I drove to Chicago yesterday. Yesterday morning, to be exact. And I was back before noon. Drove straight onto Lake Shore Drive, exited at Fullerton, drove by campus, and went down Sheffield to Wolfram. Then, I parked outside of my apartment building, checked my mailbox, and went up to my studio apartment.

The whole thing was a little surreal. I moved in just after New Years, following going ice fishing in Wisconsin. Ben hung out for the first two weekends, and after that I stayed up there for about three weeks. The only problem was Draper. His separation anxiety got so bad, I couldn't stand to leave him alone because someone was complaining about him barking. It was all pretty stressful, and since I don't have a job or classes yet, I decided to head home for a while. A while pretty quickly turned into "until I get sick of everyone and/or classes start." So I just have this empty apartment, sitting in the midst of Lincoln Park, one of the neatest neighborhoods in Chicago, one of the biggest cities in the country.

Chicago used to be a really big deal for my family. We'd go up a few times a year, always waking up really early and spending at least two hours bumbling around, filling the car with things to make the ride more tolerable. It was exciting, and Chicago was so far away, and it was so big. It all took a lot of planning, and once there, we had to take advantage of everything, walking the whole time, of course. So, as you can imagine, it's weird for me to just drive up one morning and head right back after a half hour poking around my apartment. It was weird when I was going to DePaul before, and I would ride the train home on Friday morning to work at the Coffee Cup all weekend, and go back on Monday night. It's weird that now Chicago is kind of like Princeton to me. You can just go there. Run in, run out. Decide last minute that, yeah, you probably should head up there. Ride the train in and be back that night. Chicago is tangible now. It's just another destination.

And just north of downtown sits all of my stuff. Books, movies, clothes, dishes. My bed, my table, my couch. All of it is there, while I'm here. I'm excited to get back to my life in a few weeks.