Another Saturday night at the coffeehouse.
I'm even more broke this weekend than usual, which is saying something, because of blowing a relatively huge amount of money for me ($30) a couple of nights ago on my friend Katherine's birthday; so once again it's a trip to Intelligentsia Coffeehouse in Lakeview for me, because it's a place where I can sit outside and people-watch/read for a couple of hours on a Saturday night simply for the cost of a cup of coffee. Anyway, so it's 10pm now, and I'll be heading back in about a half-hour, to catch the two episodes of "South Park" channel 26 shows on Saturday nights, and then off to bed.
It's been a very, very productive week, by the way, as I try to get a lot of my loose ends finished up here at the end of the summer, before fall starts up and I get started on new projects altogether. Oh, and speaking of which, I'll be having what MIGHT be my last bike adventure of 2007 this Monday, on the American holiday Labor Day, although will not be making a big-ass 30-mile trip to the suburbs like I had promised myself earlier this summer that I would -- the hemmorhoids and knee injury I developed this summer pretty much put the kibosh on the idea of me going much longer than 15 miles on any given bike trip, which of course is always the chance you take when you exercise over the age of 35, and especially someone like me who had never exercised before this year (and indeed smoked up to two packs a day before this year). So instead I've decided to make a tour of the near-southside for Labor Day, and all the very interesting areas found grouped together in that section of the city -- Bronzeville, the IIT campus, Chinatown, the Prairie Avenue historic district, the lakefront museum campus, the South Loop and Printers Row. Believe it or not, all of these districts can be found within a five-mile distance of each other, starting at the 35th Street el station and heading north to the Loop; that's basically what I'm going to do on Monday, is take the train down to 35th, spend the day in that five-mile section, then that afternoon quickly bike the six miles from Printers Row back to my neighborhood of Uptown. That'll then give me yet one more set of photos and videos for an eventual bike map at my site this fall, along with the others I've collected this summer but haven't gotten to lay out yet (including a map of the entire 18-mile lakefront bike trail, one of the westside park system, one of the southside's Jackson Park and Southshore Cultural Center, and one showing how to safely take inner-city vehicular roads from the northside to the Loop). And that all in all gives me five more bike maps to put together this autumn and winter, to add to the three I've already put together (which you can find at jasonpettus.com/maps if you're interested), plus of course any other bike adventures I might manage to squeeze in during 2007, before the weather turns too crappy to bicycle for good.
Oh, and guess what this Wednesday is? It's my 13th anniversary of moving to Chicago! Oh, and guess what the next day after that is? It's my six-month anniversary of quitting smoking! Can you even believe it? I'VE BEEN A NONSMOKER FOR SIX MONTHS NOW. Yeah, I know, I can scarcely believe it myself, to tell you the truth. Anyway, lots of big things happening this coming week, as you can probably tell by now; and then after that, it's a permanent goodbye to summer and a permanent hello to autumn, and to days filled with a lot less bicycling and a lot more video-watching. Sigh.
