Then we headed to 11 City Diner for breakfast. I think Mark had a vanilla shake when we were there last year, too. From there it was an easy walk to the Roosevelt Rd. Red Line, and a short ride to the Hancock Building.

After we came down from being up in the Hancock Building, we went into Water Tower Place, which we decided is a nice shopping mall, but still just a mall – and expensive. So we headed back to the hotel, picked up all the bags and caught the train to Harvard IL.

We arrived in Chi-town Saturday and checked in at the Hotel Burnham. Dinner at XOCO, and then off to see Dan Hicks at Old Town School of Folk.

Sunday – April Fool – was brunch at Nightwood – I had poached eggs and rye toast that came with blueberry jam and bacon, and Nightwood’s tots – deep fried balls of shredded potato. The potato was good and the outsides were properly crunchy, but I’m not sure I quite agree with Nightwood’s vision of the breakfast potato – I prefer something more like the American fries I had next day at 11 City Diner. Maybe I just don’t feel right about eating deep fried food for breakfast. Later we went to the flower show at Macy’s, and wandered Michigan Ave. Macy’s was depressing – the flower show was up in the deserted 9th floor – I told Joëlle it looked like where they used to have the employee lunchroom – and when we went down the escalator, where you stepped off, the floor was being held together with duct tape. Store seemed understocked, too. How the mighty have fallen.

We went to an early show Second City show – Sex, Love and Second City, and stopped for six tapas at Cafe Iberico: the potatoes in spicy tomato sauce; grilled prawns; a really good soup of pureed garbanzos & chorizo – I don’t usually like chorizo, but chopped up in this soup was perfect. Like my childhood favorite, Campbell’s beans with bacon – but way better; a braised beef; tortilla; and jambon on tomato bread.  I have been crap at getting pictures – only iPhoneoids on Tumbler. Came back to the hotel and no Game of Thrones – so I went to the bar and had a gin martini mixed by a bartender who’d been on his feet waaay too long, who told me the story of the the rise of vodka’s popularity, and chatted with a young guy about friends and relations dying of cancer and health insurance – I left just before it got too political. And I was down at the bar for just long enough for Game of Thrones to get over its cable TV debut, and appear on HBOgo, so I set it up on my laptop and Mark & I watched in bed, like the kids.

My main complaint is the utter inability to know what day it is – I missed Wednesday somehow.

Got back late Monday night to kitty-trampled kitchen counters, and stacks of mail. Today was trash and recycle day, so the kitchen’s looking more normal – I even dumped the compost twice – one advantage of the warmer winter – the compost bin doesn’t freeze closed – but I could do without there still being alive, flying bugs in there in NOVEMBER.

Tonight there’s noodle casseroles for dinner at the supper club – turkey and broccoli-mushroom – spinach salad and fruit salad and cookies. Both recipes made vats – I had to do overflow small pans, beyond the 13 x 9 x 2 I had planned for each. Maybe I’ll get a few pix, but given my usual habits, would that be a sign of normalcy, or ab-?

Half bagel on messy desk atop teetering pile of grad school applications I need to read

PS, as per usual, I guess – even though it was an exceptionally nice dinner group, pleasant conversation, several new members – only one picture from the dinner, and it’s of leftovers the next day:

Ginger cookies & chocolate chip - there were some rugelach too, but we ate 'em before they could get leftover

I had signed up for a lunch – so went and got food, and then proceeded to my next meeting, one where I thought I was my division’s liaison to a larger organizational committee. And there was another person already there in the role. We worked it out without blood after – this was my last meeting; he’ll start now – but I still have to write the report. Shucks.

Not sure what can happen next – here are some pix from last night and today.

And I got to do nature photography of the birds that live on gate A30 in the Denver airport.

I rode the train into Dallas, which took about 2 hours – 2 buses from the airport to the train station, and then the train ride itself – but when I stepped off at the final station, I could see my hotel. When I got to the hotel lobby, the line to get checked in was ridiculous, so I left my bags with the bellman, and went for a drink. Even that was little difficult – had to go to the wine bar in the chop house, because the sports bar was too full. And when I opened my credit card wallet to pay for the wine, one of my cards was missing. After some minor panic, I figured out that I used that card to pay my bag fee when I checked in for my flight when I was still in PJs at home, and eventually Mark found the card in the pocket of my sweatshirt, that was hanging on the bathroom door, safe at home.

I did a little searching for pizza, but the better sounding places didn’t deliver, so I went with the bellman’s suggestion – and got a roasted corn pizza and an iceberg lettuce salad for about $15 – and 2 room service beers for another $16. And watched The Sting on TV. Pretty standard for  a first-night-at-conference hotel night, except usually I’m with Mark.

