On another forum, people were talking about their memories of past snowfalls, and I thought I'd post here about the first one I remember ( Read more... )

So. My company scheduled an all-hands meeting outside of London for a week at the end of July. In early August, my nephew was getting married in Istanbul (her family is from Iran, but lives in Istanbul). It made no sense to go home in between ( Read more... )

My mother had been in poor health and in and out of hospitals since mid-September (see previous post), and I'd been spending most of my time in the Chicago area to support her. She had been dreading but hoping for a good result from a couple of scheduled surgeries in early December, but it was not to be; her body just gave out on her.

She died ( Read more... )

My last post was back in August, when I had a bit of a flood in the basement. That led in a roundabout way to the discovery that my water heater was failing. So now I have less money and a new water heater.

A couple of weeks ago, the temperature in the house dropped down to the mid-60s, so I turned on the heat. Nothing happened. (It turned out the ( Read more... )

She arrived in Chicago on Saturday. She is dealing with jet lag and cranky about the cold, but otherwise well ( Read more... )

As of today my mother's ship is safely docked in Singapore. They are letting people disembark without any checks other than the now-routine fever ones. She will be going from the ship directly to the Singapore airport on February 14 and flying nonstop from there to San Francisco (and thence to Chicago, which is home). Apparently whatever pressure ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

In early August, my mother had minimally invasive heart surgery to replace an aortic valve. I went down to Chicago to stay with her during and after. There were a few moments of unusual interest, but she survived and recovered -- though she's not walking as well as she did pre-surgery ( Read more... )

I do not have the shopping gene. I especially hate shopping for clothes. Even when I was skinny, I hated it, and now I'm fat (and mostly okay with that) and it's even more no fun ( Read more... )

I'm back from my trip to Skokie, IL for a very family weekend. I took the train this time, which worked out amazingly well. The price was a bit less than flying would have been, and I was able to get about three ounces of lace weight spinning done on my miniSpinner during the two trips. Because the return train gets in at 10 pm, I came back on the ( Read more... )