I am trying to inveigle my youngest stepson into making the rounds with me instead of staying at home - alone, presumably - but he's an obdurate %#@#*. Still, I love him anyway.
This Thanksgiving I feel genuinely thankful for the first time in a while. Or maybe it's more of an elevated level of appreciation.
Whatever the case, there are two people that have been so helpful and so kind to me these past several months, they've gone out of their ways and have been there for me in ways they probably don't even know. These people are helping me steer a new course in life and I am incredibly grateful.
While I cannot give their names or show you their faces, I can do so for the third (non-human) person in this trio of gratitude. This is, of course, Piper.
She cuddles with me when I go to sleep and gently taps me on the face in the morning signaling it's time for the human to prepare breakfast. Her presence brings me comfort and joy, keeps the loneliness at bay. She broke her fast on turkey this morning which surprised me as I wasn't convinced she'd go for it instead of the tuna.
Thanks to these people and others still, mirth is primary in my life instead of apprehension, anxiety, and sadness. Things truly do get better.
I don't know but the waitress was really friendly.
A friend and I stopped in at this fairly new restaurant over by East Towne the other day. Flagging your server down is easy peasy as they have a button above the generously filled condiment basket to get their attention. Being able to summon someone to serve me made me feel like something of an aristocrat.
My companion ordered wings and when asked how spicy she wanted them replied, "White people hot."
I went with a bánh mì. Upon asking for extra jalapenos, our server said, "Oh, you like it brown people spicy."
"I am white on the outside but brown on the inside," I replied.
"You're funny. I like you." I am glad she had a good sense of humor in addition to being very friendly. The spring rolls were tasty.
I appreciated the crunchy thing inside which provided a nice contrast in texture.
Speaking of things crunchy, the toasted baguette that hosted the grilled beef of my bánh mì was perfectly toasted.
Those Maillard reactions lent the perfect, well, toastiness to complement the beef and pate just right. A most toothsome sandwich.
The chicken wings look extremely appetizing.
The sauce was too sweet but I very much enjoyed the punch of umami from a nice dose of fish sauce.
Before going to see Sisu: Road to Revenge, which was great - I hadn't laughed at the movies like that in ages - my friends and I stopped at Gus's Diner for dinner. The chicken noodle soup was delicious.
I haven't been totally remiss in cooking at home. However, I haven't cooked anything particularly grandiose or labor intensive. The chicken curry was good despite the sauce coming from a jar.
Also from a jar was the jerk paste. Still, the jerk chicken was good. I fried up some cole slaw mix to got with it. This reminds me that I should go check out David's Jamaican at their new location.
Despite not everything being made from scratch, I am at least throwing some ingredients together and seasoning things instead of simply heating up TV dinners. Life is oddly busy at the moment.
A friend and I made our inaugural visits to El Sabor De Puebla - the one on Northport. A former Benvenuto's, the place is ginormous. It was sadly under populated but hope that this was simply because we were taking our dinner at an early hour.
Our table was adorned with flowers painted on the top. The backs of the benches were similarly decorated so get a booth by the windows if you go.
My dining companion ordered a sope with chicken that was simple yet tasty.
I had fajitas with poblanos, corn, and cheese. A gooey, sticky mess but delicious. The portion was, as you can see, most generous so it made for a couple meals.
Their salsas were very good and distinguished themselves from those of other Mexican joints around town with their seasoning. Less cumin, maybe? The red stuff had less of a smoky taste while the green tasted less verde than expected.
A friend and I took lunch at the Tip Top Tavern yesterday. He lives just a couple blocks from me and so we hoofed it over there in the cold and driving snow. He raved about his mac & cheese. Not only was the sauce delicious but it also came in the perfect proportion to the pasta.
"Their sandwiches are mediocre but this is excellent," he opined with a rare burst of éclat.
My fried walleye really hit the spot on that chilly, snowy afternoon. They also get bonus points for including three lemon wedges thus obviating the need for me to ask for more.
Lastly I'll note that I am making cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving at a friend's place. I'll be using orange juice and sugar but want to try including maple syrup someday.
Board game night down at the Pinney library last week saw me playing 2 games that were completely new to me. But before entering the community room to throw down a game, I walked by some fine art that I couldn't ignore.
Called Bestie, this piece by Savannah Starlin dates to 1991. The Nirvana poster on the wall got me wondering how it was that their t-shirts became de rigueur amongst the younger set.
