Is gross.

The first time I saw The Pajama Men (formerly their act was called "Sabotage") was at the MN Fringe in 2003. Hey. Four years is a lot of time. Anyway, they were just hysterical. Caught them last night at the Second City Storefront space in the Loop. Thought that was very, very funny, too.

Shame there were only 10 people in the audience. Hate it when that happens. Not conducive to comedy. And I really hoped, hoped it wouldn't affect their act. I don't think it did, but you know, laughter is infectious. I think Ben and I were laughing harder than most. God, they're weird.

They do this stream-of-consciousness thing - two guys, Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez, who actually do their entire act in pajamas - that kind of tells a story. They introduce several characters, with interesting relationships (father/daughter, two cowboys, woman/amorous space alien) jumping swiftly from one nonsensical scenario to another, though they eventually dovetail and things that didn't make sense near the beginning have an explanation near the end. Or not. It doesn't matter. They crack me up.

Four years ago the main thread was about a horse that conspired to kill his rider.

Horse snorkel. Sorry. Had to say that. Horse snorkel.

Images from that show four years ago still stick with me and make me laugh. So will moments from last night's show. I can't remember much from the Second City show I saw on Friday night. But then, I was half in the bag.

Lovely day yesterday, absolutely lovely. Christine and I met up at the Fountain Towers With the Faces In Them (I asked Ben if that has a nickname yet, that the locals call it, he said yeah, we call it the fountain towers with the faces in them) and after a leisurely catching-up lunch on Michigan Avenue (on the sidewalk, not in the street) she gave me a tour of the Fine Arts Building where the company she has been working with, Moving Dock, do their work.

What a fascinating old structure. What a great place to rehearse, perform, buy antiquarian books, whatever.

By the time we reached the Art Institute (Roger called it "The Toot," not sure if that's a common nickname or just his) we realized we only had two hours before closing, but that was more than enough to take a "Greatest Hits" tour. She was pleased to find that The Gates of Paradise are on display. For a heathen I know quite a bit, but I didn't know about that.

After that whirlwind tour, we just sat by the big towers with faces on them, listening to children cry in delight and knock heads together while hydroplaning across its obsidian surface, while we drank coffee and I tried to get my scalp to stop from sweating. It was a hot, bright weekend. In spite of having sunglasses on most of the time I was out doors, I got this nasty red crease in my brow, which was only intensified by watching a show each night. I had migraine meds Friday night, but I did all right without them last night.

I met Roger and Ben for dinner, Roger knows I prefer local spots, but he said Big Bowl has his favorite Pad Thai in town, so I was like, I'm there! I don't get to have pad thai much, due to Z.'s peanut allergy. Roger got to tell us of his adventures in NYC a few weeks ago, checking out Eric C.'s latest piece, and he and I gave Ben a basic education in what effing crazily obsessed people marathon runners are, going on and on at length with anecdotes and tales of great athletic accomplishment. Or maybe it was just me going on too long, that happens.

On our way there we had to take a detour around a film shoot. Must have been a couple dozen police vehicles with their lights flashing, lots of gawkers and crowds. All the temporary signs guiding people around the site were for some feature called Rory's First Kiss, but, well, IMDB that title and you'll find out what they were really shooting. We failed to spot Heath.

Another run this morning, and then I met up with Donna, who I haven't since since, no kidding 1995. Jesus, these women I was so close to in college, they have got to start showing some age, I feel like I am the portrait of Dorian F*cking Gray looking at them (caught that one at the Toot, by the way.)

She's a talent agent. Great conversation, not just catching up stuff, but about the shows I'd seen (her firm represents members of both show I caught) how good, or not, most improv sketch comedy is, then I had to catch a taxi to O'Hare.

Playtime for Dad

Last December, Toni asked if she could take a weekend on her own, to visit friends in New York, and I said, of course.

Then in January she said, oh! Some folks are getting together in Indiana, could I go to that, too? And I said, uh ... yeah.

By the middle of this summer I realized if I didn't cash in soon, the new school year would be upon us and I'd never get a chance to get away. So I asked about this weekend - a week after camp ended, a couple before rehearsals begin - and she agreed. Good for me to get away. Spend some time alone.

Only ... where should I go? I didn't have a clue.

So I came to Chicago. That's where I am now. In the Chicago Public Library, blogging this in air conditioned comfort instead of spending time in the 90 degree heat.

