mojosmom

It seems as though just as people were coming back to LiveJournal, they started migrating over here for security reasons. I've had a Dreamwidth account for some time, but didn't use it much, although when I started it, I moved all my LJ posts here as well. (Truth be told, I didn't post much over at LJ, either, mostly for reasons of laziness. Bad me!) So here I am.

As with most years, there's been bad and good.

I've lost some good people this year:

An old family friend, in both senses of the word, had a stroke while visiting one of her daughters in Massachusetts. She lingered a couple of days, and then passed at the age of 93. A good long life.

A young woman whom I knew from my support group at Gilda's Club succumbed to metastatic breast cancer. Judy was a pretty amazing person. She taught at Second City, and when she was first diagnosed, she put together a comedy routine about it. When it came back, she just updated the routine. A lovely, brave friend. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/ct-judy-fabjance-obituary-20161017-story.html

Just before Thanksgiving, one of the finest, kindest, most decent people I've ever known died after three years of dealing with lung cancer and COPD. I worked with Jamie as a public defender, we coached at trial advocacy programs together, and he was an opera buddy. His memorial service brought together folks he knew from the legal field, from his AA group, from the gay liberation groups at the University of Chicago where he attended law school. Jamie cared about people, he paid attention. I'm going to miss him terribly. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/ct-william-kunz-obituary-20161202-story.html

As for me, my health remains good, and I've been doing a lot of traveling. I mentioned in my last post (from March!!) that I was thinking of going to Venice. I did. I decided I could not miss that production of The Merchant of Venice. (And when I got back, I went to the Jonathan Pryce Merchant at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Good, but I liked the Venice production better.) At the end of July, Venice is crazy crowded and hot, but it didn't matter. I had a fabulous time. In addition to Merchant, I saw a production of Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters, and went to a concert at the Chiesa San Vidal (mostly Vivaldi, of course). The Architecture Biennale was happening, too, and I went to a bunch of museums.

At the end of October, I went on the trip to Barcelona and Bilbao that I mentioned exactly one year ago. It was fantastic, so worth the cost. Nothing I had seen, still photos or film, could have prepared me for the Sagrada Familia. It is so big and light-filled, the detail is astonishing. It's still being worked on, but the interior is done, and they plan to finish by 2026, the centenary of Gaudi's death. So mark your calendars! ;-) We not only saw wonderful architecture, we ate a lot of good food, probably more than we should have, but we walked it off. (That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

At the beginning of December, I did a short, random, sort of spur of the moment, trip to New York, because I decided I really wanted to see the Klimt exhibit at the Neue Galerie and the Mrs. Carl Meyer portrait by Sargent at the Jewish Museum. My timing was good, because I was able to catch a performance of L'Amour de Loin, by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, at the Met, the first opera by a woman they've done in over a hundred years. It was also conducted by a woman. I'm so glad I was able to see it, because I loved it. It's contemporary (though with a medieval setting), but the music is quite accessible. The voices were grand, particularly the mezzo, Tamara Mumford. Simple, yet brilliant, set by Robert Lepage, long ribbons of LED lights across the stage mimicking water.

And I'm going to Boston in mid-January - pray that there are no snowstorms! Some college friends want to celebrate their birthdays there - why, when one of them lives in Miami, I don't know, but they do.

I'm planning another trip to NYC in June, as there is a big Frank Lloyd Wright show opening at MOMA that month (it's his 150th birthday), and the New York City Opera is doing an opera based on Tony Kushner's play, Angels in America, that I do not want to miss.

My sisters came in for the holidays, and, as usual, we got together with friends, went to museums and bookstores, and generally had a good time. Christmas Eve and the first night of Hanukkah coincided, so Cathy made the traditional latkes, and on the third night we went to the home of a neighbor and fellow Robie House volunteer for more latkes.

My refrigerator chose Christmas weekend to die, and as it is twenty years old, I decided to forgo calling a repairman and just go out and buy a new, more energy efficient one. While I was at it, I bought a new dishwasher. My old one died a couple of years ago, and it wasn't worth fixing, but I'd put replacing it on the back burner as doing dishes for one person isn't a big deal. However, should I ever sell the condo, a working dishwasher would be expected, so as long as I was appliance shopping, I did that, too. The refrigerator came on Wednesday, the dishwasher should arrive next Friday. Here's hoping my washer/dryer last for while longer!

I continue to do volunteer work with the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, and serve on a couple of boards, my friend Jeanne and I continue to spend a lot of time at the Gene Siskel Film Center (they did an Anna Magnani festival this summer!), and my TBR pile continues to grow, not helped by my being in a book club.

