Chicago week so far

Occurs to me that I haven't really posted about my visit here since I arrived.

It's been kind of a blur. But a mostly good blur.

Arrived Saturday evening; stayed at the Write Inn, which got mediocre reviews online but which I had no problem with.

Sunday, switched over to the Carleton of Oak Park (they had no rooms Saturday night on such short notice), where I have a lovely huge room with a refrigerator and a microwave and even plates in a cupboard. And it's extremely close to M&K's place.

Since Saturday, have been spending most of each day hanging out with Mary Anne, usually with the kids. (Kavi was sick when I arrived, and she stayed home from school on Monday.)

Have been trying to help with the kids, but as usual I'm ending up not doing the hard parts; am mostly playing with them.

For example, on Monday M and K both had to be gone in the middle of the day for a couple of hours, so I agreed (albeit with some trepidation) to watch Kavi, who had stopped throwing up by then; we played half a game of Candyland (I think the color-only movement system is a remarkably clever-but-simple game mechanic for making it playable by young children), then Kavi declared that we were done with the colors of tokens we had picked, and she took them off the board and put the other two tokens at the starting space. So we started playing again, but she wasn't really paying attention to the game, and then she got up and declared that it was time for her nap; she went to her room and lay down, and I mostly-closed the door, and she slept for the whole rest of the time that M and K were gone. I sat on the couch and tried to read subs, but ended up drifting in and out of sleep for most of that time as well.

For most of the past couple days, I've been a little dazed. Not sure why; could be partly jet lag, general social tiredness, trying to get up too early (I've been waking up around 8 a.m. local time, which is fine until I remember that that's 6 a.m. according to my body clock), not getting enough sleep (6ish hours a night, which was enough for a while but I think may be taking its toll), not eating and drinking on my usual schedule, or any number of other things. I haven't really touched my to-do list since arriving, except for the bare minimum of magazine stuff. (Apologies to the half-dozen people I owe urgent responses to. Will try to send those responses tomorrow.)

On the plus side, it's been really good to see Mary Anne. This is my third visit to Chicago since WisCon (the previous two were at the end of May and in late July), but it somehow feels like it's been forever since I've seen her.

And I'm enjoying the kids. Kavi is always fun, and Anand is a little more engaged with the world than he was last visit. (He's walking now! And he'll be 1 in a couple days.)

And I've been walking Ellie, which I always enjoy. I wouldn't want a dog myself—too much responsibility—but I like playing with Ellie when I visit.

And as noted in previous entry, I made significant writing progress today.

And Oak Park is neat. It kind of reminds me of Los Gatos, only not as upscale and a little more cityfied. But some of the same feel: the shops, the relative ease of walking everywhere, the sense of it being a sort of a small town/neighborhood, but with a bit of a city vibe. (Note that I haven't really spent much time in Los Gatos; this is more gut feeling than anything I can defend.) Downtown Mountain View might be a bit like that if it weren't for the vast majority of the businesses being restaurants.

Oh, and I'm continuing to read Crusie's latest (Maybe This Time) in bits and pieces, usually just before bed or just after waking up. I'm not loving it as much as I usually love her books, but am liking it.

Anyway, so I'm enjoying my visit, just a little vague and muzzy too much of the time.

Think tonight instead of staying up reading subs for the next couple of hours I'm just gonna try going to sleep.

Tomorrow, will be visiting one of M's classes to tell them about the exciting, jet-setting life of a magazine editor. Maybe that will prompt me to finally get around to finishing and posting a blog entry I started writing two years ago, titled “What I should've said to this year's Clarion West students.”

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