Happy Memorial Day. I mean that.

I'm getting a chapbook ready to send off to a few places by the end of the week. It's mostly made up of poems I've written to my friend Aaron McNally on his facebook page over the last few weeks. Is that cheating? Does that count as "already published poetry." Anyway, if you're friends with both Aaron and I, you've read every first draft.

Writing poems that way has been freeing for me. I don't know if it's having an exact idea of audience, or if it's the instant "publishing," or if it's simply the challenge of trying to write a poem for him everyday in the free seconds I have at work, or if it's all these things combined, but it has been great fun. And there's something about having to write everyday that makes your place in the world a little more interesting.

It's full on Spring here in Chicago...just in time for Summer.

I'm moving in 3 weeks and have hardly packed a thing.

I think the greatest discovery I've made in the last few weeks is the Goose Island Pub Pack; you get 3 bottles each of the Honker's Ale, 312, their IPA and the Summerland.

Last Friday I sat up until 4 am talking to a bald guy in a ladies wig about his divorce and drank 3 bottles each of Honker's Ale, 312, IPA and Summerland.

I got all my training materials to teach at the Workshop next Fall...this shit just got real, but I am really excited to be able to have an answer I'm proud of to the question, "What are you doing now?"

My wife got me a new pork pie hat yesterday. I hate hipsters, but occasionally they do some good things, like making pork pie hats trendy and easy to find again.