Tuesday we drove all day. Left Akron early, crossed Ohio, crossed Indiana, approached Chicago. Further proof of Harold Hill's untrustworthiness - Gary, Indiana is a blighted shithole.

Not a huge fan of the tri-state tollway either, but it got us around Chicago without having to go directly through the city. Then we fled out to Rockford and straight up to Madison. We're staying in the Collins House, a B&B on the shores of Lake Mendota, one of two lakes that the original part of Madison is neatly shoehorned between. The house is nice, "a classic example of the Prairie School style of architecture," the brochure calls it. Designed for Collins, a lumber tycoon, by a pair of architects named Claude and Starck in 1911. Very nice design, arts and crafts style interior in the public spaces. Elisa and I are both big arts & crafts fans. The lake stretches out beneath our room. Very nice indeed.



This is Collins House seen from the beach on Lake Mendota below it. Our room's at the rear, looking out over the water.

Madison itself seems a pretty livable city - very much the college town. State street, which runs from the capitol dome to the university campus, is lined with good restaurants, along with cheap student bars and the usual patchouli-laden bead and gimcrack stores. It was warm when we got there - 70 degrees after leaving behind 39 in Akron. Everyone was out in James Madison park, adjacent to the Collins House along the shore of the lake, running around in shorts and t-shirts, chasing frisbees and soccer balls or just sunning themselves. Spring has clearly arrived here, or at least close enough for the students to start acting like it's here.

News on our house appears to be good. Lots of interest, as we expected. Our realtor actually put in the MLS listing that we'd consider offers starting Wednesday at noon. This seems a good idea, encourages people to get their offers in if they're interested as others are likely to at that point and if yours isn't in, one of them will get the house. A realtor who wants the house for herself is supposedly writing up an offer, and we've gotten a couple of messages from realtors on our home number leaving courtesy messages that they'll be around at a given time to show it to some very interested party. Our guy thinks the realtor is probably going to offer at least list price as she's been trying to get ahead of the curve and generally seems to really want the house. I suppose we'll know how many and what kind of offers we've got by tomorrow evening.

From here, after breakfast tomorrow morning with Clarion pal Karen Meisner, we're off on the next leg as the great migration of 2004 rolls inexorably on.