And this is Abundance Tree by Sharon Tang. I really like the colors, the patterns.
Once I made it through the art gauntlet, I was regaled by one of the game night organizers with tales of his visit to the Gamehole. Alex sure has a lot of vintage D&D stuff.
When we got down to gaming instead of staring agog at photos of vintage Monster Manuals, we began with Flip 7.
It's a bit like a combination of blackjack and Uno. You have cards flipped face up before you. If you reach 7 cards without any duplicate numbers, you win the hand. Getting two of any number puts the kibosh on things for you.
However, you can end your hand at any time and get the sum of the cards as points. There are also modifier cards that can give you bonus points or screw over another player.
A fun game with a fun group of people.
The other game we played that night was The Bucket King.
You begin by erecting a pyramid of shot glasses, er, mini buckets.
After being dealt cards, someone leads and the others have to match the card or cards color and match or beat the total. If you cannot do so, you are obligated to remove a sho - bucket from your pyramid of that color...even if it's buried beneath other ones.
It perhaps goes without saying but I lost at both games. D'oh! Still, a fun night at the library.
I hope she likes at least one of them but she's been a finicky eater her entire life. (Unlike Grabby who ate any and everything.) Well, since my wife adopted her, anyway. She started eating human food a few months ago so her palate seems to have expanded a bit so we shall see.
A woman whom I had befriended on the bus had organized a crack Buckthorn Removal Squad and invited me to join her and the rest of the squad for a late-morning cull out at Token Creek Park.
One afternoon she noticed me reading Thoreau's Walden on our bus rides home and asked me what I thought of it. This was the first of many chats about nature writing that we've had. She introduced me to Sigurd Olson and I Ben Logan to her. Having a B.A. in philosophy, she was able to help me understand Aristotle when I was reading him. We share a joy of spending time in non-man-made environments as well as laying importance upon not despoiling them. Our conversations have been great fun and quite enlightening.
The invitation for some oak prairie restoration came after I had sent her an email lamenting that I would no longer see her on the bus as I had moved and was taking a different route to work.
My venture in Stoughton having taken a bit longer than expected, I would be late. I held out hope that it wouldn't be a problem or hold anything up. So, upon returning home, I hastily put on my boots and scrambled to find my gloves which were exactly where I had put them.
Much to my shame I have to admit that I'd never been to Token Creek Park before yesterday. At least I have no recollection of having done so. Better late than never. I found the meeting spot where my bus book buddy and her boyfriend were waiting. Not having seen her in a while, it was wonderful to see her and meet her beau.
We grabbed our equipment - a saw, pruner-snipper thingies, gloves, etc. - and headed down the trail to where we'd be working.
The area was littered with heaps of brush and our task that day was to cut the felled buckthorn into burnable size and stack the pieces into burn piles. My bus buddy gave her boyfriend and me a lecture on how to identify buckthorn and an overview of the restoration process. She'd been at it for a year and a half and had cleared a not insignificant area of invasive species. I was tasked with being the sawyer and so grabbed the saw and got to work on a pile of trees.
Kneeling on the ground, I cut the small trees into three foot lengths and piled up the logs. Despite the din of Highway 51 in the distance, it was lovely outside in the woods, er, prairie. The oaks had donated their leaves to the the ground and every step produced an autumnal crunch. I think the sawing was good for my back as it mimicked the physical therapy exercises I've been doing to get various muscles loosened up and run through their paces. In addition, I enjoyed feeling the cool air on my face and smelling the prairie as it prepared for winter.
When her boyfriend took over sawyering duties, my buddy and I went around to deal with buckthorn stumps. I trimmed them of new growth while she applied herbicide. We chatted as we worked. I told her of my visit to Walden Pond and she of hers to Yellowstone.
We called it a day at the noon whistle. For my part, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. A little exercise, a little banter, and a couple hours spent in Nature - just perfect.
The crack Buckthorn Removal Squad meets again next month on or near the solstice. It was our hope that there would be snow on the ground as this would be the perfect accompaniment to burning the brush piles.
When I got home Piper knew I had been out of the city as she gave me a thorough sniffing.
I removed my boots and prepared to go shopping with a friend. We went to buy picture frames and groceries. In typical fashion, I forgot to bring my list which had needed comestibles and the dimensions of needed frames. This wasn't too big an impediment as I recalled the size of one of the frames I needed and consulted the internet for the other.