Just a few notes:

Ran into Tony S. walking the other way down the concourse at Hopkins. I said, "Hey! I'm leaving, you're coming home!" and he said, "Actually, I am going home - to Mississippi!"

Spending the weekend in a basement B&B in Old Town. It's great, a whole apartment to myself, in a real neighborhood. Discovered that Second City is right around the corner - so I went there. Never actually seen a show at Second City before. No surprises. Funny. Sketch comedy is like Chinese food ... I'll stop there.

Walking up North Ave., checking out my surroundings, I saw this guy who looked exactly like Leilani step out a Walgreen's. I thought, weird, that guy looks exactly like Leilani, only Leilani's taller. An hour later, after a plate of the most decadent sushi I have ever had in my life, I'm walking past the same intersection and I hear this rich basso profundo call out, "David Hansen!"

Yeah, it was him. Only shorter than I remembered.

This morning I took a run then double-checked plans with Ben and Roger for tonight, and even got a call from Donna, who I haven't seen in twelve years. We're meeting tomorrow for coffee.

Gotta run, I'm meeting Christine by the fountain in Millennium Park and heading off to the Art Institute. Never seen Sunday in the Park before. They say it's big - and if you cross your eyes and squint, you can see a puppy.

Okay, I stole that joke from the show I saw last night.

15th National Perinatal Bereavement Conference - Final Word

It's been a week. Everything I had been holding back came busting through in a highly physical fashion. My skin has broken out, and I have been developing a nasty, big cough. I am almost done, but not quite. This mid-life crisis, or whatever it is I have felt comeplled to put myself through is only in a holding pattern.

I married my brother and his wife in August, siumltaneously directed GLTF actor-teachers and a production of Hamlet, went to Chicago and London to perform I HATE THIS, and have been training from the NY Marathon (put in 15 yesterday) which I will run - oh, yes, the plane tickets are paid for - in two weeks. After that I just need to marry a Catholic and a Jew and I can call it quits.

I am picturing myself, sitting in a stuffed chair in Athens, Ohio after polishing off a sizable amount of Thanksgiving dinner with a large alcoholic beverage in my hand, plotting exactly how many pounds I will enjoy gaining over the winter.

The last two perfs of IHT were so satisfying, I cannot tell you. There are already proposals in the works for future performances, but nothing on the calendar yet. It has been a long time since I haven't had on in writing. It is my hope that what I learned, felt, came away with the past two weekends will stick with no me, no matter who is in the audience. The last few medical conferences, I wasn't sure if I was an educator, a survivor, or just a pro making a couple bucks off the worst experience of my life. It's places like SANDS and at the conference that I felt like something else, not quite a missionary, not just another victim. I crafted something immediate out of the askes of awfulness - I couldn't have written this piece now, I wouldn't have the nerve to. But I can still play it, and it's that bridge between the raw anger of then and the distance of now that has turned it into something better than it was even when I started.

Enough analysis. I write too much about my own work, I start sounding like Arthur Miller.

15th National Perinatal Bereavement Conference - Part Five

• Is there in stillbirth, no humor?

A recurring comment from the many people who came up to Toni and I following Friday's performance was how much they appreciated the use of humor in the play. Now, I know there are funny moments, but I had forgotten how many of them I intended to actually be funny, like expecting laughter, because quite often there is no laughter and I have just come to accept that.

Except for Friday, when there was a lot of laughter. In fact, I was was in such harmony with the audience, things that never got laughed at, ever, were being received with that kind of knowledgeable laughter that can only come from what you might call a survivor.

"My wife does not consent to this examination," in the second Nurse Evil scene is usually the set-up for the admission, that," No, I didn't say that," which gets the laughs from the medical practitioners. The bereaved parents thought the first sentence, and how I delivered it was hilarious, and the follow-up only funnier still.

• Misunderstandings

1. The first nurse, the one who comes in doing everything and throwing a lot of questions our way is the best nurse in the world. She had the odious task of being "first contact" and having her whisk around the room only illustrates the state of confusion we were put into by her arrival.

He took care of us for an entire shift. She sat. She was quiet. She listened. She made it possible for us to make it through.

2. They whisked the boy away the moment he was born because we asked him to, it was not a thoughtless act on their part. They warned us he would be in sad shape (he had been dead for almost two weeks) and that, though we could hold him right after birth, it would be very upsetting. They offered to clean him up first, and we agreed. Some people gasp when I say what happens, as though it were thoughtless, and there was thought in it.

15th National Perinatal Bereavement Conference - Part Four

• Would You Like Bread With That?

