This is a long weekend. I didn't figure that out til Thursday.

Yesterday we got a ride from Dawn to the post office to pick up a bunch of parcels Kate had sent from Japan. It turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. Kate had addressed them to "Toby", but I only had ID with my full name on it, and apparently it wasn't enough for the last name and the first three letters of the first name to match. Kate pointed out that she was the one who had sent it, and was clearly identified as the sender on the postal form. The lady took a look at Kate's name and our Japanese address and remarked something to the effect of, "This is from Kenya or something." We weren't sure how to respond to that. "Kenya" is indeed a possible Japanese name, but it wasn't written anywhere on the label, unlike "Japan", which was. In the end, happily, I managed to get the parcels, but only after offering up a stack of cards plus a receipt with my address on it to the gods of the USPS. They turned out to mostly contain Kate's clothes, though, which was a bit disappointing.

Later that day Kate and I went to the departmental "Coffee Hour" (which generally lasts two hours, and has lots of beer, but never any coffee), and I introduced her to some of the other people in the department. (Well, I did some introductions. I missed some. The social graces are not my greatest strength.) This was followed by Thai food and random game playing.

Just this night we went to the Checkerboard Lounge for the first time, a blues club that has in the past hosted the Rolling Stones and some guy named "Muddy Waters". (Apparently Chicago has some sort of reputation for this sort of stuff.) Unfortunately the band had a few hiccups. Apparently the drummer had some trouble getting there, so they had to call up a replacement drummer. While waiting for the replacement, a lady who wasn't in the band sang a few songs about being an "old dirty lady" (I'll take her word for it), which was pretty awesome. The replacement, when he showed, did a great job for some guy they just called up out of nowhere, though he wasn't quite as good as the real drummer who showed up sometime around midnight. (What happened to him? Who knows.) Overall the show was great, though.