I'm listening to Lush's 'Gala,' and it's fitting in quite nicely with how warm and toasty and good I feel as I sit here in my apartment, wearing a black turtleneck sweater on this chilly, icy evening. I'm smoking a cigarette and anticipating a lovely evening with my girlfriend.

I recovered quite nicely from my all nighter. Went to sleep at 6:15 pm Thursday night, and didn't wake up until 8 am Friday morning. As far as I could tell, the all nighter caused no ill effects besides a vague sense of disappointment that my fatigue at no point caused me to hallucinate.

It's getting to be that really beautiful time of year in Chicago. Incorrigible gentile that I am, I love Christmas and all things associated with it. They city just had it's annual festival of lights ceremony down on Michigan Avenue today. That's where they turn on the holiday lights in all the trees. It's really pretty, actually, and a quite lovely way for the store owners to let Chicago's consumers know that 'tis the season, so come on down and max out those credit cards.

I had to go down to school today to start and finish a rough cut of the project I'm working on for my digital editing class. On the L ride there and back, I was absorbed in the second in the series of Harry Potter books. I had long avoided it, as I do most things when they are very popular, but I decided to give it a fair chance. If you haven't checked out the series yet, let me warn you that Harry potter is Literary Crack. It's cheap, dirty and addicting.

Anyway, it was around 4ish when I began the ride back home. Somewhere between Sedgewick and Armitage I looked up from my book long enough to notice that the sun was setting in the west through a haze of thin, high clouds. Looking out through the east window, I could see that there were still occasional patches of blue sky, peeking out from the clouds like islands. As the train made it's twists and turns, I watched the snow whip around my car. I looked from east to west and back again as I took in the sunset and falling snow. The buildings turned that sort of yellowish orange/red color that they do when a setting Chicago sun strikes them. I reveled in that moment, how beautiful it was. It was one of those points in time you would capture if you could, and play back like a song when you needed it.