When lunch was through, we stayed at the table to speak with the woman sitting nearest us. She had seen the play - everyone saw the play, I didn't need to introduce myself to anyone, people were just walking up to us to talk, it took a lot of pressure off introductions - and spoke to us about the baby girl they had lost some thirty years earlier. No, it never goes away. Never.

We had just enough time to jump to the one seminar I made all weekend, Companioning: A Breath of Fresh Air in a World of Chaos, presented by Jane Heustis. When it began, I wasn't sure if I was in the right room. I worried it might be directed to caregivers only, nurses and midwives, and doctors. And then I remembered I am a caregiver, or at least I realized it perhaps for the first time listening to Jane speak.

Put simply, companioning is simply being there, though there's more to it than that. But listening, and surrendering to the idea that there is nothing to "fix" the situation, those are difficult things to learn. You need to unlearn everything Western civilization has told you is appropriate - looking on the bright side, shunning darkness, not crying. A companion doesn't make excuses, nor takes on any guilt for not being able to perform miracles. The world can wait, the world must be told to wait, and a companion reassures the bereaved that the world will wait, as long as it takes.

Toni and I have become defacto companions, if unlicensed. Hospitals, chaplains contact us when someone has asked for someone to speak to - me, especially, when there are guys involved. It was only a year and a half ago when I met Justin and Laura at the Great Lakes Brewing Co., just a few weeks after they lost Hans. I think I was wearing a tie, I'd just come from visiting one of our actors in a school, I must have looked too professional by half, some kind of fraud. but I knew what I was doing there and I did it. We just talked, for as long as it took.

15th National Perinatal Bereavement Conference - Part Three

• Brick

Having missed most of the conference events (I hadn't even made the bookstore before they started tearing it down) I limped into Dr. Silver's lunchtime keynote address, Sillbirth: Where are We and Where are We Going? A highly technical examination of stillbirth and its many diverse causes (fortunately our plates were cleared before his Power Point presentation began to include what we in the community refer to as "road accident pictures") it was nevertheless fascinating ... and there was something else.

Maybe it was that particular Q&A from the night before, the one Toni was involved in. Maybe it was my physical state. Maybe it was just the repetition of factors and the result of these factors that put me in mind of the brick. The brick outside CPT, just one of those commemorative bricks organizations use to pave the outside of their venue for fund-raising purposes. In CPT's case, we are lucky Calvin's brick is close to the street and away from the door, the ones that are most traveled, or are most likely to have salt on them during the winter months aren't for the ages, and Calvin's probably isn't either.

But what gravestone is? And that's what it is, his stone, it's the only one he gets that's only his. And I saw for the first time in perhaps ever, or certainly with any perspective or distance (as I have done this show for four years now) the shape of my story. From terrifying loss, to this one commitment to finality. Something killed my first child, and one day I had to find out that was true - and one year later I was laying flowers at a brick with his name on it.

The enormity of that year, what I tell in my play, what I hit people over the head with when I tell it, it all came back to me, sitting there, my head bowed, listening to statistics. I forget who I was prior to all of that happening. I do not remember what it was like to expect that first child, only everything that came after. But that afternoon I felt closer to him than I have in a very long time.

15th National Perinatal Bereavement Conference - Part Two

Subjects yet to be addressed:

• Would you like bread with that?
• Bereaved Father, Superstar
• Author, Author
• FAQ
• Brick
• The Castro Sisters
• Is there in stillbirth, no humor?

• FAQ

Recently I have been contemplating support materials - before and after mats that can surround the performance. The post-show Q&A is helpful (when Toni participates, it's much more valuable - I feel I just repeat myself) but if I am going to continue this, I need to work with someone to create a richer program.

To that end, I want to create a FAQ for those questions which are frequently asked following performances.

Someday I need to ask someone what FAQ means.

1. Is it difficult to perform this play? To relivethese events over and over again?
2. How has your family responded to this work?
3. Do you have any plans to record this on video?
4. Did you encounter any good nurses during your experience?
5. What does Toni think of you presenting this play?
6. Did you ever get any response from a certain baby food company?

There are others (you can help, send in yours) ... most of them I do not want people to read until after the performance. It's like, I do not like to have Calvin named before the show, or at least not just before the show, it's something I always ask the person who introduces me, because his names, whether he even gets one, is a mystery - and then I get to name him at the end of the play. I also do not want anyone to know if we have subsequent children beforehand, so they aren't allowed to reassure themselves during the show - to detach themsleves from what they are watching by saying, "well, it's all okay, he has living children now."

