This past weekend Shel and I were in the windy city looking for a place to live. As you may or may not know, we'll be relocating in fairly short order, because my job's office is moving. We're looking forward to the change; we've been in Chapel Hill since August 1996, and that is a loooooooong time. One M.A. and one ABD later, we're getting the hell out of here.

So we visited some friends, SCW and EW, who live up thereabouts in Lakeview, which is a part of Chicago. They were kind enough to put us up for several days and even help us go through the process of looking for places (SCW hooked us up with her realtor, and even came along on our first day of hunting).

Here are a coupla pics of their place. Click on the thumbs to see larger versions.



Lots of good food to be had in the area; we ate twice at a local pub called Charlie's Ale House, which had the best beef stew I've ever had. Also terrific were the shepherd's pie and the chicken pot pie. And those of you who know Shel and I know that it has to be some terrific pot pie to compete with Shel's home cooking. It was, incidentally, for this reason that I avoided ordering it. I let Shel get it and make any evaluative calls herself.

We're just starting looking, but we've definitely got some decent options in the Irving Park/Bucktown area. Next step: testing the commute to Hinsdale (where my office is located). I'm aiming to test that during my next visit, hopefully in mid-May.