i suppose i should have mentioned it earlier, since we decided a week ago: we're buying a condo. we've decided to go the easy route (steve's personal motto is "give me convenience or give me death") and buy in our apartment building, which is converting to condos this summer. we're not buying the unit that we're in, since it's facing the lake and there's about a $50k premium for that (plus they're building a whole frickin' neighborhood, so the view is *totally* going to change).
anyway, it's a mirror image of our apartment, with a city view. it's also 14 floors higher and has "kitchen upgrades" like granite countertops, a cooktop stove and a better sink.
so we're pretty excited. of course, now we're going to be poor for awhile, saving up for the down payment and making sure that we rebuild the nest egg that we had prior to giving the developer a big fat check.
so that's what's new with us.
we're assuming we'll make a pretty darn good return on our investment, and since things seem to be going well overall with life here in chicago, we're happy to stay awhile and plunk our money down to gain some equity.

on a very different note, it was awesome to be able to see a few old friends on a mini-trip back to michigan (right about 40 hours, including two very full nights of sleep since i've been sick). hooray for old friends! hooray also for the supermixed crowd at the habitat on weekends!

also (and this is for zac), i think the pay-for-placement thing is lamer-than-superlame when you're talking about force-fitting a product like fast food into rap songs. what will those crazy marketers think of next?!?