Yes, Karen found one in Rockford. It had a crack (maybe that's part of the manufacturing), and it's probably not as kitschy cute as the one we saw in Valparaiso, but that's the way it goes.

Actually, that was the only real antique we bought. I got something for some of the friends we're visiting next weekend, but since they might read this, I won't be more specific. And we bought a ridiculous number of books at Borders -- Welcome to the World Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg, Nick Hornsby's High Fidelity, an Emerson anthology, and American Pie, a book about pies across the country I heard about on Morning Edition Friday. And Karen got a bunch of books too. The difficulty is I keep buying books, but since I have so many magazines I subscribe to that I try to read cover to cover, I don't read many of the books. (Most of my reading time was during my commute, which is now a five-minute drive. Not that I'm complaining about that aspect.)

Rockford, as it turns out, is a little more than an hour away driving mostly on Interstate 90 with Karen at the wheel. (She has grudgingly accepted the nickname Princess Leadfoot because of her driving, pinched from the late lamented comic strip Second Chances.) We took state highways coming back, which were far prettier (and let us know just how close the farmlands are to our neck of the woods). Anyway, it's a day trip from Wheaton, not an overnight -- although we've now been to two attractive Hampton Inns.

Now, the only thing I have to do is burn all these Superhits CDs by July 18, a complicated task given I spent one weekend night out of town and I'm going to be out of town most of next weekend. Why do I have all these self-imposed deadlines? Goodness knows.