So I arrived in Chicago, safe albeit less than sound after sitting next to a genuine schizophrenic for eight hours on the train. It was interesting listening to his muttered rantings. There was something about a dead-as-a-doornail black man -- there were a lot of imaginary corpses, in fact -- and something about the military with their helicopters. Enemies all around him. Twenty-two in that train car alone, by his own estimate.

Also, to no one's great surprise, religion came into the mix. There's a golden tape recorder getting all of this down, and (he must have got a glance at some pages from Insomnia, the book I was reading) people read trash and it makes their minds trash. Most memorable of all was his question, seemingly directed at no one in particular: Are you 11,492 years old?

That's the most exciting thing to happen to me so far, of course. As I should have expected, I don't really have anything to do here in Chicago. The MAPH program doesn't start until September. My computer and bike are still at home, to brought here by my parents at their earliest convenience. I've run out of cash, and I'm even starting to run out of books. Though I am in a library right now, so that's probably not a problem.

I've spent most of the past few days making the apartment livable. It's weird the kind of things I've had to buy. A shower curtain, a water filter (the city water smells and tastes so strongly of chlorine that I can hardly stomach it otherwise), a trash can. Stupid things I'd never have thought of.

I had a bit of an adventure yesterday, retrieving two of my bags from the Amtrak station because my train had been an hour late on Tuesday and there was no time to both get them and get to the Housing Office before it closed. (I hopped in a taxi moments after exiting the train and made it to the Housing Office with about five minutes to spare.)

Hauling my bags seven blocks to the Metra station, because I wasn't going to piss money away on another taxi, I had three beggars offer me their services. Except, naive country boy that I am, I mistook them for good Samaritans (even the one who needed both money for a train ticket home and heart medicine for his sick daughter was momentarily convincing) and was in each case ultimately put in the awkward position of being asked for money I didn't have for services I didn't need.

The last guy helped me sufficiently that I was guilted in to giving him 40 cents, the change left after I'd bought the train ticket and really the last of my walking around money. I renew my objections to the institution of begging.

Ah, Chicago...