Summer in Chicago is Beautiful; You Should Come

When I drove to Fort Wayne to get my last load of stuff I only took a small bag - a change of clothes and that was about it.  It was at that point that I realized that the Driveabout as I'd known it was over.  There's a convenience to having most of your possessions in your car, but there's a weight to it, too (both actual and metaphorical).  And while I will continue to Drive About, the fact that the majority of my daily stuff is not packed in the Vue anymore seems significant.  Perhaps for that reason I've not been in a blogging mood for a couple of weeks, but I have thought about you all a lot and decided tonight that it was past time to catch up.

After two weeks IKEA finally got me all my furniture - and that was only because I schlepped back out to Schaumburg - so my apartment is now all done.  (I still need to hang some stuff on the walls, and put away my office, but I'm in no rush to do that.)

Behold the living room in its finished condition:

It is definitely nice to be able to sleep on my own bed - not a sleeper bed, not a bed at someone else's house or a hotel, but my own bed.  That, along with the general disarray that is my office area, makes this place feel like my home.  Hooray!

But the month of May has not been only about the trials and tribulations of decorating.  I've been getting used to Chicago and loving every minute of it.

For instance, the Lakeshore is amazing and it's a block away from my apartment.  The bike trail, which ends just north of me, goes 18 miles south.  I've ridden it as far as Navy Pier, which is about seven and a half miles south.  The going part was great; it was on the return trip that I discovered just how windy the Windy City can be.  Let's just say I got a much better workout on the way back, and had I stopped pedaling for even a few seconds I'm sure the wind would have knocked me over.  But the wind was a minor inconvenience compared to the beauty of the lake that day.

And it's not always that windy - last Sunday I rode my bike to church, which is conveniently located a few blocks off Lakeshore Drive and Belmont, so I can take the bike trail most of the way, and the ride back home was easy.

Even when the sun isn't shiny it's beautiful.  This is where I take my morning walk.

The one good thing about having to sleep on my sofa bed for a couple of weeks was that one morning I woke up in time to see the sunrise over the lake, which I see from the living room but not the bedroom.  It was amazing.  I couldn't get any good pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it.  The most interesting thing is that it takes most of an hour for the light to get from the north side of Lake Michigan to the sky over the south end.  You see oranges and pinks from the sun beginning to peak up over the horizon at "my" end of the lake, and the sky is still completely blue-gray downtown and further south.

I've had no trouble figuring out the L, but the buses have been a bit more problematic even with the handy aid of Google Maps Transit Directions.  It took me an hour and a half, and two buses, to get home from downtown one evening when I tried to do it at rush hour.  Note to self:  don't do that again.  Walk another half mile to the train.  But generally I've been able to get around.  The second weekend I was here I flew to Pittsburgh for my cousin's daughter's Bat Mitzvah (she did great!) and took two buses and a train to get to O'Hare.  It took longer than predicted because the buses don't run quite according to schedule, but for $2.75 you can hardly beat it.  I have my own CTA card and now that I know how everything works I feel very much like a Chicagoan.

On a related note, my IPass transponder finally started working so I can zip through toll booths lickety-split. That has been helpful in my trips to IKEA, among other places.

I hate to get all political on you, but when I have an experience where dealing with the government is substantially better than dealing with a private corporation, I feel obligated to share that with you.  And no, this story does not involve IKEA, which I've resolved just to let go of so as to avoid high blood pressure.

Okay, I have a "credit freeze" on my credit, which means that no one can check my credit without my allowing them to.  This is a good thing for reducing the risk of identity theft, but I will tell you that everything else about it is a pain in the behind.  First of all, you have to remember that you've frozen it, and not lose the letters that the credit bureaus send you (there are three of them, just to make things more time consuming for you) which contain your 10-digit personal identification number and the instructions for unfreezing your credit when you want someone to give you a loan, or approve a lease - or sell you high speed internet.  When you want such a thing, you have to call one or more of the credit bureaus - and that is as simple and as much fun as you'd think it would be.

I had unfrozen everything in late March, when my landlord had to run a credit check.  (That was a whole 'nuther drama, due to an inconsistency with my address, but the property manager finally got it worked out somehow.)  That was just for 30 days, then it refroze.  Of course, it was just after the 30th day that the cable guy called to sell me cable, which I didn't want, and high speed internet, which I do.  So I had to do another unfreeze for the one credit bureau they use, which is Experian.