• The Castro Sisters

We could not have survived the weekend, or in fact much of the rest of our lives, without Kelly, about whom I will speak more eventually. However, it was the special contributions of the Christine and Aimee that made our involvement in the conference itself at all possible.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Aimee and Christine. Aimee spent the evening with kids Friday night, so Christine and Toni could see the show - and make Toni available for the post-show Q&A.

Funny story: Aimee was handed Orson. And whenever she put him down, he would stand there and cry, arms stretched up to her, opening and closing his hands for her to pick him up again. So she thought he couldn't walk. For two hours she carried him all over the hotel. When Christine came out after the show to help while we did the Q&A, she offered to take O. from her sister's trembling arms (O.'s a big little boy) but he didn't want to be held by Christine and pushed her away. She set him down - and he promptly toddled away.

We had made plans for C. & A. to look after the kids on Saturday afternoon, which became even more vital as I was useless, curled up in bed. They took the kids to Navy Pier, to the Children's Museum - and Z. got to ride on the ferris wheel, something we had promised her when we were last in Chicago in March but had to skip because of th weather. She hadn't forgotten the promise, and finally had her wish fulfilled this weekend.

Christine and Aimee joined us for that dinner at Ed Debevic's on Saturday - Toni's the only one of us who got sick. Was it ... the chili? Or is it actually ... the flu ..?

Will I actually adress the substance of the conference? Yes, I will - wait for it, it's all taken a while to digest. In the meanwhile, here is this new article on HAMLET in artistscahir.com.

15th National Perinatal Bereavement Conference - Part One

Chicago, Illinois October 12 - 13, 2006

An extremely moving, exhilarating and difficult weekend, and not for the reasons you would expect. I don't even know where to begin, and whether or not I can cover everything. However, if I were to make a laundry list of subjects I would like to cover - in no particular order - they would include:

• General Props
• Would you like bread with that?
• Bereaved Father, Superstar
• Author, Author
• FAQ
• Boy, does this hotel suck
• Migraines & Prison Pillows
• Brick
• The Castro Sisters

And I am sure there will be others to come ...

• General Props

The conference began on Thursday, but we could not get away until Friday. There were seminars we wanted to attend on Friday afternoon, and made a concentrated effort to arrive by noon. We aimed for a 5am departure time, and I was impressed we actually left by 6, but even with an extra hour afforded us by a time change we actually forgot until we were halfway there, you just can't make a car trip with two small children without tacking on two extra hours - and then there's the Dan Ryan Expressway.

So we actually got there around two, and still had to unpack and eat. At the very least Toni hoped to get to the keynote address she thought was at five - but was actually at three-thirty. Luckily we ran into Kathie Kobler just as we got back from sushi and soba noodles in the Merchandise Mart Food Court. Kathie was the conference chair, and delightfully helpful. She told us the address was beginning right then, at 3:30 - and I waved off Toni and took the kids with me back up to the room.

Kathie K. and the entire planning committee did a dynamite job. We thought the entire weekend was well organized, and there was a very positive atmopshere throughout.

So, as I said, I went up to the room with Z. & O. And just like the fun-filled dad I am, I asked if they wouldn't help me schlep my set down to the performance space. We were quite a picture, me lifting a cardboard box with props in it, a small table, stool and stepladder, while a three year-old and one year-old dutifully followed after - into the elevator from the 23rd to the 15th floor, across the lobby, and down a different elevator. They were also super-gracious when we found the cookies I promised on the 14th floor had already been taken away.

There I met Todd Hochberg in person, another of the planning committee, and the man responsible for, among so many other things, all the technical aspects of my show. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Todd. There was a gimungous screen off to one side, and I had a platform so people in the back could see. It was to be held in the Sauganash East Ballroom and so I needed to be mic'ed (well, I didn't need to be, but it helped) and though there were a number of technical difficulties, which I may or may not go into later, Todd was instrumental in surmounting them.

Also, I wanted to mention Alana Roush, a founding member of the Pregnancy Loss and Infant Death Alliance (PLIDA) who introduced the performance. Apparently she found me by Googling "plays about dead babies" or something to that effect - and whoa, amazing, she found my website. "Isn't the internet incredible?" she said.

There are others I want to acknowledge, and I will hopefully get to them by and by.

• Boy, does this hotel suck.

