An extra day

Last Friday we were supposed to leave for 2 nights and 3 days in Chicago. But the weather was sounding scary – wet snow – and Thursday night we chickened out and decided to leave Saturday morning instead. Which brought a feeling of great relief and then of course the snow didn’t amount to much. So Friday was kind of an extra day, but I still didn’t get caught up.

Right now I’m working at early voting and it’s slow. The voting site is on-campus and it’s spring break. So we’ll see how far I get. When I backed up my iPhone pictures there were like 50 so that’s how long it’s been.

Way back to St. Pat’s Day brunch. There’s green in it but that was the extent of our celebrations. I tried to give Jasper some of the leftovers for lunch on Wednesday, but he didn’t like it. It looked like egg that he likes but it tasted like spinach and garlic, plus I think he was a little too tired. We went to the library in the morning and he dozed off for just a few minutes in the car, but instead of letting him sleep in his car seat like I did the week before, I woke him up and brought him inside. He was happier eating yogurt with strawberry jam.     

Brunch on 3/17: Spinach mushroom omelette, fried potatoes, sourdough toast

Little Blue Truck before we went to the library

We made oat milk chocolate pudding after nap. Emma said there was running around screaming later that evening, so I guess I got him too sugared up. He really didn’t have that much, though.

I bought Jasper this stool-tower-thing because he looked so happy in it in a video at Emma’s parents house. It came last Thursday but I haven’t opened the box yet.

I’m trying to remember some cooking successes … I did document this cooking semi-failure, too flat and a bit soggy ginger cookies. I’m going to stick them together with icing, I hope tonight. If I have time after I build the toddler tower.

The cookies did get stuck together later Tuesday since I couldn’t put the toddler tower together (see below) – the pic made it to insta Thursday.

I want me & Jasper to color Easter eggs tomorrow – I read this method that sounds easy. Baking soda & food coloring paint, then dump vinegar on, and rinse for softly colored eggs.

So Jasper needs his stool to stand on to make the eggs.

We left for Chicago on Saturday morning and while I was getting ready the cats looked out at the snow.

We had lunch at Monteverde. I called on Thursday and wended my way though the phone tree to see if I could get our Friday lunch moved to Saturday and it worked. I had a beer and we shared arrancini and a salad and two pastas and dessert. Butterscotch budino that was very good, but maybe a little too much toppings distracting from the creaminess of the pudding. I had the affogato below, and we also ordered a scoop of gelato that came with a cookie, I think the meringue ones called forgotten cookies because you leave them in the oven for a long time.

We saw a set of neighbors at the restaurant. We were going to see a reduced Mozart; Matchbox Magic Flute at the Goodman Theatre and so were they. It was fun, probably even more fun than the full production we went to see in 2021, in Art Deco style. The costumes were really nice, but I didn’t take any pictures. Sarastro, the captor of the heroine Pamina, has easily the best line when he says, talking about her suitor, Tamino, who is frightened by a dragon the first time we see him on stage: “You can’t go around being afraid of life’s dragons and expect to marry well”. The Goodman is only about a 4-minute walk from the hotel where we stayed, so it was super easy. After the show, we used the free drink coasters the hotel gives you, or at least I did, for another beer that I didn’t like as well as the ninja vs. unicorn, and I got a bag of potato chips and a bag of peanut M&Ms. Which with the beer, was just about a perfect post-theater meal. I never had a chance to ask the neighbors if they were staying over too. They drove to Milwaukee and took the Amtrak train from there, which is about equal to the driving vs. train ride time of the route we take, the Metra train from Harvard. The Amtrak train also costs a lot more. But I bet there’s more late night choices Chicago to Milwaukee, so they might’ve left after the play.

And this as far as I got Tuesday in between voters.

On Saturday we ran out of time after lunch to go up to the Newberry Library and check out the Mr. Kelly’s show, curated by my friend Alison Hinderliter. It was opening weekend, and it’s up till July so I’ll have to figure out some other time to go.

So we went to the Art Institute where I took a bunch of pictures of Picasso works on paper and Japanese women ceramic artists. Here they are.

Chicago theater marquee from the hotel window

Chicago theater marquee with Wilco above the hotel bed

Wilco pothole mosaic

Sunday coffee at Dollop

Sunday afternoon in the Fine Arts Building. We went to the bookstore on the 2nd floor and then hung out on a bench on the 4th floor

And now it’s already Wednesday night after another Jasper day. We did make the Easter eggs, but I couldn’t build the toddler tower because one of the parts came mangled. I was supposed to have 6 of part “I” and I got 5 and this deformed thing. I’m sure they pack the bags of hardware by weight and this squashed thing weighed as much as the good ones.

I’ll tell you more about the eggs later. I inadvertently cracked them all – it woulda been funner if I hadn’t done that.