We spent yesterday walking--miles and miles of walking, all around Pilsen--combing through thrift stores and such, and eventually ended up at a bookstore that was giving away all of its books for free that day (!), and the Skylark Bar, where we drank cheap beer and listened to old school hiphop and Serge Gainsborough doing his Barry White-ish thing in French, and finally concluded the evening at a Vietnamese restaurant, where we ate a family-style meal of pork soup, green papaya salad, fish-sauce chicken wings, and whipped rice pudding.

I have no idea what we'll be up to today. Nobody seems too concerned about plans, or about getting anywhere at any particular time. Maybe we'll venture out of the neighborhood, or maybe not. At some point I hope to go across the street to the Museum of Mexican Art, and it might be pleasant to lay eyes on Lake Michigan. I expect whatever we do will again involve miles of walking, as we all enjoy that. This is a big flat town and the striding is easy.

In the meantime, I will sit around under a couch blanket reading my books as the boys sleep away in their beds and the sun rises over the FBI building and the basilica that is perpetually under repair and the museum and the garages and alleys and the pigeons and the baseball field and the garbage trucks and the delivery vans and the police cars and Shadow the Constantly Barking Doberman and the murals of sunflowers and Dominican priests and the diners and the bars and the mysterious offices for the sale of brass and bronze ingots and the produce warehouses and the fire stations and pest-control service and the place to buy religious statuary and the Costco and the helicopter port and the Santa Claus decorations and Dental Sunshine and Amigo Insurance and (my personal favorite) Discount Scaffolding.