You know, when Toni and the rest of us visited last spring to check out a school for her, the difference between the hotel we stayed in this weekend, the Holdiay Inn Chicago - Mart Plaza and the Holiday Inn we chose to stay in a few blocks away, was only ten bucks. That place was ten dollars more expensive a night than the Mart Plaza, and it's amazing how much more ten dollars will get you.

We waited out front for a long while before a valet parking attendant showed up.

The concierge was rude, unhelpful, and really didn't know where anything was.

They had one hapless waiter in the hotel restaurant on Friday night - I had a show to do, and it took an hour to get our dinner. I would have just left, but Kelly, my stage manager, was enduring a terrible cold, and I needed her to sit and eat. By the time we got back to the performance space, I discovered that whatever the hotel liason had done to the sound, it was hideous and we had fifteen minutes to get it right. Todd H., again, had my back.

Breakfast the next moning (which I missed, for reasons I will explain) almost gave Toni a nervous breakdown.

The iron in our room didn't work. Must I go on?

The view from our room, however, was stunning. It's like we were on a 23 story high boat in the middle of the Chicago River, facing the El, the Sears Tower, everything. Almost worth it.

• Migraines & Prison Pillows

The accumulated stress of four hours of sleep, on the road for eight hours, the dinner fiasco and pre-performance stress, coupled with an unfamiliar bed, the general dehydration that you get in any hotel room, and my pillow led to a horrorshow of a migraine.

Let me explain the pillow. I prefer a flat, usually very old pillow (that's the only way they get so flat.) Toni calls them my prison pillows. I can't sleep without a pillow, and a sheet of paper is a little too thin, but any real thickness at all and I am terrible uncomfortable. And I will get a headache.

So we already missed Thursday and Friday's events (well, I did - Toni got to see one adress and everyone got to see me, but I didn't) and then I missed three blocks Saturday morning because I was immovable and weeping in my hotel bed. I did take my meds before dawn, and again several hours later, and they just weren't going to take. I needed to ride this one out. I was able to join Toni for lunch ... and more on that later.

This is the bad stuff. After this it all gets good ... except for Toni getting food poisoning at Ed Debevic's. I will post more tomorrow, I promise.

Home (?)

Easter Sunday was spent in Roger's Park, visiting friends, having brunch, discussing miscarriage, freezing our butts off on the shores of Lake Michigan (several days of pitch-perfect weather had come abruptly to an end.) We had been home from London for about nine days before leaving for Chicago, Toni heads off on Friday for Vermont. Whether or not Zelda goes with her is up in the air at the moment.

Will we move to Chicago? That's the unanswered question right now, but it sure is asked alot. I hesitated making it so obvious here, but apparently it's already an open secret. One artistic director in town, who shouldn't know anything about it, asked if it was true, and so I guess I am a person who is talked about. It's been fun pretending I am not. I guess everyone is talked about.

And you know what Oscar Wilde said.

I was in a kitchen yesterday, lamenting the state of the nation. Americans are inherently selfish. The whole rights of the individual thing, there's little sense of responsibility, it's all about entitlement. The more people spread out, miles from the center of any collective activity, driving, driving, driving, away from others. Away from any social responsibility. No taxes, no public schools, no centers of culture - it's like that theater I saw in Elmhurst, some people are trying like hell to bring good, professional, interesting theater to the suburbs. And it's so hard, and why? Because you moved. The good stuff is downtown, but no one wants to go downtown.

I had a conversation with a woman after a performance of DARK LADY in a suburb of Akron (that always makes me laugh, "suburb of Akron") and she was telling me how much better it would be if GLTF toured their mainstage shows - why don't we take our professional Shakespeare to where she is, we'd get a much bigger audience.

And you wonder why Cleveland is dying. She wants to see what it has to offer, but she won't. She wants Cleveland to go to her. Pffffffftttthhh.

I know how to save Cleveland. Amazing no one has suggested it before. It's so simple.

First: Get one or two major corporations to move their headquarters to downtown Cleveland.

Second: These large corporations will employ people locally, who will be encouraged not only to work, but live and play in downtown Cleveland. Real jobs with good pay, not this cleaning up after a**holes from Medina at the Q garbage.

Third: The taxes paid by these large corporations (because you weren't thinking they'd get to make billions of dollars here without paying their fair share of taxes, did you?) would pay for strong schools, infrastructure, reasonable mass trasnit, etc.

