• Accidentally looking directly into the flash of a camera.
    • The orange Strobies logo.
  • The parent who had clipped a big, plastic portable fan on to her baby’s car seat carrier.
  • The planetarium.
    • Museum smell.
    • The flickering of the plastic planets in a solar system display.
  • The flyers, everywhere on the North Side of Chicago right now, advertising “$1500 CUSTOM WEBSITE,” from Edgewater to the Loop.
  • The Korean spa.
    • The laminated signs above masseuses’ stations: “ANDY,” “JAKE,” “DANNY.”
    • The wooden foot rests with wood-burned, script warnings: “Don’t take it.”
    • The blood vessels in my butt cheeks pulsing after sitting on a sauna floor.
    • Eating hard-boiled eggs cooked in a fire sudatorium.
    • The video of a chef cutting beef with scissors.
    • Talking about a smell with Sammy, referring to it as part of “the smelltrack of our lives.” (I’m proud of that one.)
    • The miniature staircase leading up to the dumpster outside.
  • My discomfort with the word “last” (as in “last decade” or “last work”) since it can be taken to mean “final” instead of “most recent.”
  • Learning that Marimekko is a Finnish brand, not the name of a single Japanese designer.
  • Wondering whether the temperature of water affects plants when they slurp it up.
  • How the leaves have started falling already.