Thanksgiving in Chicago

...with Amy and Jamison. Here is their apartment building in Hyde Park:

Here is Kimbark Street:

and here is Amy at her job:

We bought grandkids' Christmas presents there, for 20% off. Her coworkers call her "Noorlander!" and she was worried about me taking her picture because they will tease her. She likes the job.

We ended up having Thanksgiving dinner--with Betsy, Brett, & Ethan and Jackie, Joel, & Blythe--at A&J's friends' larger apartment a few blocks away. We were so busy that day I didn't take any photos. Amy made cider-brined turkey, homemade dressing, gravy, walnut cranberry spinach salad, pumpkin pies, key lime pie, chocolate pecan pie, and cheesecake. John made the candied yams and mashed potatoes, and did a lot of the clean up. I made the mushrooms and green beans with shallots, and the dinner rolls, and Jackie brought cheese roll and crackers and veggies with dip. I think she did great coordinating a major dinner for nine (not counting the two babies) in two apartments several blocks apart. Yeay Amy!

Hyde Park

We took a walk with Amy to the U Chicago campus, and stopped to look at the Roby House (Frank Lloyd Wright, above), and the Oriental Museum (below):


The weather was rainy and cool or sunny and cool. The leaves had mostly fallen and made a golden, red, and brown carpet over the pavement. The streets and houses are lovely and even the apartment buildings are tolerable. Short blocks, quiet streets. A & J live half a block from a little shopping center, two blocks from church, five or six blocks from Amy's job, maybe four blocks from the nearest train station and bus line. I don't know how it is in the deep of winter, but late autumn is very nice.

Playing With Dex in Nichols Park

Jamison gives Dex a drink (above, on the "No Dogs Allowed" tennis court--the best place to let dogs play off-leash, of course, since it's fenced).

Chris runs with Dex:

The Field Museum

John, Chris, and Amy at the Field Museum (above), and Amy inside (below):

A "friendly goddess," from the Egyptian exhibit.
A Tibetan demon. He was a man who was killed by robbers at the 59th minute of the 24th hour of the 365th day of the 49th year of a 50-year meditative quest for enlightenment, and, in frustration, destroyed his interrupters and drank their blood from the cups of their skulls then went on a murderous rampage. Sometimes I feel that way when I'm interrupted.

Speaking of skulls, John with the skull of Sue, the famousest T-Rex:

John, Karla, Chris, in the Pawnee lodge, after a lot of walking:

It is a beautiful museum. We especially liked the exhibit on the evolution of life on earth--it was interesting, various, logical, and integrative. I really liked the "aquarium" of cambrian (I think) marine life.

Beautiful Chicago

Chicago skyline with Lakeshore Drive from the Field Museum (above), and sunset (below):

Panning from northwest to northeast from the Field Museum, with Chris and Amy:

Amy's House (With Jamison, In Chicago)

Amy's kitchen--small but fully equipped.

John, Chris, and I visiting in a studio apartment don't help space-wise, but all she had to do was fold up the futon, and viola! Plenty of room. Amy and Sinestra, above. I really like the view from their (south facing) windows.

Handsome, clean, brave, and reverent Dex.

Sunday naps.

Update

Thanksgiving this year we will be in Chicago, with Amy and Jamison, Brett Betsy and Ethan, and Jackie Joel and Blythe. A&J are in a new place, a studio apartment which they said reminds them of Harry Potter (don't know why yet, but wouldn't it be cool if it was house elves? Maybe not, if you remember Dobby).


Rob and Nicolle have found a new apartment in the Aves, and even though Rob has a previously scheduled gig in New York (working for JetBlue makes the cross-continent commute possible), Nicolle is moving on her own this weekend. So I''m taking the truck to Salt Lake tomorrow morning and I'll bring the babies back with me in their Nissan, and then in the afternoon John will come home from his wilderness writing trip to Moab, and we will have a lot of fun. R&N's new place is only a couple of blocks from their old place, only a couple of block's from Brett and Betsy's, only a few feet from the babysitters, and across the street from a chocolate shop! And a block and a half from Smith's. So very good. I can't wait to see the apartment tomorrow.

Chris and a mixed group of his buddies are watching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure after the THS state football victory over Springville this afternoon. It's always been my favorite Keanu Reeves film.
I'm trying to get the motivation to tidy up my office (cleaning it is beyond me). Then I want to organize my (electronic) Blood Practice files to take on our trip to Chicago, where I hope to have some quiet time to work on the novel. I'm committed to a writing group start-up in January, where I'll be working on the Mormon werewolf story, so before that I want to have the vampire novel out to whatever reader-critics I haven't already exhausted. If you haven't met my protagonist, she is here. The writing group requirement is 2500 words/week. Yeah right. And if I can work it into my schedule, and BYU allows me to matriculate, I'll go to John's novel-writing class winter term (T Th 12-1:15, when I'm usually doing psychotherapy at the care center in Pleasant Grove). If I can be super-organized and productive this month, I'll use the werewolf novel for the class--if I'm slow I'll do what will hopefully be the final rewrite of Blood Practice. The tentative title for the werewolf thing is The Werewolf Solution, but it's sort of evolved away from that. We'll see what happens.

I am sad and anxious about Tena moving to Houston. What will I do without her support and encouragement in our biweekly PWA-S meetings (Professional Women's Alliance--South Chapter)? I know things will work out for them and they will be happy in east Texas, but I sure will miss her and her family. I will have to use Rob's partner flight benefit to go visit them. Her job headquarters is close to the Woodlands, and they might even end up living there. Wouldn't that be weird! But a house like the one where we lived would be perfect for them.

I keep trying to balance the four main jobs in my life--that is, 1) home & family, 2) psych, 3) writing, and 4) personal & health--and as usual, doing 2 1/2 of them at a time. I'm continuing with the gratitude exercise whenever I remember, which is about every other day. Today I'm grateful that my little ASUS is up and running (and thanks to B&B for helping me clean it up); for water, which really is amazing, in that we can drink it, bathe in it, wash things with it, look at it, and get rained on by it; and I'm grateful that Amy got her phones fixed. And also grateful for green pens. And Belgian chocolate. And that my Bike o' Death is working again. And for my cats. And grandbabies. OK, time to quit for the night.