And that was all the way last weekend already. We took the train.
We dropped our bags at the hotel, met John & Megan at Dollop for coffee, and proceeded on to the Art Institute. I wanted to see Bisa Butler, John wanted to see Richard Hunt, and we all wanted to see the Obama portraits. I think we succeeded.
I didn’t take a good shot of the portraits themselves, but Megan did. Similarly, I mostly took shots of details of the Bisa quilts that interested me; Megan took a pic of the banners in the grand staircase leading to the gallery, and she also took Richard Hunt. When first went out into the terrace where the Hunt sculptures were, I thought they looked like something you’d see in a vacant space in the West Loop. I think that’s sorta the point – they are intended to look like Chicago.
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We ate at Frontera, outside. Then we strolled back to to the hotel, and I gave John the Bucks-related newspapers I’d been saving for him. We hung out in the room for a bit until it was time to go see my friend Alison’s band, the Handcuffs, out on State Street.
In the morning we grabbed a coffee at a different Dollop, the one that opens earliest, and caught the 7:35 back to Harvard. And we were home not much after 11:00AM, in time for me to get plugged into the zoom for a thrilling afternoon of meetings starting at 1:00.
Before we went to Chicago, I was taking care of Emma’s new kitty, Kiwi. Saturday I went with my laptop and we hung out on the couch. Sunday morning, I went over early and got a little cuddling in.
The highlights of the rest of the week were cooking summer food, like yellow squash casserole.
Zucchini muffins, and bread – the loaf is not shown – it’s in the freezer.
Cherry tomato and corn galette
Al and Emma came for dinner on Wednesday and we had pulled pork sandwiches (no coleslaw but I got out all the pickles, including the homemade ones). I cooked the pork shoulder steaks, one of the last cuts from from last year’s pig in water with soy sauce and Worcestershire and onion, the way I would for ribs, then shredded it and baked it with BBQ sauce, from a jar, or several jars actually – I didn’t make homemade. And there was corn on the cob, and macaroni salad; and a kale gratin that was a recipe by Jessica Seinfeld, Jerry’s wife, who got some flack in the food writing world for her first book about sneaking vegetables into your kids’ food. And cherry pie, fresh cherries from the market that I’d pitted on Saturday before we went to Chicago. I never took a pic of it – here’s how it’s doing 3 days later, a little damp on top where I sprinkled it with sugar before I baked it.
Tonight we’re having BBQ pizza with some of the meat on top.
I guess that’s it – we’re masking again in the grocery store, the west is on fire, I’m behind on grading, and I’m almost ready for the new online student’s orientation that starts Monday. Ah, summer.
Oh, yea, and we had an iSchool party last night, at our department administrator’s house. There was a band. When I was biking away, it occurred to me that their singer sounds like Chrissy Hynde. We were all just as awkward and tongue-tied as you’d expect after 18 months working from our bunkers. But it was fun.