Just so you know – I have still been having a life, I just haven’t managed to write about it much, recently.
I blame work – I was totally overloaded this fall semester, 3 classes instead of 2. I finished grading at 2:48 PM on Christmas eve. (Although I think I was grading on Christmas eve last year, too.)
Email sent to students when I finished grading
I think we had a good week before and Christmas long weekend – us liberal elites in Trump’s America.
Before the long weekend, we went to Chicago to see kids and friends and the new Nutcracker set during the World’s Columbian Exposition. It was a nice trip. It started with dinner with John & Megan on Tuesday, at Star of Siam, my favorite Thai restaurant in Chicago that happens to be about a 5 minute walk from Megan’s work.
Wednesday morning, Belana & I went and had tea at the Drake, traditional tea at a nontraditional time, 11:00 AM. I liked the plain scones with lemon curd and clotted cream and raspberry jam the best, and also the apple cinnamon quick bread (that I thought was really more like either date or raison bread). I took the subway back to the apartment to continue grading. I passed the Ventra card back to Belana, and she went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and saw Diana Thater’s light art. We were going to meet Mark at his office and go to a movie, but the Internet there went out. Instead, he just came back to the apartment and we went to see Arrival at the multiplex on Illinois St. After, we took the Blue line up to Fonda Frontera (formerly Xoco Wicker Park). We had a nice meal, the service was just a little slow and it was a little too late at night to eat that much food. I had Barbacoa beef tacos, and we even indulged in dessert – Mexican chocolate soft-serve ice cream with churros and cherry jam and chocolate cake crumbles. I should’ve had posole, it’s Christmas, and it would have been lighter.
On the Thursday morning of our trip, I met Al at the Apple store right off the L at North and Clybourn and got him a new iPhone – so we got to hang out together for an hour and a half doing that. Then I went to the closest Starbucks to the place we were meeting a whole gang of friends for lunch – Beatrix – and got a little more grading done in the hour I had. Beatrix was nice – it’s in the Aloft Hotel – and I think their schtick is healthy food supplemented by an indulgent bakery case. I had the “Crispy Kale Salad” in which some of the kale was kale chips and it also had dates and pumpkin seeds, and menu says persimmons, but I only detected one chunk of that.
We walked to the Auditorium Theater for the ballet. I liked the 2nd act better than the first. In the traditional Nutcracker there’re international dances, like the Cossacks. In this new Nutcracker, the international dances all represent countries or attractions at the Fair, one of which was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. This was four dancers, one male with a lariat, and three females dressed in tutus wearing hose with visible garters, kind of like a cross of dance hall girls, Deadwood whorehouse madams, and ballerinas – and they all wore cowboy boots. So no Cossacks but still people dancing in boots.
We got back not-too-late Thursday, to find the new kitchen floor almost completed, just a few sections of tile to fill in. But lots of cleaning up and putting back for me to do. I got up in time to let the workmen in at 7:30, worked upstairs while they worked down. I cleaned after they finished up, then walked in the snow to pick up the Christmas roast. Belana stuck all the pictures and clippings and cards and magnets and junk back on the fridge – nice to have ot “re-curated” and see everything in a different order. I made a leftovers enchilada casserole for dinner, corn & black bean salsa from the party, cheese, bottled salsa mixed with squash soup for the sauce, and corn tortillas from the freezer. It was remarkably good. Al ate it for breakfast on Saturday, and left one small square for me.
I’ve started getting pictures of cookie box recipients opening their boxes – the box that went to Worcesters in Oregon, and to Rachael’s brother and his family in Pittsburgh.
On Christmas eve morning, I made the dough for our traditional pizza to eat with a silly movie. The pizzas used up more party leftovers: pepperoni, red sauce, pepperonata, goat cheese. Since I finished grading early enough, there was time for Belana and I to make a few more cookies – rolled out and decorated gingerbread and a shortbread that I pressed out with my springerle molds. I thought the shrotbread was kind of broing, but just realized that it’s home made Lorna Doones. Al and Emma came over and we ate the pizza and cookies and watched the last ever Downton Abbey, and Love Actually.
Christmas morning it was grey and melty. We had cinnamon scones with lemon curd and drained yogurt in lieu of clotted cream for breakfast. I cut up the fruit cake and put rosettes of hard sauce on top. And of course, the giant hunk of meat for dinner, cooked on timer while we went to Rogue One with hundreds of other holiday celebrants – the concession line was ridiculous. I missed the frst 10 minutes of the movie waiting for a large wine and a large mocha for Mark – and I paid with a twenty dollar bill, and got 48 cents back. We ate the roast with creamed spinach and roasted red cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli, and Yorkshire puddings.
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