It has been a fun day and a half!

Yesterday morning, I was futzing around on the internet, when my computer froze. I restarted it, and got the evil gray screen with the flashing ?. Yes, folks, my hard drive had bit the dust. Kaput, gone, dead, no more. I hauled it to the Apple Store, where they said, "Yep, your hard drive is nowhere to be found." On their recommendation, I did not have them replace the drive, but took it to an authorized reseller that a) was faster (less than 1 day as opposed to 5-7 days), b) had a better warranty (5 years as opposed to 90 days), and c) was only a few bucks more. I picked it up today and again went to the Apple Store because the person I spoke with yesterday said they would comp me an upgrade to Snow Leopard. That took all of 15 minutes.

After a short trip to the Brown Elephant thrift store to donate a bunch of stuff, I came home, plugged in the computer and started to re-set all my bookmarks, etc. After about an hour or so, the power went out! I dug out a flashlight and a bunch of candles, and spent the evening reading by a combination thereof. Also being glad that I have a gas stove, because I could make myself dinner! The lights went back on about 45 minutes ago. It was horribly windy today, and a transformer pole was blown down, so our entire bloc was without power. Com Ed had told my neighbor that it might not be back until tomorrow; I'm very glad they were wrong.

Thanksgiving was good. Stacey got in about 5:00, and I fixed a lasagna. We avoided all stores, except for Petsmart, on Friday, but hit a couple of local stores for Small Business Saturday. On Sunday, I had my annual open house, with some of the regulars and some new people as well. Stacey went home on Monday, and I went to the Siskel Film Center to see a film of Carmen, performed at the Opéra Comique. It was splendid.

I shall run around tomorrow and take a bunch of pictures to try to finish off NoNoNoNo. Unfortunately, the last photos I took were not uploaded yet to Flickr, and are off in the ether with everything else that was on my hard drive. ~sob~

( I've been flitting about a lot. )

( Other things )

It's a good thing I'm retired and can sleep late. (Well, not so late. Lilith is better than any alarm clock. 7:00 a.m. sharp, she's patting my face, demamding that I get up and feed her!)

I spent the weekend organizing things. I moved hat boxes and shoe boxes around so that I could see things more easily (it really helps because then you know what you have and find yourself wearing a hat you'd forgotten about!). A side benefit was that I unexpectedly opened up some space. Then I hit the master bath, which has a lot of storage space. There's a linen cupboard and hamper on one side, and a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit and medicine chest on the other. When you have storage space, it tends to fill up. I had recently bought new bedding and new towels, so I decided to retire (as in "get rid of", "donate to a thrift shop") some of the old stuff. And then I organized all the bath oils/gels/soaps/etc. that I have accumulated and got rid of all those little tubes that had a tiny bit of stuff in them or were all dried out, etc. Suddenly, there's more room in those units! And I can find stuff! Astonishing. I don't know if this organizational fit will last, but it's nice at the moment.

(P.S. Do you know how hard it is to type when there's a cat between you and the keyboard? Oh, excuse me, between you and the keyboard and sitting on your forearm? Unlike Mohammed, who cut off his sleeve, I am not about to cut off my arm. So I'm just going back and fixing all the typos.)

I've had plumbers in the house all day. This is what happens when you live in a 100-year-old building with very old pipes. It's no emergency; they're just dealing with a variety of issues all at once, and, of course, finding things more complex than originally thought. But, of course, this means I'm sitting around the apartment instead of doing more exciting things, like grocery shopping. ;-)

We had major storms and wind yesterday. We lost power at the office a couple of times, just briefly, in the late afternoon. It was probably not the best day for the IT people to tell us to leave our computers on at the log-on page so they could do some stuff over the weekend! Because I did that, but I know the power went out after I left, because some of us were hanging around the parking garage watching the storm and the lights dimmed. There were actually people taking the elevator in the garage! Got home to find that some of my plants did not fare so well. I had a small marjoram plant on my kitchen window sill, and had left that window open, as I generally do. No rain got in, but the wind had blown it onto the floor, so out came the vacuum cleaner to suck up all the dirt. My basil has been growing like Jack's beanstalk, and the very tallest bit got blown over and the stem broken. So I cut it off the rest of the way and will make pesto!

Other than that, it's been a rather full week. On Monday, Teatro Vista board/ensemble members got together to get a mailing out, and drink margaritas and eat nachos. Tuesday was the last Italian class of the session, and I have decided not to take classes this summer. The various road construction projects have made getting up there after work sheer hell, particularly when there's a Cubs game going on. Wednesday I went to hear Mary Beth Raycraft talk about her book, A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exposition. And Thursday after work there was a going away party for one of my colleagues who has taken a job as chief Public Defender in one of the downstate counties.

