Two months, two seasons and two cities for me last week.
Here are some memories and highlights:
1. Chicago for me January 27-30. Richmond for me January 30-February 2. (I was actually in Chicago from January 16-30.)
2. Chicago’s high temperature on Tuesday, January 29 was 63 °F. Richmond was 71 °F on Wednesday, January 30. Then winter returned to both cities by the end of the week.
3. Shorts and T-shirts. Sweaters and scarves.
4. As always, our flight from O’Hare was about one hour late in departing. In Richmond, we had to wait for a gate to open. REALLY? Weather impacts O’Hare. Barney-Gomer effect impacts the Richmond airport.
5. My favorite new political ad this week in Chicago – Michael Bloomberg’s Super Pac funds a TV spot attacking Debbie Halvorson who is vying for Jesse Jackson Jr.’s congressional seat. Love it, but we’ll never see an ad like this in Virginia.
My favorite politico meeting in Richmond this week – Bill Bolling and Ken Cucinnelli had a powwow. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.
6. Food service highs and lows. On Monday night, a waitress at our local Chicago fave Hot Woks Cold Sushi brought soup bowls and spoons to us in advance of bringing us our big bowl of Tum Yum soup to share. Other servers kept trying to take the bowls away before we got the soup. It was funny and we laughed it away, but the manager stopped me on the way out to apologize profusely for their over attentiveness. In Richmond, at Taste of India, we finished our Samosa Chaat and I placed my messy knife on the appetizer plate at the proper angle for pick up. The waitress came and pointed to my knife and said, “Do you want to keep it?” Umm, well sure, but where do I put it? Shall I put the drippy thing on the clean white table cloth? Is it possible for you to bring a new one? We like the food at Taste of India, but they always have some sort of service-oriented issue like serving our food to another party or forgetting our order.
7. Did not see any birds in Chicago. I love birds. We have great birds in Richmond in January/February.
8. I hate cooking in our Chicago condo because of the lack of a stove exhaust fan. Why did they ever put microwaves over stoves? In Richmond, we have one powerful, mamma jamma kitchen exhaust fan over the stove. Frankly, the Chicago kitchen sucks — OR DOES NOT.
9. Chicago gas heat beats Richmond heat pump. Warm air is good when it is -2 °F.
10. Pack, unpack, laundry, laundry, laundry. Everywhere all the time.
dodderingdownsizing 