Well, the apartment studio is definitely coming together (definitely not a studio apartment – the new place has two bedrooms, a living room, another room with a fireplace, and the kitchen and the bathroom, all for a price that's staggeringly affordable compared to life back in D.C.), and now it's time to play catch-up on the client projects that I'd been shirking. Hey, what can I say? Transporting oneself across the country takes time, not to mention healing from one of the most horrific sicknesses I've had in the last bunch-of-years. Suffice it to say that the sore throat led to inner ear pressure, which led to a ruptured eardrum, which has led to my basically losing hearing in my right ear for four to six weeks. It's coming back, though, which is making me feel incredibly relieved, and it no longer hurts like crazy and isn't leaking anymore, so all things considered, I'm doing okay.

Anyway, so, yes. The new place is coming together nicely – for the first time in almost three years my work area is no longer in my bedroom, which is one of the few ideas from Feng Shui that doesn't make me snicker. That's definitely a perk. And living with one of my best friends on the planet is also a major perk. I'm a lucky guy – I go from living with one best friend to living with another. God help me if I ever need to find a roommate that's a total stranger. I don't think that's happened since my freshman year in college.

And, today I finished one of those things I've been trying to do for a long, long time: added credit-card payment as an option to Dreamsbay.com. Thanks to the beauty of PayPal, I can now have my clients pay with plastic without it costing me an arm and a leg. I'm thrilled. One more step towards professionalism. Someday, when I actually get an office, I'll look around and say, "Hey! I made it!"

At which point, knowing me, I'll probably throw in the towel and change my career to something silly like Olympic figure skating, or something equally impossible.

So, yes, that's what's happening here in Chicago. Again, apologies for the intermittent updates. There's just so much to see and do that I don't feel like being attached to a keyboard any more than I can help it. One of these days I'm going to take the old camera out and go to town, though. There's a ton of neat stuff around here. Oh, well. As I seem to be saying a lot lately, "One day at a time."

Onward!