacks so you can get 2 Philip K. Dick books for $3.50 each a BLOCK AWAY FROM THE HOTEL. Good ones, too.

No Question About It

If you had one last morning in the windy city, how would you spend it?

Outside the Box

Man, this awesome breakfast place, Orange, they weirded everything up. Here's my meal: Water with cucumber in it, orange/carrot/ginger/tomato juice, and pan-seared oatmeal. Please read that again. It is true.

McDonald's the Future Yourself, Motherf*cker

Marnie is also, you guessed it, awesome. We spent the evening sightseeing. After meandering the magnificent mile, failing to find an open used book store, and finding the Navy Pier thoroughly disappointing:
... we decided to go for upside-down deep-dish spinach pizza at Uno.
Then we walked home, noting with care the danger of falling ice.
These signs are everywhere, and when you consider their implication, they're pretty terrifying. First of all, the ice is obviously falling from the tops of buildings, aka THE INFINITE DEPTHS OF SPACE:
Second of all, what the hell am I supposed to do to avoid it? They should read: DANGER: YOU COULD BE IMPALED AT ANY TIME. TRY WALKING IN FRONT OF THE SPEEDING TRUCKS ON THE STREET INSTEAD. OR DUCK. NOTHING WILL HELP.

YOU DO NOT IMPRESS BALZAC!

The alternate title for this post is "Screw You Too Chicago Two: The Institute." Screw you for having all of your permanent collection open for non-flash photography. Stupid forgotten camera.

Oh, and I threw in a couple of graffitis (?) from a bathroom at a Thai restaurant. The thing I love about cities is the art everywhere.









... This one is called "Max Ernst invents the iPod in 1927"

Screw You Too, Chicago.

Of course Chicago had to go and rub in the fact that I forgot the charger for my good camera by being full of fantastically g*dd*mn photogenic city scenes. Sorry. Just imagine all of these pictures but with higher resolution, better focus, and not looking vaguely like sheet metal.

God, I should just say "everyone at LSA is awesome" and get it over with

You know who else is, it turns out, awesome? Olivia. She comes from Oklahoma, like the best webcomic artist there is. She gave me an excuse to order this extravagant Vegetarian Soviet Republic Mixer Platter, and allowed, nay, insisted that I eat all the beets. Then she and Tyler and I went to the lake and took pictures.
[Tyler is awesome too, but we all already knew that]

Heaven

You know who else is awesome? Cara. This is an actual conversation we had:

Cara: How's it going?
Phil: Hallucinatingy
Cara: Oh. I'm going to some talks. Do you want to go upstairs and sleep in my bed right now?
Phil: ... ... .... ... ........ Heaven!

Prime

Man, I didn't know it at the time, but I had a pretty good day. DeGruyter happened to have my only refereed publication on display at their book table: I got to go for food with Walt the Awesome, shown here paying the price of fame:
And I got to vote on the Word of the Year:
Still, I think the highlight of my day had to be hearing the moderator using his most dignified voice to say 'Va-jay-jay'.

Oops

Have you ever tried to knit on a plane? No, wait, let me rephrase that: Have you ever bought four 12-inch bamboo stakes, sharpened them, and then tried to pass them through Homeland Security? You should.