Peninsula Blog.

Busy day. I was entirely too productive for a Monday, but professional circumstances demand it. I'm in the throes of hammering a new issue of the magazine into place: hammering, cutting pieces off that don't fit, tightening the screws, checking the plumb lines, and so on. Somehow, though I don't have a talent for real carpentering, the analogy fits. That's all most journalism is, anyway. Building tables and chairs.

The place I went today, and the thing I saw, was the Chicago Peninsula Hotel -- or that might be the Peninsula Hotel Chicago, I forget how they style the name. It's a posh hotel, modeled after the posh hotel of East Asian fame, the Peninsula in Hong Kong. Yuriko and I wandered through that property some years ago. Memory isn't exactly clear on what I saw then, but this incarnation of the brand reminded me of that stroll.

I only saw some of the common areas, since I was attending a reception of the National Multi Housing Council -- a trade group for apartment landlords. Part of the function was at an outdoor terrace, about five stories about street level, with the tall buildings of North Michigan Avenue crowding close by the hotel and illuminated by the setting sun. The hotel could have been a more modest place, for all I cared; but that view was worth coming to see.