One great point is living one block away from a grocery store. The one nearest us is Jewel-Osco, which is about like Albertsons. In fact, some research Colin did last night revealed that it actually IS Albertsons, or at least is own by them. So there you go! And when I suddenly realize that I don't have the right kind of fake meat, I can send Colin out to the store with a minimum of guilt. And we are shopping every few days rather than doing a big trip once a week, which means we get to eat much fresher food.
Related downside: no recycling! It's an outrage. We know that some places in Chicago do have recycling, but not ours. In fact, we have not been able to locate a recycling dumpster anywhere near us. This makes our garbage fill up really fast, and also makes us feel guilty. Bottles? Cans? That's not garbage! (But the Jewel-Osco doesn't even seem to take returns.) We both grew up in the recycling age, and it feels weird to go back to more wasteful times. We felt especially bad when we were throwing away about twenty pounds of cardboard every day, while unpacking! Now we're getting used to it I guess, but it still feels sad.
On the other hand, some things that used to end up in the dumpster now have a better place to go: namely, items we are still fond of but have decided to let go. You know, shoes that don't quite fit, shirts that aren't too flattering, little toys, superfluous kitchen items.... All these are shamelessly donated to a little second hand shop two blocks away. It is called Brown Elephant, and the proceeds go to the Howard Brown Medical Center (which is involved with gay health issues) for the purposes of helping uninsured patients. Seems like a good cause, especially in a neighborhood with such a considerable and visible gay population! Admittedly, there has been a little volume-in (black sandals, ice trays that make arrow-shaped and plus-shaped ice-cubes, and one metal tray where we are keeping out knives), but the volume-out ration is definitely good.
a>More on city living later. On to the activities of the day. We have both been trying to get some work done, so we spent the morning picking away at dissertation work. Sigh. That two page per day goal can be pretty elusive at times. Since we also worked all day yesterday, we had decided we would take this afternoon off and go see the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Colin had had a prior fondness for Tillmans, and I agreed that at his best he's really good. He doesn't go so much for flashy subjects. He goes for bringing out the best in very casual and ordinary subjects. That is, if by ordinary you understand "stuff you see everyday" (genitalia included) rather than stuff that usually shows up in museums. So there's an odd and kind of appealing combination of the obscene and the mundane. There's a lot of stuff that's not obscene either, and the stuff that is is so casual.
Overall the result is sometimes amazingly good, and a lot of the time odd, and occasionally a bit boring. The installation style was amusing ("If one thing matters, everything matters"--Tillmans), giving the impression of him just throwing the bulk of his portfolio up on the walls of the museum. No captions. Very few frames. Wins my award for best museum picture-hanging technique: huge prints clipped with white binder clips and hung from little nails. Also small prints stuck on the wall with scotch tape. The unstructuredness made it fun if a little tiring. Quite worthwhile. Also made me think of my bro. Also made me want to take pictures of everything. Missed a great shot of an incredibly colorful garbage truck with two incredibly colorful garbage collectors riding on the tail-gate, just as we were coming out of the museum. The museum is out here as well as in there. A fun afternoon.All day it was overcast and clammy, but as we were eating dinner a deep fog came down. All the tall buildings were misted out at about the tenth floor. We went for a walk down to the lake and it was almost completely erased by the fog. Only a few feet of water off the edge of the steps. Sailboats with their sails bound up tight and their fog lights on glided by much closer than usual, trying to get back to harbor without getting lost I am guessing. Fireflies (and mosquitoes) were out in droves. The practice trapeze of the lakeside trapeze school was all lit up with bright lights, but no one was trapezing just then.
Also, on the walk back we say a whole horde of raccoons eating peanuts under some trees. One raccoon is nothing much to remark on--a little fierce up close, I suppose--but 10-15 raccoons have an incredibly "Don't mess with me" air. All the same, I really wanted to go over and investigate. It was just getting dark, and their little masked eyes were shiny and threatening, and cool. Colin dissuaded me by pointing out that a raccoon bite has got to be a sure route to a series of rabies shots!
But what an interesting day.
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