Thanksgiving in Chicago
The subject line is a misnomer, because I never actually set foot in Chicago over the weekend. But I'm not sure if Glenview, Skokie, and Long Grove are meaningful places, and everyone knows Chicago.
On Wednesday, I took the train from St. Paul to Glenview, which is a suburb of Chicago.
The train leaves at 8 am. I'd allowed plenty of time to get to the station because there had been a snowstorm the night before, and six to eight inches had fallen (and were still gently falling). I drove carefully, and had no problems until I got to (IIRC) Jackson St., which is the street just before one turns right to get to the train station parking lot. That's an uphill street, and I had to stop about a third of the way up because there were cars scattered all over the street. Apparently a number of cars had only got halfway up and then weren't able to get sufficient purchase to continue. I sat there for about five minutes while various cars maneuvered without a lot of success. Finally one of them gave up and backed into the driveway of a parking garage, apparently willing to wait until someone came and Did Something. That left a clear if sinuous path for me, and I decided to take my shot. Despite not having snow tires or four-wheel drive, I made it up the hill without any spinning or skidding.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. I brought my miniSpinner and got a few hours of spinning in. I'd lost my good headphones, though (the really ones were stolen out of the car a few years ago), and eventually my ears hurt enough that I gave it up and read instead on my iPad.
My mother met me at the Glenview station and took me to her home, which is a condo in Skokie. We had dinner a few hours later at a local sushi place. It was rather startling to see no snow at all; it had faded out out halfway through the train trip.
The next day, we went to the bowling alley. This is a tradition that goes back over 50 years, started by people from Habonim (a labor Zionist organization). Originally it was the women shooing the fathers and kids out of the house so they could cook, but these days it's whole families. Usually I bowl a couple of lines with my nephews, but they weren't there this year, though I'd see two of them later. So I hung out and watched people bowl and chatted with people I only saw once a year.
Shortly after three, my mother drove us to my niece-in-law's (if that's a term) mother's (Jenny's) place. We'd been at my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving for many years, and my mother's before that. But my SIL's Thanksgiving was down to nine people last year, and felt very thin on the ground. Her oldest son (my nephew) and his wife (Elisha) are expecting their first child, so it seemed an appropriate time to make a change. There were about 20 people there, and the place was large enough to accommodate all of us easily. Jenny had called me a week or two before to make sure I understood I was personally invited, not just an add-on to my mother's invitation, which I really appreciated. She asked about family traditions, and I told her that our family usually said the Hebrew blessings appropriate to the day and read Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus." She asked me to bring a copy, and I said I could look it up on my phone.
In the event, that never happened. There were appetizers (including a yummy baked brie with apricot jam), and squash soup, and then a buffet for people to help themselves, and one thing just sort of faded into another. It was a very congenial time, though. I baked a pumpkin bread that the recipe claimed to be better than Starbucks'. I don't know if that's the case, but it did turn out quite well. (This is the one that was a quarter-cup short of pumpkin. I used an eighth of a cup less of flour, and it was fine.) We all hung out afterwards for a couple of hours, and I kibitzed a game of Aggravation that was being played with adults and kids. Next year, if all is well, there will be four generations present -- my mother and Jenny's mother will both be great-grandmothers.
On Friday, my mother and I had lunch with her Hadassah group. It meets every Friday at a restaurant. Last year was rather sad, because the restaurant they'd been meeting at for years -- The Bagel at Old Orchard -- was closing soon after, and this was the last time. We all said goodbye to the waiter that had been our usual one, with hugs and some cash for him to remember us by. He's now at another restaurant and doing well, I hear. This time it was just five of us (it's usually about double that), and we tried a new restaurant, Sweet Basil Cafe, that replaced the Ruby Tuesday that had been there. The menu is huge and the food was very tasty, but there were several glitches in the serving process -- always a danger with new restaurants. I ended up taking half of my California panini home with me, and ate it on the train the next day.
That evening, two of my three nephews and their wife and girlfriend (respectively) came over for Shabbat dinner, along with a cousin my age who lives alone. We had to do a quick reset of the table because we'd set it for eight, then belatedly did a recount and realized there were nine -- which meant putting out an extra leaf for the table. It was a dinner intended to clear out the fridge and freezer, so rather eclectic -- two kinds of soup, salmon, brisket, corn casserole, ratatouille, cranberry sauce, and applesauce.
On Saturday, my youngest nephew and his girlfriend were supposed to come over to bake mandel bread with my mother, but his mother played the mom card and the two of them hung out with her instead. So my mother and I just hung out and occasionally chatted, and left for the train station shortly after one.
When I took the train from Chicago last time, the train was almost three hours late because of mechanical problems. This time, it was right on time. Once again, I got some spinning done, though not as much as on the way down. A woman on the train recognized me (or my e-spinner) from last year, which was amusing. The train was about 15 minutes late, but I was home by 11 pm.
