Mental images

We went on another trip to Chicago, an overnight for a Friday evening symphony and there was no school that day, so our exchange student came with.

We stayed at a Fairfield Inn to get a pull out couch for the kid. We did a bunch of things we had not done since pandemic, like eating indoors at a restaurant, and riding the L (green line from our West Loop Saturday brekkie to the Art institute).

We had hoped to get together with John and Megan, but they, and especially John, were too busy with work.

So, we made a reservation for an early, pre-symphony dinner at Publican. We booked an outdoor table, but inside seemed nicer, real wooden table tops instead of metal mesh, so we went in, and got seated in one of the little corals.

We ordered far more food then we could finish, but we made an attempt.

In addition to all of the above, there was a roast chicken with frites and a salad with beuaty heart radishes.

We walked a ton, I got in close to 15,000 steps both days; I mean, after the big dinner we walked almost 30 minutes to the symphony and then another 20 to the hotel, plus we’d already walked from the train station to the hotel and from the hotel to the Publican. So, we were actually hungry again Saturday morning. We went back to the west loop (on foot) and had breakfast at Beatrix, right across the street. I had eggs and potatoes, Mark had an egg sammich, Maja had pancakes. All good, except the server inadvertently dumped Maja’s glass of mango juice on us. He was so excited to tell us he’d gotten us one of the last hunks of coffee cake out of the bakery case, he forgot that the juice was on the same tray and when he bent down to put the cake on the table the juice cascaded. No pics, just mental images.

Then the L to the Art Institute to wander the Impressionists after first visiting the photos – there was no official show in the photography gallery, only the revolving show of stuff from the permanent collection, like this bird wing.

There was a crap load of people outside, I think they were all thinking it was the last warm Saturday before winter.

The rest of the mental images were on the trip home.

1. On the train, in between Crystal Lake and Harvard, we went past a trucking company parking lot with 10-12 vehicles parked in a line, next to a small pond where there were what looked like 10 times that many ducks & geese assembling, the ducks kind of scattered around the pond and geese approaching in a line.

2. On the highway, we smelled someone doing a burn, and then there was a fine line of smoke sort of across the road and in the hollows next to the road, like the fog that hangs in the same hollows on a damp night.

No pics but it really happened and I saw it.

Once we got back it turned into another stupid busy work week for me, but I did make pumpkin pie for our student’s sweet 16 (on Wednesday). She had a few kids over after school, mostly friends from cross country. Her mom in Germany sent 3 bags of juice and fruit using Amazon Prime & Whole Foods. At first we couldn’t tell who it was from, as soon as we looked inside the mystery bags, we thought, “hmm, this is all stuff the birthday girl likes to eat”. The girls ate all the grapes and most of one of the pies, and Mark and I finished it off that might. Still a whole pie left to go, the one I over-baked and is cracked, but I expect it will still taste OK.

And another one, mental image that is:

Tuesday morning (Nov. 2) I went out to get the papers and detoured down the driveway to tip my cat pumpkin into the back yard compost, because the squirrels ate its face off. It was OK Monday morning when I went to get the papers but by the time I left for work, gone. Over the driveway, puffy pale pink clouds against a pale blue sky. on a crispy fall morning at a few minutes after 7:00. Too cold to go in for my phone to take a picture so the one in my mind is all I got.