As we drove to the supermarket, my friend and I chatted about Christmas. She noted that, from her experiences in Europe, Christmas there is about lights and food and good company versus the endless sales and materialism that characterize the holiday here in the States. I think this was prompted by my observation at the frame store that they had a Black Friday sale going despite being almost a week out from the dreaded shopping day.
Not being a Christian, I don't celebrate Christmas and I am rather ambivalent about it these days. It used to be fun watching my stepsons open their gifts when they were young but they somehow grew up into men. And my divorce has riven the family my wife and I had into splinters, a process that began back in 2016 or 2017, to be honest. After that, Christmas no longer meant getting together with the kids. Then at some point my wife became uninterested in joining me to visit my family in the Chicago area and Christmas devolved into me visiting my family while she visited friends or family. We would convene at some point so I could give her gifts and that was that.
Sadly, I found the last 3 Christmases at home to be rather depressing. I loved spending time with my family in the Chicago area but giving my wife gifts had become rote and largely devoid of meaning for me. I felt as if I was simply feeding her lust for more things and do not recall just being together for any time beyond the opening of gifts. Sharing a meal, perhaps?
I am not expecting to begin any new traditions this Christmas but do expect to miss the days when it was a joyous time spent with the woman I loved. However, it will be nice to not feel any anxiety over finding the right gifts and right number of gifts for a woman from whom I was becoming ever more disaffected. I shall enjoy my trek to Chicagoland followed by some time spent with Piper on the couch. Not particularly celebratory, perhaps, but less stressful than in years past. Maybe my youngest stepson can find some time to spend with his stepfather. Or maybe I shall take a walk in the woods.
Diversion over.
Grocery shopping was a similar experience to that at the frame store as I recalled most of what was on the list and then just improvised. Thanksgiving is approaching and I would be going to two people's homes to overindulge and then I am off to Chicagoland the next day so I didn't really need a whole lot. But I enjoyed being in the company of my friend as she pondered the possibility of rye dinner rolls at Thanksgiving and we engaged in supermarket badinage.
I got home, put away my things, and prepared for my next venture: seeing For Heaven's Sake downtown.
For Heaven's Sake was being screened at the Overture Center's Duck Soup Cinema. A comedy from 1926, it stars Harold Lloyd as J. Harold Manners, a wealthy, if bumbling, man about town.
Duck Soup Cinema is more than just the screening of a silent film. We were treated to the strains of a vintage Grand Barton Organ courtesy of Clark Wilson. He played before the show began as well as providing the soundtrack to the film. The organ at the Capitol Theater dates to 1927 and was built by the Bartola Musical Instrument Company up in Oshkosh. It is one of only three of such organs that remain unaltered from their original manufacture.
The show began with the emcee, Joe Thompson, making some dad jokes to his co-hostess, Alanna Medearis who works for the OC. They introduced Duke Otherwise who played some fun and funny tunes on guitar. He brought up a couple people onstage for one song and invited audience participation for another, asking people to shout out animals to be included in the tune he was performing.
Somehow I had missed Wayne the Wizard elsewhere in the building performing magic tricks for patrons. DSC spares no expense for patrons!
For Heaven's Sake was great fun. It's only my second Harold Lloyd film after Safety Last!. Although Manners has the wealth of Croesus and enjoys being a dandy, he is a good man at heart. And so when he accidentally sets a charity cart afire, he pays the owner, Brother Paul, enough for the man of God to start a mission. One day Manners is aghast that Brother Paul has named the mission after him so he goes down there to correct the situation only to become enamored of the churchman's daughter, Hope.
Their decision to marry draws the ire of the city's elite who kidnap Manners. However, he is rescued by some drunken groomsmen who are denizens of the mission. A long stretch of physical comedy follows as Manners' attempts to get the intoxicated groomsmen back to the mission are foiled by their random behavior including abandoning the driver's seat of a double-decker bus in motion.
For Heaven's Sake was great fun and, just as yesterday's visit to Token Creek Park was my first, I do believe this was my first time at Duck Soup Cinema. But not my last!
On my way out I ran into one of the ladies from the Polish Heritage Club who made some of that nalewka that I sampled earlier in the month along with her beau. We chatted briefly and was told that I would be invited out with them on their next trivia outing. We PHC members take care of our own, doncha know.
