I don't think I fully appreciated how amazing the Harold Washington Library is until this afternoon. I knew it was an interesting place, with a lovely indoor garden on the top floor and some cool art. But today I went in for the books and went into a mild ecstasy walking through the fiction shelves. There are just so many books out there, many of them good and brilliant and wonderful, too many to read in one lifetime. I wandered along the shelves in visual and performing arts, mesmerized by art criticism titles and chronicles of rock bands. The strangest thing is that I feel the interiors of most libraries are sort of...unappealing. But all those books...dear lord, books make life worth living. I would live in a library or a bookstore just to be surrounded by mountains of them all the time.

Walking up Michigan Ave carrying my pillow, with down feathers stuck in my hair and all over my coat, ranks up as one of my favorite city moments. Participating in a mass pillow fight in front of the Art Institute tops it. Today was dubbed International Pillow Fight day. It was awesome. I did get whomped pretty good in the face a few times and it's a surprisingly good workout. There's still two and a half hours in the day, still time to celebrate!