Went to the MCA yesterday and was wholly underwhelmed. I'd been there once before to see the Jenny Holzer exhibit (which was very cool) but didn't go upstairs to see any of the other exhibits. Well, the thing is, I didn't ever really need to go upstairs. They have like 3, 4 artists featured and I didn't really "get" any of them. The biggest exhibit upstairs was very engineering/physics heavy, and frankly, I have no interest in that sort of thing. I think they swap out the exhibits pretty regularly, so I guess I'll try again on another free Tuesday.

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I also went to look at an apartment yesterday and I am getting pretty sick of people lying about what neighborhood their properties are in. There was nothing Logan Square-ish about this place--the sidewalks were crumbling, the yards overgrown with weeds, and I'm pretty sure if I was there after dark there would be hookers and drug dealers on the corner. The agent called while I was on my way there and had to cancel, but I didn't get the message until I was standing outside of this building looking up and down the street in complete horror. If these are my options, I'll stay where I'm at.

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I didn't finish my ms revisions or get them to Jay yet. My new deadline is today at 12:00. I've got 4 hours to get this thing in shape.

One of the things I'm trying to do (I've almost decided which poems are staying and which are going) is to re-order the book without relying on chronology--primarily because I don't want a chunk of childhood poems right at the beginning. But they've been in a certain order for so long, I'm having a hard time imagining them as separate pieces again. What a strange process this is.

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Canceling netflix may have been a bad idea. Requesting movies from the Chicago Public Library is painfully slow. And now that all my TV shows are done for the summer, there are no good free episodes to watch online.

Maybe I'm just not a hard-core enough writer, but there are only so many hours a day that I can use my brain, and after that, I just want to stare at a flashing screen.

Making like a tourist

It's been such a whirlwind year (okay, only 10 months) that I haven't gotten to see as much of Chicago as I feel I should have. That's why this week is tourism week for me. Some of the places I plan to check out are: The Field Museum (maybe--it's a little pricey and I'm on a budget), The Museum of Contemporary Art (I've already been, but it's free on Tuesdays, so that's where I'll be today), The Lincoln Park Zoo (free every day! And I hear there are some really interesting gardens/conservatories adjacent to it), The Art Institute (which I've also been to already, but didn't spend as much time there as I'd have liked. Plus Ilya Kaminsky is reading on Thursday night, which is also when admission is free). One of these days while I'm downtown, I'll check out the Harold Washington Library on Mary B's recommendation. Also, the Shedd Aquarium just reopened, but it's kind of expensive and I'm not really into fish, so I'll probably skip that one for now.

I suppose a real tourist would do some shopping, or at least some window shopping, so I'll see if I can fit that in. But frankly, I get alot more excited about $9 tee shirts at Target than I would about the haute-coture that I can look at on Michigan Ave.

More importantly, I'm hoping the weather forecast for the week (rain daily) is wrong, because I wouldn't mind wandering around Millennium Park a bit, too.