So it's been busy, and I can use the rest!

My latest at croc_sandwich.

Stuff on a shelf (go to the Flickr image to see the notes):


Statice:


Chocolate-chip cookies:


Fruit tart:

There was an ice cream social yesterday for members of the Hyde Park Art Center. I went, only to find that it had turned into an ice cream sundae social! I had vanilla and neapolitan, on a brownie, with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. So much for dieting.


Today, I spent well over three hours in the dentist's chair. First a cleaning, and then all the prep work for a new crown. She is replacing a crown that is (she checked the records) thirty-four years old! Got a fair bit of reading done during various bits of downtime, waiting for things to set.

I then went and met my friend, Eddie, for lunch. He is luring me onto the board of the theatre company of which he is the artistic director. I was able to eat, but just a cheese omelette, because my mouth was a bit numb. I turned down the waitress' suggestion of soup, as I didn't want to dribble! On the way to meet Eddie, I detoured to the Daley Center Plaza, where there was an Arabic festival going on. There were belly dancers:

as well as a fashion show, and lots of folks enjoying the sun. It's a good thing I stopped on the way to lunch, because, as we were sitting in the restaurant, it started to rain. After lunch, I went and renewed my city vehicle sticker (we were just down the street from City Hall) and then came home.

At home, I played with the book case I mentioned the other day, and have decided to move the four-shelf case into the sun room, return the three-shelf one and buy the five-shelf for my cookbooks.

I decided the sun room needed a bookcase, but it can't be too big because the room is small. Also, because it's windows on three sides, and open into the living room on most of the fourth, the only place I can put it, taking into account door sill and window sill projections, is 23" wide. So I found these at Pier One.

I bought the shorter one today, because the taller one would probably be too overwhelming for the space. But now I'm thinking that I have three very similar cases that are between these two in size - 48" tall, with four shelves, one of which is in my "butler's pantry" and holds my cookbooks, which are, of course, tightly packed. So if the medium-sized one fits in the sun room, I can return the short one, and get the five-shelf one for the butler's pantry. Of course, this means emptying all the books out of it for the experiment.

The saleswoman told me I have thirty days to, as she put it, "play around with it" and change my mind if I want. So play I will.

The bad thing is that our building's hot water heater bit the dust, resulting in the purchase and installation of a new heater, resulting in a special assessment. NOT the best time of year for unexpectedly large outlays, what with an insurance premium and estimated tax both due in January. And especially not the very day after you've had a long chat with your financial advisor, during which you both moaned a lot about the state of the markets in general and what was supposed to be your retirement money in particular.

The first good thing is that we now have hot water again! It's not easy washing your hair at the kitchen sink with water heated on the stove. And I have no scullery maid to heat large pans of water for my bath, so was reduced to a sponge bath (again, with water heated on the stove).

The second good thing is that I arrived home to find in the foyer a large box from Zabar's. "Who", I wondered, "is getting goodies from Zabar's?" And there was my name on the box! Now, my friend Hillary (the one whose daughter roomed with me this summer) had emailed me that she was sending me "a few nibbles". Some "few"!! The box was packed with goodies, including rugelach and babka, bagel chips and fortune cookies, coffee and chocolate, a Big (chocolate) Apple and a sugar cookie shaped and frosted like a NYC cab, among other things. All packed in a pretty woven cane picnic-style basket. Not to mention the cardboard shipping box which is now a cat house.

She also sent me a card, enclosed with which was a document welcoming the participants at the 30th Annual Conference of the Council on Governmental Ethics Law. A welcome letter from Rod Blagojevich. Dated Dec. 7-10, just after his arrest. Oh, my, talk about bad timing!

Weekend stuff:

Saturday was Jim & Kevin's annual Open House, always a pleasure. They do have an interesting variety of friends. I chatted about DNA and law with a couple of scientists, and politics with a former Joffrey dancer, and walked home in a light fall of snow. Sunday, I went up north to Julie's for turkey and stuff. The sweet potatoes came out well, and everyone went home with a variety of leftovers. Peggy brought me a bottle of wine which she had intended bringing to my open house. So, naturally, just as she forgot it then, I forgot it yesterday and left it at Julie's! Here's hoping Julie will remember to bring it to our next get-together. I'm missing Caroline's open house tonight, as I really couldn't see making the trek from Wheaton to Lake Villa and back to Chicago, particularly in snow and sleet.