The ride home was uneventful despite the bus being well-populated on a Saturday night. When I got to my door, I found that the Beer Fairy has stopped by.
If I had a fireplace I would most certainly have been sitting in its welcoming orange glow last night as I enjoyed my first Winter Skål of the season. Piper, no doubt, would have been with me basking in the warmth of the flames, the flickering light cascading over her. As it was, I simply enjoyed my beer in the glow of a lamp while Piper lay on the couch.
Yesterday was a busy day. It was a social day. And a day that engendered much reflection.
It began with a trip down to Stoughton with a friend to check out the bake and craft sale held by the Sons of Norway lodge there. The morning air held a chill that was a portent of the months to come but I enjoyed its brisk welcome to the day. I didn't recall what street the lodge was on but knew it was just off Main Street and enlisted my friend's assistance. Her navigation seemed off to me as we tacked a course through various side streets but who am I to question the declarations of an iPhone?
"Turn down Fourth Street!" she cried to me as my car darted forward down an unfamiliar street. A look of giddy anticipation began to creep over her face as the promise of rosettes and crafts drew nearer.
"Hmmm. This doesn't look familiar to me," I offered in my defense.
Her route or rather her phone's route brought us to the Mandt Community Center where we saw multiple families walking inside clutching hockey gear. A quick consultation of the Google and she realized that our destination was, in fact, the Mandt Lodge.
Our course was soon corrected.
We parked a couple blocks away with my friend surmising - quite correctly - that there would be no parking to be had close to the Lodge. We walked up the street and made a short stop at a memory garden where the sun has risen over the mill pond.
It was a lovely space that must look even lovelier in the warmer months.
The path was lined with bird feeders and statuary. This one reminded me of the clock egg hoolie in the video game The Last Express.
"It looks like a giant butt plug," my friend offered with a hearty laugh that made me chuckle. I think this was the first time I'd heard such bawdiness from her.
This statue brought Twin Peaks to mind and prompted me to make the much less ribald comment, "The owls are not what they seem."
When the lodge came into view so did a long line of folks waiting to enter.
In an attempt to alleviate crowding, people were being let inside in small groups as others left. We spent 20 minutes or so in line much of it with the infant in its mother's arms in front of us intently staring at me. A real cutie.
When we were finally let inside, we found that the place was packed with people scrambling for rømmegrøt, a Norwegian porridge, and all manner of Nordic cookies and sweets. I ended up with a small section of almond cake and some kransekake fingers which are the small, tubular siblings of a different and larger almond cake which apparently consists of rings of nutty goodness stacked one upon another.
On the crafty side, there were alpaca socks of all manner plus hats and scarves made from the wool of the South American(!!) animal. I was hoping to add another bar of pine scented soap to my strategic soap reserve from Suds & Harvest so that my skin would be redolent of evergreen through the winter. Mission accomplished.
I also snagged a tube of lip balm as mine was just about depleted.
We didn't stay too long as the lodge isn't very large and I had a date in the woods later in the morning. However, as we walked back to the car, my friend pleaded, "Can we go down to the bridge?" This was a bridge that went over the mill pond and of course I consented. We passed by a house that had a hound in the yard who was desperate for pets. We happily obliged.
It was a gorgeous morning and the bridge made for some fine scenery.
My friend dropped me off at home and I scrambled to find my gloves and put my boots on for I had a date at Token Creek Park ridding it of the dreaded buckthorn.
I took a walk before settling down before the keyboard yesterday morning. This time my walk would be done in daylight. The west side of the neighborhood tends to get the attention as most of the commercial activity is there - that isn't on E. Washington. But it is the east side of Eken Park that has Starkweather Creek and more greenspace including a dog park and community gardens.
While these look like scenes from the isthmus, they are from left-leaning neighbors here in Eken Park.
I thought this was funny. The style was familiar to me as if it was lifted from a cartoon or videogame but I couldn't place it.
I have walked by this greenspace a few times and have been wondering about it.
The land is apparently owned by the city but the Friends of Starkweather Creek maintain it with picnic tables, a Leopold bench, and a rain garden.
The Friends are also apparently responsible for the murals on the bridge nearby.
When I got home and took my place before my keyboard ready to work, I found a sleepy Piper perched on her cat tree looking at me.
