It feels both much longer and much shorter than just four months since I left Chicago. I went back this weekend and saw my friends and went to the Wisconsin state fair with my family (where I saw a girl sleeping, curled up in the hay with her cow as if it were just a big, big dog). The only aspect of the trip that didn't quickly become familiar was the humidity. I wonder if that means that excessive humidity is naturally foreign to the human body in a way that cheese on a stick is not.

The one other weird thing was that I could smell the dirt in Chicago. While I lived there the soil seemed crappy and sandy, but I guess crappy can be relative.

I still feel lucky to live in southern California. I can't remember who described Pasadena as "Too pleasant to work in", but it's true in the sense that Kurt Cobain would have ended up doing alt-country if he lived here.