And I'm sitting in a building across the street from the Sears tower, admiring a deflated hedgehog inflatable chair, having recently come into possession of an IL-registered white minivan with a cracked passenger side-view mirror and started the nascent revival of my faded ASL abilities thanks to Nikki and Andrew (who also has an amazing array of collared shirts and some super-cool books). Chris has the only key to the ILXO office, but the rest of us should procure our own soon.

A stable bed, a large bag of shrimp chips, and the ability to get cashiers' checks are also good things to have around. Unexpected send-off parties (Chris and Mad, thank you for completely making our day!) are also pleasant surprises, and oh my god music has high frequencies again and it's confusing (in other news, I took my hearing aids out of storage).

Last weekend was my high school reunion. IMSA people are wonderful and I miss them and it's awfully strange to have beers with people you last knew when everyone was far low the age when that was legal. Tonight we are staying at Tank's, since Libertyville is closer to her house than ours. Tomorrow we will go a-warehousin' and it shall be educational.

At some point in time, I will have to explain many of the sentences in this post in more detail, but for now I'll just leave the cryptic shorthand hanging. Right now, I have several hundred points of correspondence to catch up on, and way too many receipts I don't want to think about having to go through (accounting/finances/budgeting is not my strong point, and I'm trying to find ways to automate/outsource it in a hurry).

The important thing is that life is good and I'm hale* and happy.

*well, okay; my wrists are still wonky, and my ankle probably needs that brace, and the left side of my jaw continues to spontaneously dislocate, but none of those are... y'know, scurvy** or anything.

**also an inside joke that will get explained later.