Today I'm spending the day lounging around, catching up on email, and doing laundry. Tomorrow I fly to Boston for work. My cat hasn't forgiven me yet for the current abandonment, and she's going to have another one to be angry about soon. So it goes.
On Wednesday, I took the train from St. Paul to Glenview, which is a suburb of Chicago.
The train leaves at 8 am. I'd allowed plenty of time to get to the station because there had been a snowstorm the night before, and six to eight inches had fallen (and were still gently falling). I drove carefully, and had no problems until I got to (IIRC) Jackson St., which is the street just before one turns right to get to the train station parking lot. That's an uphill street, and I had to stop about a third of the way up because there were cars scattered all over the street. Apparently a number of cars had only got halfway up and then weren't able to get sufficient purchase to continue. I sat there for about five minutes while various cars maneuvered without a lot of success. Finally one of them gave up and backed into the driveway of a parking garage, apparently willing to wait until someone came and Did Something. That left a clear if sinuous path for me, and I decided to take my shot. Despite not having snow tires or four-wheel drive, I made it up the hill without any spinning or skidding.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. I brought my miniSpinner and got a few hours of spinning in. I'd lost my good headphones, though (the really ones were stolen out of the car a few years ago), and eventually my ears hurt enough that I gave it up and read instead on my iPad.
My mother met me at the Glenview station and took me to her home, which is a condo in Skokie. We had dinner a few hours later at a local sushi place. It was rather startling to see no snow at all; it had faded out out halfway through the train trip.
The next day, we went to the bowling alley. This is a tradition that goes back over 50 years, started by people from Habonim (a labor Zionist organization). Originally it was the women shooing the fathers and kids out of the house so they could cook, but these days it's whole families. Usually I bowl a couple of lines with my nephews, but they weren't there this year, though I'd see two of them later. So I hung out and watched people bowl and chatted with people I only saw once a year.
Shortly after three, my mother drove us to my niece-in-law's (if that's a term) mother's (Jenny's) place. We'd been at my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving for many years, and my mother's before that. But my SIL's Thanksgiving was down to nine people last year, and felt very thin on the ground. Her oldest son (my nephew) and his wife (Elisha) are expecting their first child, so it seemed an appropriate time to make a change. There were about 20 people there, and the place was large enough to accommodate all of us easily. Jenny had called me a week or two before to make sure I understood I was personally invited, not just an add-on to my mother's invitation, which I really appreciated. She asked about family traditions, and I told her that our family usually said the Hebrew blessings appropriate to the day and read Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus." She asked me to bring a copy, and I said I could look it up on my phone.
In the event, that never happened. There were appetizers (including a yummy baked brie with apricot jam), and squash soup, and then a buffet for people to help themselves, and one thing just sort of faded into another. It was a very congenial time, though. I baked a pumpkin bread that the recipe claimed to be better than Starbucks'. I don't know if that's the case, but it did turn out quite well. (This is the one that was a quarter-cup short of pumpkin. I used an eighth of a cup less of flour, and it was fine.) We all hung out afterwards for a couple of hours, and I kibitzed a game of Aggravation that was being played with adults and kids. Next year, if all is well, there will be four generations present -- my mother and Jenny's mother will both be great-grandmothers.
On Friday, my mother and I had lunch with her Hadassah group. It meets every Friday at a restaurant. Last year was rather sad, because the restaurant they'd been meeting at for years -- The Bagel at Old Orchard -- was closing soon after, and this was the last time. We all said goodbye to the waiter that had been our usual one, with hugs and some cash for him to remember us by. He's now at another restaurant and doing well, I hear. This time it was just five of us (it's usually about double that), and we tried a new restaurant, Sweet Basil Cafe, that replaced the Ruby Tuesday that had been there. The menu is huge and the food was very tasty, but there were several glitches in the serving process -- always a danger with new restaurants. I ended up taking half of my California panini home with me, and ate it on the train the next day.
That evening, two of my three nephews and their wife and girlfriend (respectively) came over for Shabbat dinner, along with a cousin my age who lives alone. We had to do a quick reset of the table because we'd set it for eight, then belatedly did a recount and realized there were nine -- which meant putting out an extra leaf for the table. It was a dinner intended to clear out the fridge and freezer, so rather eclectic -- two kinds of soup, salmon, brisket, corn casserole, ratatouille, cranberry sauce, and applesauce.
On Saturday, my youngest nephew and his girlfriend were supposed to come over to bake mandel bread with my mother, but his mother played the mom card and the two of them hung out with her instead. So my mother and I just hung out and occasionally chatted, and left for the train station shortly after one.
When I took the train from Chicago last time, the train was almost three hours late because of mechanical problems. This time, it was right on time. Once again, I got some spinning done, though not as much as on the way down. A woman on the train recognized me (or my e-spinner) from last year, which was amusing. The train was about 15 minutes late, but I was home by 11 pm.
Today I'm spending the day lounging around, catching up on email, and doing laundry. Tomorrow I fly to Boston for work. My cat hasn't forgiven me yet for the current abandonment, and she's going to have another one to be angry about soon. So it goes.