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At the last stop on Michigan Avenue, all of the busses were sorted by number. Eight 151 Sheridans within 15 minutes, followed by three of the usually very rare 145 Wilsons. Then, a pair of 147 Outer Drives, both so packed that I ended up riding pressed up inside the front windshield of one of them.

Strange pickup lines #168

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful, he leaned over the counter of the booth, and asked: "Are you... Australian?"

"No," I said, "except when I stand on my head."

Chicago Chainsaw Massacre

At 3AM this morning, I woke up to the sound of a chainsaw revving.

I thought, "Surely, it's just an asshole on a dirtbike, doing doughnuts on the street outside my apartment."

We get our fair share of lively partiers with loud engines, but this wasn't one of them. It was, in fact, a man with a chainsaw, outside my window. I had a momentary flash of Friday the 13th paranoia, before seeing that he had been sent by the city to remove a large tree branch that had fallen across my street. All the same, it took a while before I could get back to sleep. I've had these weird nighttime rescue missions happen before, when I was so tired, I thought I was hallucinating the fire trucks, or the DEA raid down the way.

But no, I live in the world's most exciting neighborhood (at 3AM.)

Writer's Workshop

"Are you a writer?" she asked.

"Yes...yes I am," only after I say this do I realize it's true.

"I knew it. You look like a writer."

(Is that, "You look like a writer: sexy, hip, intellectual," or "You look like a writer: disheveled, antisocial, frumpy?")

"So..." she says, "what do you write?"

"Novels...and things. I've finished a first draft, but need to go back and edit it."

"Is it due out soon, then?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it. It has a long way to go," I tell her. Then I tell her I'm also a consultant, which is also true, but which feels like a cop-out somehow.

I ask her about what she does (runs a tea website, spends a lot of time outdoors). We chat for a while, and then I leave to catch the 146, thinking I'd better get back to this writing stuff, because it's not good enough to look like a writer.

Overheard on the EL

Girl on Cell Phone: "I mean, he was going on and on about his vacation, like it was, I don't know, Paris or the Riviera or something. He went to Schaumberg. Give me a break...what did he do, stop by the IKEA?"

Everlasting Blogstalker

The local coffee house, Pause, is the spot to sit in the summer and work on your blog posts, or in my case, the last MBA paper of my life. Huzzah.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who likes the place. While I'm sitting in the front window, a clatch in the back are namedropping the Chicagobloggers weblisting are in the big back table, a couple of Gen X slacker types are tap-tap-tapping away at laptops in the church pews, and a guy who looks suspiciously like local microceleb Jake from NoFo is sitting out front giving me quizzical looks because I'm staring squinting stalking politely trying to figure out whether I recognize him or not.

Either way, hi, Jake.