July 10, 2012

Yesterday I got up at about 5 a.m. and set to work on a short article that needed to be done, and then worked on a larger article that also needed to be done. At about 7, I went back to bed, not thinking I'd be able to go back to sleep. But I must have, since I got up at 8 surprisingly refreshed. Good thing, too, because I needed to be considering what I had to do the rest of the day.

I finished both the short and the long articles by 10:30, with time for a quick shower thrown in. Then I drove to Glenview, a northern suburb, where I needed to take photos of a lunch gathering of a real estate organization. The event was at a kind of place I rarely see: an upmarket golf club, complete with all the posh trappings.

I took pictures of four groups of people, talking to them about their business, then drove back in time to pick Lilly up from her summer school class. When I got home, I took Ann to no-extra-charge, supervised swimming at a nearby park district pool, and then went home to write most of my daily column about the economy, as well as my next weekly contribution for another publication, along with a phone interview thrown in. I almost finished both bits of writing by about 4, when I picked up Ann and left her at home with Lilly, since I had another event to go to, this one in the southwest suburbs. Traffic was awful.

Never mind the details, the main thing was the event included a 30-minute walking tour of UPS' Chicago Area Consolidated Hub, a 1.5 million-square-foot package sorting and distribution facility. I'd never seen the likes of that. I was going to stay for the dinner, but I had something else scheduled in the evening: a concert to attend, scheduled before I knew I going to be doing these other things on the same day.

So I drove back home -- traffic was much lighter by this time -- picked up Yuriko and drove to the northern suburbs. We got to Ravinia only a few minutes after the concert started, and stood for the whole thing. We didn't mind a bit, because we got to see Natalie Merchant.

We got home by 11:30, and I polished off the work I hadn't quite finished in the afternoon, despite exhaustion. I filed the bastards just after midnight and went to sleep without much trouble.

A remarkable day. But I'm glad I don't have too many like it.