I’m not dead, I’m just out in the world. It’s a sunny day, a blue sky day, a day for lying on your back on the grass; it’s a Beatles day, a hop-skip-and-a-jump day, a day for singing down the street and smiling like every time you look around you see someone you haven’t seen in years; it’s an everyone’s-in-it-together day, an our day, a day of days. It’s fucking SPRING, you guys.

This city is full of graffiti and architectural decoration, both of those things being equally delightful. Its buildings crowd together like dogs on a cold night; its streets are skinny as pipe-leg jeans. Its people are stoic and a little intimidating, but if they do eventually smile it is charming as all get out. Its beer is delicious. Its potato dumplings are even more so.

Everything is worth looking at. Good thing we’ve got time.

We’re leaving for Prague tonight, and several good omens have already occurred: As we were walking up Woodlawn to run some pre-trip errands, a siren-ing ambulance passed on the left. A moment later, the beautiful husky with notes of coffee in its coat that we sometimes say hello to on that street lifted its whole head and howled in a deeply resonant echo of its wolfy ancestors and the distress of the day. I realize that this might not seem like a good omen to everyone, but it did to me.

The other day, I heard (and we both saw) the first cardinal of the year, on the Midway.

Zheli has been making motions to wave goodbye to us with her foot, so I’m not too worried about her.

Sometimes I go to make a post here and I remember those of you to whom I owe emails, and I think, “Should I refrain from posting, so that they don’t feel indignant that I am posting instead of writing them emails?”

And then I look at the post I am making and realize that no one could possibly want to receive the email I would end up writing with this brain, this moment.

In an inspired effort to be as personally productive as our brand new president, I sent out two emails this evening: one inquiring about jazz vocals lessons with a local singer who also teaches, and one inquiring about the possibility of becoming a volunteer bird specimen preparer (a.k.a. amateur taxidermist) at the Field Museum. I may not be able to afford the former, and I am somewhat unqualified for the latter, so I am not holding out high hopes for follow-through—but gosh darn it, if there is one thing I can do extremely well, it is send out emails.

There you go. Congratulations, Mr. President. Congratulations, me. We both deserve cheesecake.

I’m a bit mired in the necessity for money-making at the moment, so all my good intentions for luxurious hedonism are sort of on hold. Still, as Ross reminds me, someone’s got to pay for luxurious hedonism. And I should have a small break in the clouds come Tuesday, when a couple of short-term deadlines will be over and I can wrestle out the crick that’s forming in my neck from all this computer-work and no play.

You will, moreover, be glad to know that Ross and I are not letting the fact that every news station in Chicago insists on describing the temperatures that will arrive tomorrow as “brutally cold”* stop us from going to the opera again. This time we’re going to get our Pinkerton syndrome on. (Some people might say I’ve already done that.)

*The news folks are also keen on the phrase “dangerously cold wind-chills.” January in Chicago is fun!