I haven't been writing much at all lately, I know. I haven't really had the time. With the summer as short as it is, Alex and I both know what's going to happen far too soon-- essentially nine months in a row where quality time together will be precious and rare, while his classes consume him like always. While we've got the summer, we're taking advantage of it, and that means that while I can come up with blog or journal entries in my head staring out the window on the el, there's really very little time to actually write and upload them.

We've been having fun, though. Aside from the everyday things, we've managed to work in a number of good Chicagoland experiences. Two weekends ago was Taste of Chicago, fireworks, and free concerts; last weekend we walked around downtown, went bowling at House of Blues, and went to the Baha'i temple (pictures to follow); and this weekend, we've been to the Millenium Park grand opening, a Cubs game (standing room tickets, of course, as everything else is sold out), and tomorrow we're planning to visit the Chicago Botannical Gardens.

We had Joe Vess over for a nice visit last Wednesday, too, and spent nearly four hours talking about all sorts of things, from Wal-Mart to the new government of Egypt to the international global economy, among other less serious topics. (It's nice to be able to bring up the expiration of the Multi-Fiber Agreement and have people know what you're talking about and discuss it intelligently.) He's off to DC in a few weeks, to join everyone else under the sun.

Caught a link in Andrew Sullivan's blog to a New York Times article on young conservatives-- turns out Northwestern's own (or formerly Northwestern's own) Dave Weigel is quoted near the end. My spidey sense totally knew that was coming, for some reason. I could probably say a lot more about that, but I won't, at least not right now.

Okay, this is all scattershot and random, and I'm tired. One of these days there'll be a few more intelligent things to say, including the Closer to Fine post about how weird and complicated it is to combine one's deeply held beliefs about money and society with the actual earning (and disposal) of an income-- the post that's been sitting in draft form on Blogger for at least a week now. Until then... you'll have to put up with junk like this.  ¶ 12:42 AM