last holiday-themed post

Maybe. These photos are just too sad for my Flickr account, so here you are. The lousy weather meant I didn't try to go to Iowa for Christmas. Then my family called on Christmas to see if I'd come the next day or later, but by then I'd given up on the idea of going, and besides I'd started coming down with a cold the night before (when I had a nice night out with an out-of-state friend here to visit her family, going out for a big dinner in Chinatown and drinks in an apartment in a former paper factory, I think it was). So I didn't go to my hometown, didn't have family here, and didn't know if it was okay to call friends (some of who turned out to be here, and would have invited me to dinner and to get glogg at Simon's [which was kind of my dream day if I was stuck here] if they'd known I was also in Chicago). But I was too sick, not very sick but sick enough I didn't want to make things worse, that I couldn't have gone out with them anyway. Nor could I go out and have fun seeing what was open in the Thai neighborhood, or ride Metra when hardly anyone was on it, or check out an unguarded abandoned building.

So on Christmas I had a cold, and only went out (because I needed to go somewhere, briefly) to the 24-hour Starbucks at North and Wells (open till 7 pm on Christmas, however). My breakfast was a large venti eggnog latte and lemon pound cake, and I spent a few minutes reading a coffee-table book on the past few decades of the Boston Bruins.

When I got around to dinner, I made some cheap staples (soup and macaroni and cheese) from Family Dollar, but fortunately I had salad ingredients from Treasure Island and a beer from Olde Main in my hometown, so the dinner wasn't too pathetic. Also, in the evening my friend in Boston called and it turned out he hadn't gone home (Albany) for Christmas either because of car trouble, so we had that to talk about, and hockey, lots of talk about hockey (I still don't have a Chicago friend to regularly talk sports with).

Dessert/late-night snack was hot cocoa (Penzey's mint mix) and cookies from another friend. I didn't get to make any cookies this year. What I didn't do for Christmas (cooking, decorating, sending cards, giving or getting gifts), and won't be doing for New Year's (though at least I'm going to the Blackhawks game, the last one I got a ticket for before the prices went absurdly high), would fill volumes. So, I'll try not to think about it too much. It wasn't a terrible day, but I can't believe I did so little. Except listen to the all-Christmas-music lite station incessantly for weeks (as noted previously). And it did switch, right at midnight, to a non-Christmas Tom Petty song.

Next up (what I should have blogged tonight, but I want to get back to that Bruins book so I can technically finish reading it in 2009): the impending closure of Standee's, the 24-hour grill in Edgewater. Which the Chicago media hasn't covered much, maybe because this happened so suddenly? And they're supposed to move across the street, but we'll see...They have amazing stories to tell there. And when I ate there with a friend the other day, the food was the best I'd ever had there. Go figure, I start to like the place right before it closes.