There were three chapters to the day. The first involved sitting quietly in a cafe, sipping coffee, eating breakfast, and spending an hour doing not much of anything. It was rare and wonderful and necessary, given what was to come.

Chapter two involved moving boxes, tables, and poles, literally thousands of pounds of stuff, from our car to our booth in the conference hall where AWP is taking place. It was tiring and taxing and not much worthy of discussion.

Eventually, all the stuff was in the booth. Which meant it was time to set everything up. Robbi got straight to work. There is a lot to setting up the booth, from draping tables to rigging up the hardware that holds up our banner to hanging signage to doing all the pricing. We needed someone to keep everything straight.

August sat in his bouncer, barking orders.

It took about five hours, but eventually, we were done.

Here’s a general sense of what the booth looks like.

Here’s our front table.

And here’s the back wall.

Here’s the Ten Thousand Stories display (meant to catch the eye of the casual browser).

The book spinner.

The Makers Tile Game display.

The “slightly more literary” section.

The foreman.

And the eye candy.

I was so pleased with the booth, that I had to jump over it.

Either the booth was too mighty, or my legs were too tired. Alas, I did not make it.

Once the booth was set up, it was time for chapter three, a bit of wandering in downtown Chicago. The hotel where the conference is taking place is not far from Millennium park, and so we followed the lakefront north until we found the magnificent pavilion by Frank Gehry.

Before wandering over to the amazing Cloud Gate (otherwise known as “the Bean”) by Anish Kapoor.

If you ever go to Chicago, you must go see the Bean.

It’s a huge, smooth curving metal sculpture that reflects and distorts the city landscape surrounding it. I’m sure that every tourist has taken the same set of photos of themselves reflected in the Bean.

Or taking photos of themselves taking photos of themselves reflected in the bean.

But if you find yourself near the Bean with a camera, it is surely impossible to not take photos like these. The Bean is just too much fun to resist.

One can walk under (it feels like inside) the Bean and look up at the concave dimple in the middle of its underside.

The Bean is simply majestic, especially at twilight.

Just look at the thing. It almost seems to be alive. The Bean is so inspiring, it invites response.

And so I had to jump over it.

The Bean thoroughly conquered, we set off to enjoy the 50-foot glass block towers by artist Jaume Plensa. Three of the faces alternate between different colors.

The fourth face features an ever-shifting sequence of faces of more than 1,000 Chicago residents.

Thoroughly exhausted and stuffed full of culture, we picked up some Vietnamese take-out and headed back to our borrowed condo (thanks Stella!) to eat it.

And now we are going to bed. Tomorrow, the conference begins in earnest, and we aim to sell some books.

Tonight, I will dream of the Bean.