Unwritten anyways. I’m doing one of my back and forth weeks, down to Chicago on Tuesday, back to Madison Wednesday morning, and now back to Chicago Friday.
The weather’s been back and forth-y, too. It was winter over the weekend, for Valentine’s Day, which was a Sunday. The day before was probably the coldest of the year, a high of 1° or something like that (I was at the Garden Expo). On Valentine’s Day we walked to dinner in Madison in pretty, sparkly, puffy snow. On Tuesday in Chicago, we walked to our pre-symphony dinner in wet snow, but still snow. On the walk home it already seemed warmer. On Friday it was in the high 40s in WI, 50s in Chicago, and ridiculously windy.
What did we eat a midst all this back and forthing? Valentine’s at Lombardino’s was lobster bisque and shrimp carbonara for Mark; Lombardino’s salad and grilled scallops over potatoes, spinach, and aioli with marinated eggplant (that kind of had the same texture as the scallops) for me. Oh yea, and in fact, it was snowing enough that John stayed over until Monday morning. While we were out to dinner and then coming home to watch Downton Abbey, he and Megan made pasta with chicken and arugula pesto from the Garden Expo, and then went to see Deadpool.
Mark had Monday off for President’s Day. He and Megan and I ate leftover pasta and a big salad for dinner. I had gone over to the community center and helped Terese prep for the Tuesday morning food pantry breakfast. After the breakfast and a meeting at work, Mark picked me up and we headed to Chicago, where we had ramen for that pre-symphony dinner.
Wednesday morning I took the 7:30 train back to Harvard, and grabbed a Stan’s donut and a Starbucks coffee on my way to the station. Back to work in time for Panera salads during a meeting for lunch. While I was walking to the train it smelled deliciously chocolately from the Blommers Chocolate on Kinzie, which made me wish I could order a hot chocolate instead of a latte at Starbucks. I had online class at 8:00PM, and the hot chocolate and grahams with Nutella for dinner.
Rach got in Thursday afternoon. I thawed out a carton of turkey broth and some Costco chicken breasts, and made chicken, rice, tomato, and arugula pilaf for dinner.
Friday back to Chicago in the wind – both the drive and the walk to the apartment were a little too interesting for me. I decided that I’d rather worry that me & my wheelie bag were going to get blown into an old guy with his wheelie shopping cart in the Jewel parking lot, than worry if a semi was going to get blown into me on the highway. I had to finish the Trader Schmoe’s Scandinavian Swimmers when I got to the apartment, to recover. John came to pick me up, and we fought traffic up to a tire place on Ashland and got there just in time to get new tires on the Outback. The wind was still knocking into the car while we waited in traffic to get onto Lake Shore Drive. We went back to his apartment and booked him a hotel room in Vegas for his SPE conference in March. Between the tires and the hotel we spent a pretty breathtaking amount of money in a really short time. It was almost like having Oma around.
John went bowling, and I went and met Mark at Xoco for dinner.
On Saturday morning we went to Floriole for breakfast – for the 2nd time. I tried avocado toast instead of the ricotta I’d had the time before. Mark stuck with quiche. I like them, but if I had a bakery the selection would be a bit different – like instead of a croissant dough type crust, my quiche would have pie crust.