My friend Plotts worked for Experian for a while, back when people in the United States still did that sort of thing, and he has nothing good to say about them.  He and I will have no argument about that topic.  Basically the deal with Experian is that you have to enter a bunch of personal information (PIN, social security number, birthday, address, zip code, phone number) into their system.  If everything matches (which it did in March when I unfroze things) then it's all good.  If not, you're just out of luck.  There are no humans available to help, and their website is as unfriendly as their phone system is.  You have no choice but to send them a letter (a letter!) with a bunch of documentation, and then hope that the good people in Honduras, or wherever they are, eventually get around to unfreezing your credit.  One of the pieces of information they require is a driver's license showing your current address.  And so, after being beaten down by Experian to the point where I was willing to send them their stupid letter (a letter!), I decided I had no other choice but to get an Illinois driver's license.

I know the people who issue driver's licenses have been back and forth between making the documentation requirements so onerous that no one can get a driver's license (at one point in Indiana 16-year-olds were expected to bring in utility bills showing proof of address) and so easy that, oh, I don't know, anyone who can drive can get one.  This can be a challenge when you move since no one really wants to be first to acknowledge that you aren't a criminal or a terrorist trying to get a fake ID.  In Illinois you need your current license, a social security card, another photo ID (luckily I have a passport) and two pieces of mail sent to you at your new address.

Unfortunately I had only brought a bank statement so things looked hopeless for a few moments while the guy at Thompson Center politely explained to me what was required.  And then a flash of hope - I happened to have my laptop with me, which I rarely carry around, and my lease was on my laptop!  And they accepted it, which amazed me.  In a good way.

Next I had to pass the written test.  I don't think I've taken a written driver's test since Ronald Reagan was President, and I didn't feel like spending $15 on the little book, so I was a bit nervous.  There were some "gimme" questions - such as "In order to reduce the likelihood of drunk driving, you should A) drink less, B) drink beer, or C) not drink at all."  Seriously.  I didn't make that up.  But I did miss one question - turns out that if you refuse a breathalyzer in Illinois not only is that probable cause to search you (I knew that), but they'll haul your drunk butt off to jail for five years if it's your second offense.  Good to know.  Some of the sign identification questions were tough, but apparently I can handle process of elimination pretty well, because I passed.  Which is good, because you pay your $30 fee prior to taking the test.  Those people at the Secretary of State's Office aren't idiots.

Finally, the picture.  Easy, right?  Not so much - I kept getting red eye and it took five takes to get one that didn't look like I was the Spawn of Satan.  The photographer was a funny older guy, who had his own little work area and seemed to like the autonomy he had to be a character, so he was, occasionally teasing people and laughing quite a bit.  There was a young woman ahead of me who didn't like her picture, returning about three minutes after she and her mother had left the office to ask for a new one.  The photographer laughed at her in a grandfatherly way.  "Honey, that's already down to Springfield by now."

Elapsed time?  Forty-five minutes.  That evening I spent more than that putting together all the information I needed to send to Experian - including a copy of the letter they had just sent to me at my current address telling me that a creditor had changed my address.  Right, Sherlock - that's the whole point here.  Anyway, I sent the letter a week ago and as of this morning the cable guy said he was still unable to run the credit check.  Sigh.  At some point in my future I will be able to watch movies on my laptop.  I have faith.

After leaving the Thompson Center, I met Beth, my business partner, at the City Club luncheon.  This is one of those groups that has speakers from various areas talk about different public policy topics.  Our purpose in attending was to hear what the City of Chicago is doing with data (more interesting than you'd think) and refresh some of Beth's contacts.  While she was talking to someone and I was politely standing there, I heard a woman's voice saying, "Karen Goldner, that is you!"  I turned to see a woman I probably haven't seen since 1969 - seriously - maybe we saw each other once in high school but that was it.  Her parents introduced my parents on a blind date, so her family has considerable significance for the Goldners, but I hadn't seen her in decades. I didn't even know she lived in Chicago!  Anyway, to run into her randomly at a luncheon with 300 people in a city I'd lived in for a week still makes me shake my head.  We snapped pictures to send to our moms.

Oh, I've been to a Cubs game, too!

We lost, but it was a lot of fun.

So, three weeks in, I'm beginning to feel like a Chicagoan.  I still need to find a place to get my oil changed and a doctor - one of the maintenance guys in my building has already told me about a great dentist in the building next door - but those will come in time.  (Actually, the oil change needs to come sooner than later, come to think of it.)  I'm starting to meet people.  Thursday night I am going to see a play in my neighborhood.  And I've gotten myself on something of a schedule for work, which at this point is mostly marketing but I feel like I'm making progress.  (Thanks to Christopher for being a great business coach!)

It's odd to think that two months ago I hadn't yet decided where I was going to be living, or when.  And now, Chicago is home.  Sweet Home Chicago, as the song says.

I can hardly wait to find out what happens next.