mia_mcdavid and I left Windycon about 10:30 on Sunday morning and drove into the city. I was pleased to find that I can still navigate the Spaghetti Bowl on the near south side.

Our destination was the neighborhood of Hyde Park, where I grew up and where we met back in 1976, when mia_mcdavid was a grad student at the University of Chicago. We went to a late (and good) breakfast at the Medici, of which my memories go back to the late ’60’s. The servers were wearing T-shirts with the restaurant’s logon on the front. On the back was

They were selling these T-Shirts and mia_mcdavid bought one for me.

After lunch we went to the main branch of the Seminary Coop Bookstore. I have been a member for something like 30 years. For me this bookstore is the most fun to explore that I have ever found. It is in a windowless basement with long passages and many alcoves branching off from them. If Tolkien’s dwarves had a library in Moria it would have looked something like this.

There is another branch a few blocks away on 57^st Street. This one is also in a basement, but it has some windows in front. We walked by it and I noticed one of the windows had a sign announcing that Barack Obama is one of their members.