This morning I had to get up 15 minutes early to shave my legs – it’s too warm in Texas for leggings or tights. And I did my Rodney Yee a.m. yoga DVD, too. I found the closet Starbucks – subterranean, in a shopping mall under a big bank building – 2 ways to get there – from the bank plaza or enter the parking ramp of another building across the street. And I took pictures of the leftover giant Christmas tree ornaments that are still decorating the lawn outside my hotel – sitting on brown sod.

Racoon on plane wing

One of the birds on A30 in DIA (Denver Int'l Airport)

Group shot of the birds in A30

Platform waiting for the train to Dallas - in the middle of nowhere

Wine bar in the Dallas Omni hotel

Giant Christmas Balls

Giant Balls from above

I didn’t take a single picture of North Carolina food. My last food shot was Sunday breakfast in the Orlando airport.

We had a few good meals – Sunday night was Bonefish, which I think is a limited chain. I had swordfish and pumpkin ravioli, before I drank too much red wine. Monday after the funeral, and after a lot of the family went home, we went to a place called Ironwood Cafe. Also nice – I had ribs and sweet potato fries and haricot verts – tasty but heavy. I broke my water glass while Gregg & Jean were eating dessert and I was drinking a cup of lemon tea to try to settle my stomach – splashed water all over Mark & Ethan, broke the stem off the glass. Tuesday was the lawyer, lunch at a Panera, and another 9 hours of travel. Meals – half a mozzarella panini & tomato soup at the Panera, scone from Starbucks, and ice cream from Baskin-Robbins in the BWI airpot – shoulda been good but there were too many ice chips in the ice cream.

Today back to work and a 9:00 a.m. meeting, and a 2:00 to 4:30 class. I am sooo out of it.

But maybe it’s not just me – I made pizza for dinner, and Instagram and Tumblr don’t seem to be talking to each other – here’s the pix tho -

Plain tomato pizza

Goat cheese, squash and caramelized onion pizza

Arugula & prosciutto pizza, with goat cheese, squash and caramelized onion at the back

Plate of beignets

Beignets & cafe au lait

Cafe au lait

Even ate (most of) the last one

Bitten beignet - this one's the money shot (ha!)

Ceiling fans

Only in New Orleans

Slippery sidewalks in the French Quarter

This was on the big loom - I love how the patterns in the fabric being woven in makes the weave look more complicated

This is my new kitchen rug - French red stripe

This is what we're gettingffor Ethan - they call it field of flowers

Close up of field of flowers

On my last morning in New Orleans, I went to one meeting and then got coffee & beignets. Then we went and bought rugs, from a place that custom weaves rag rugs, in the Quarter, Lousiana Loomworks, where we’d gotten stuff before. Mark’s got a kitchen rug from them, and I have two, although they’re older now – one of mine’s in the basement by the washing machine, and the other I use by the back door in winter. We ordered a little rug for next to Ethan’s bed in the dorm when he goes to college next month.

Cone of frites

The $16 burger on a board at Luke

Shrimp & grits - kinda blurry - gotta stop using the digital zoom

Wreakage of our dishes after we ate all we could

Luke is Besh’s more casual place, in comparison to Restaurant August. It’s kind of German/French/New Orleans and heavy on the pig – in a good way.

I had shrimp & grits, the shrimp and buttery grits were great, but the picture came out blurry. Mark’s chicken had that garish food shot with flash look, so I’m not reproducing it here. Joe’s $16 burger was the most photogenic.

I fell while we were walking over and skinned my knee. Besides feeling stupid when I took the fall, I was a little beat up and sore the next morning.

The opening general session started with inspirational videos, like a high school age girl singing “I need my library”. I suppose I should’ve been more inspired, but it’s hard not to be cynical when one of the kids in the vid said he needed his library because high school’s such a noisy fast place.

The real keynoter was Dan Savage. I’ve read him for years – when the ALA prez was intro-ing him and talking about all his good works, I kept thinking, “yes, great, but let him come out and talk – we want to hear him ‘cuz he’s funny”. His current project is it gets better – again really good stuff, helping gay teens, preventing suicide. Even on such heavy stuff, Savage was funny. I noticed that he’s kinda pumped up now – big biceps – but all through his book The Kid, he says that he wanted to have a kid, be in a committed relationship, so he could get fat. Let himself go, not have to workout.

I didn’t bring my real camera. Mark loaned me his little one, since maybe we’ll get one of these new little Canons. Mark says it’s got a really big CCD for a point & shoot. And I could get an SD card for it that has wifi for getting the pictures out of the camera. The theory is that this would give me a way to shoot food while traveling and blog the pix that would look a bit better than iPhone pictures.

I dunno – I tried using the little Canon last night to take pix at the Gumbo Shop, and felt like a dork.

Cigarette butts stashed in a corner of our balcony

Bread, unbroken

Bread, broken

Shrimp Creole

Macque choux corn

Dinner table at the Gumbo Shop

Ceiling fan at the Gumbo Shop

Toulouse Street

Toulouse Street

Pool at the Hotel St. Marie - in the dark

posted from my iPhone