feel the illinoise

well, dear readers, it has been such a crazy day that i'm just now getting around to blogging about our trip to chicago this weekend. mind you, i apparently had three hours earlier to put up all of the pictures onto my sister site, but hey. what's more important: wordsy words words or pictures of me, brian, and terry shirtless? i think we all know the answer to that question. and it ain't words.

to make a long story short, i have completely fallen in love with chicago. ok, so maybe i should make that short story a little longer. chicago's a little smaller than new york, which makes it feel more manageable; terry's neighborhood, specifically, is really beautiful. it's got fantastic, chicago-y architecture and not once did we have to drive around looking for parking for 45 minutes. sure, you have to walk through kind of a scary ghetto to get there from the train, but if you walk in the other direction for ten minutes you're on the gay beach. on gorgeous lake michigan. which, if there aren't warnings about dangerous bacteria levels, is clean and beautiful.

there seems to have been themes to this weekend's visit: "wow, i cannot get over how clean it is here;" "wow, it totally doesn't smell like rotting garbage, piss, and feces in your front yard!" or "wow, this hamburger doesn't cost $17 with an extra $4.50 for french fries." seriously, folks, it's a damned good thing that i visited chicago after i moved to new york, because if i had seen how terry was living when i was still stuck in baltimore (no offense, my dear baltimore friends, but you know what i mean), it would've been like the knife twisting in my side.

all in all, it was a wonderful visit. i only get to see terry twice a year these days, if i'm lucky, so that was good. his apartment is adorable and inspired me to, you know, go ahead and hang the pictures that have been sitting around my own apartment since april. on top of that, we got to see some touristy things, meet terry's friends, see lyday a ton, meet her wonderful boyfriend (i won't say fiancee...YET), and hang out with newly-brick-shithouse brian. the only person i missed (besides, you know, that branch of my family that i didn't call...oops.) was ben. and, dammit, i'll make that happen sometime soon.

i've decided that i need to go back to chicago in the dead of winter. or i needed something like a rape or mugging to happen to me. you know, just something to really make me despise the place. because right now i'm ready to pack up and move, no matter how much i love new york.