Fourth: The people living working and playing in the city center would expect art and entertainment, and would frequent downtown movie houses, galleries and theaters, as well as shops, restaurants and other businesses. And the schools would be so great people might send their own kids there.

That's it. Easy peasy. And that's capitalism, too, none of that corporate or public welfare crap. That's all we have to do.

What? Can't happen? Crazy dreamer? Well sh**, why don't we all just hang ourselves and get it over with?

Who Farted?

Yesterday morning was spent sleeping. Well, I wasn't sleeping, but Toni needed to, and the kids crashed early. Zelda and I spent a big, long time at the pool and then there were naps all round. Friday was a long, tiring day for everyone so that was a very good thing.

We met Roger T. in his neighborhood, Andersonville, "the neighborhood that hates kids," as Roger calls it in his inimtiably sardonic style. It's still a very lovely place to live, with lots of rehabbed old homes and fabulous shops and restaurants and I hope it stays that way. All the gays are being driven out by young families, and you know what happens to the property values when they move into a neighborhood.

Maybe you heard of Andersonville, that's where the coffee shop was that had the audacity to kick out a family whose children were literally tearing up the place, and then post a sign requesting that "parents with small children please make them use inside voices and have proper restaurant behavior," or something to that effect. The nerve of those queers.

Anyway, it was a media hoopla for a few days, what with outraged parents trying to put the place out of business. Staging a boycott is such time-consuming business, you'd think it were more cost-effective to teach your children to respect other people when in public.

Later I split off from the family to see Ben in a production of Waiting for Godot in Elmhurst. You know, Beckett had a 100th birthday a few days ago, too. Samuel Beckett was born, and a day or so later San Francisco burned to the ground. Makes you think.

Ben's production was presented by a company that's trying to bring a higher level of drama to the suburbs. And I was largely impressed. They made it funny, that was the best part. It was not subtle - Gogo was Laurel and Didi was Hardy, end of story. Oh, and Lucky was a dead ringer for Buster Keaton. Ben, as Estragon, got to showcase his best talents, his sense of humor, his physical comedy, his sweetness, his goofy smile.

Roger saw me to the METRA train. Once I boarded the 6:40 to Elmhurst, I was alone. I hate being alone. It makes me feel selfish taking time on my own, away from Toni, away from the kids. Not selfish, afraid. Once the train started I could spend time watching the city go by, and that was comforting.

Ben and his wife Pam were in Andersonville once, in the very same coffee shop where all the ruckus occurred - on one of the days the ruckus occurred. As part of some p.r. stunt, a soccer mom came in and started a fight with the owners for the benefit of local media.

The place doesn't really hate kids. There were a couple places we visited that weren't just family-friendly, but generous. Huey's hot dog place had a great play area, and the ice cream parlor was, of course, a big hit. We eat a lot of ice cream on the road.

No, they don't hate kids. They hate stupid, thoughtless, foolish parents.

Things That Are Spooky Weird About Downtown Chicago

Spent a big long day going from place to place with the kids while Toni checked out the Institute. Zelda, Orson and I were left at Millennium Park, Zelda ran around the big metal Bean, and was roundly ingored by some rude seven year-olds while splashing around the fountain with the big faces.

A few really weird things jumped out at me as we wandered around the city:

- None of the storefronts are empty.
- A large number of people work here.
- A large number of people live here.
- A frightening number of people appear to have come here from out of town for no other reason than to do and see things here (I think there's a word for such people, but I don't know what it is.)

Also, we went all the way out to the suburbs and back and didn't need to use my car. Odd. How did we do that?

We visited a very nice school in Oak Park. Ben D. came out to join us, he gave us a quick tour of the neighborhood, and was a sweet Uncle Ben to the kids. There were also some super teenagers in the park who taught Z. how to use a frisbee.

This place f***ing rocks.

Big Shoulders

I don't believe I have ever driven in Chicago at night before last night - it's pretty stunning. Entering New York City by car is like sneaking in from underneath, coming to Chicago (is it all too sexual? excuse me, I just woke up) is like flying down in your own plane. Suddenly, there it is, and it's pretty big. Great skyline.

The kids were super, Toni dug the mix tape (I'll get that up eventually) and we got here in just enough time to use the pool. We are staying in the Chicago City Center Holiday Inn - Toni got a $99 a night rate, which is incredible, this place is fabulous. The staff is fabulous, the room is fabulous, fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.

I gotta go, Toni heads off to an interview soon, and I will be alone with the kids in a strange city for most of the day. Gotta make plans.