dom.blog

Hell yes, it’s Ed Miliband

This week we met the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Ed Miliband, at a low-key event at the University of Chicago.

With all of the political turmoil in the US and elsewhere, it’s easy to forget about Britain’s relatively boring experience since the 2015 general election, when Miliband’s Labour Party won a small but durable majority over the Conservatives. Ed was fortunate, of course, in that his opposition was immediately distracted by a protracted and bitter fight over who would succeed David Cameron as leader. After the mutual back-stabbing of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and the embarrassing revelations of Theresa May’s past convictions for trespassing over wheat fields, it was perhaps inevitable that Jacob Rees-Mogg would end up as the new Tory leader. Popular with the membership base, and with the shadowy campaigning group Inertia, he has never been fully accepted by his parliamentary colleagues and has failed to win over the country as a whole.

Meanwhile, Ed’s popularity has waxed and waned with the normal political tides. How much money does the NHS need? How much tax should Google pay? What kind of sandwiches should the newly-renationalised railway serve? (“Anything but bacon”, joked Ed.) In times of trouble, he likes to remind audiences that, had he not beaten David Cameron in 2015, the whole of politics could have been subsumed by fights about leaving the European Union for decades and decades. But it doesn’t win him much credit, since – like Obama’s handling of the financial crisis – most people can’t visualise a disaster which didn’t happen.

It was nice, and oddly relaxing, to see him in person. He’s not a charismatic icon, but a reassuring presence, and that is much appreciated right now.

Aside from this, and in addition to brunch with Jason and Carrie where I discovered that “eggs in a hole” is a thing, we saw two films last weekend. The Lobster was recommended to me years ago, and is the sort of film which some people call “absurdist” and others call “weird”. I think I genuinely enjoyed the first half, after which it dragged a bit. We also saw The Other Side of Everything at the Davis Theatre, which was fantastic. The film is a documentary by Mila Turajlić, a filmmaker whose mother (and star of the film) is Srbijanka Turajlić, a democratic activist who campaigned against the Milošević regime in Serbia in the 1990s. The whole thing is filmed from inside their apartment in Belgrade, which was partitioned by the Communists after the Second World War and, when the film begins, still has someone living in one of their old rooms as a protected tenant. Srbijanka is such a thoughtful and inspiring figure, so it was a happy surprise to see her standing up in person at the post-film Q&A with her daughter. I wished I had brushed up a little on the history of Yugoslavia before seeing the film, but even if you don’t remember anything this is highly recommended.

My own experience of long-distance Amtrak trains is that they attract two main groups of people: the elderly and the British. So it was not altogether surprising that Grace and Charlotte arrived from San Francisco after a scheduled 51-hour journey by rail, nor was it very shocking that it actually took quite a bit longer than 51 hours to get here, throwing off our Saturday night plans. But we made up for it later with dinners at Kuma’s and Little Goat Diner (two Chicago staples!), a little light Scientology brainwashing and some “welcome to the Midwest!” tea served in a QPCS mug. Still flying the flag, Queens Park.

Charlotte and Grace in Kuma’s (and not on a train)

Last week we also went back to Geja’s for Catherine’s birthday, where (like last year) we (a) dipped a lot of food in cheese fondue, (b) moved on to cooking more food in bubbling oil, before (c) returning to the fondue dipping routine with melted chocolate. I wanted to break out these steps because last year I apparently claimed to have regretted overeating in the initial cheese phase. This didn’t sound like something I would say, so – for the record, and for next year – I want to fully endorse all of the cheese. Randi and I also popped up to Evanston on Saturday for brunch with Rudy and Melissa, before getting back to Chicago for “game night” with Chloe and Aaron. Sometimes it seems that we forget to actually play games on a large portion of these nights. But we did witness how they have successfully trained their cat to respond to the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song as a signal for food.

Randi, Rudy and Melissa in Evanston

Finally, on Sunday it was Easter and/or Passover! I was very happy that Randi’s proper Cadbury Easter Egg arrived in time, and equally happy to help eat it. We also ate a large variety of eggs in various forms over brunch with Joe and Julie, before watching Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This was not the style of film I had expected from the description, but I very much appreciated the dark humour to accompany the plot, and I now feel marginally more informed if people have belated conversations with me about the Oscars.

Mostly eggs

Here are just a few of the things I lost when my laptop was stolen from our apartment:

• Audio recordings of my dad making up stories for me when I was a child, which I originally captured on audio cassette with my very own portable recorder
• Silly videos from the very last day of secondary school
• All of those history essays I wrote in university
• About 28 years of photos
• My first ever conversation with Randi

I didn’t lose any of these things for very long, of course, because my next step was to download everything exactly as it was from a CrashPlan backup. A week later, I’m typing this on a swanky, self-indulgent new laptop purchase with my digital life all restored. So I can get on with feeling nerdishly excited over this slim new computer which recognises my face, or shame-faced that we hadn’t got around to buying renters insurance yet, or philosophical that the forensics officer from the Chicago police who came round “mostly handles homicides” so our Friday night drama was just some light relief by comparison, or confused that whoever broke into our apartment decided not to take my laptop’s power cord or the actual cash sitting on the coffee table. That’s all fine, I can cope with all of these feelings very easily.

But – public service announcement – backups are good. Would recommend. Now all I have to worry about is the @ sign in the wrong place on the keyboard 😉

If you’ve recently picked up this laptop from a Chicago pawn shop, I have a power cord to sell you

Aside from being victims of minor crime we’ve had a relaxed few weeks, venturing outside for select activities such as a lovely catch-up night with Chloe and Aaron at Kingston Mines. Oh, and my first “proper” Super Bowl party on Sunday. I thought I’d already ticked this one off back in 2015 but apparently that didn’t count because (a) there was no chili cheese dip (b) we all fell asleep. Anyway, this time around I can rest easy thanks to our amazing hosts Ashley and Erik, who I last saw during our phone-banking on the Clinton campaign. (Remember that? Seems like a good idea now, doesn’t it?) The food was amazing – I’m still a little full of queso – the crowd was pleasantly moderate on the “caring about sport” spectrum, and the underdogs won by doing lots of running and less stopping than usual. Huzzah.

Recipe for Vegetable Frittatas (Serves 4)

1. Go to Catherine and AJ’s.
2. Eat some of their already-baked biscuits (in the American sense) as an appetiser.
3. Have everyone put a slightly different combination of vegetables into their own skillet on the hob. Consider including bacon as a power vegetable.
4. Add eggs and cheese. Think you’ve added enough cheese? You haven’t. Add more cheese.
5. Bake!
6. Spread the word about Catherine and AJ’s as a ‘social media influencer’.

Frittatas

I think I write the same thing every January, but here it is again: January is a time to stay indoors and plan trips for the rest of the year. We have been pretty successful at planning our big summer trip… but unfortunately this is still seven months away, so I’ll need to improvise some more blog content between now and then.

So let’s see… we played Codenames with Toggolyn and friends, in which it was demonstrated again that Codenames is a stressful, stressful game which lures couples into massively overthinking each other. Much easier to play with someone you’ve never met before. We had dinner with Randi’s cousin, Arielle, and successfully lured her to Chicago. (Well, it wasn’t really us. It was a job. But we didn’t put her off.) I got to see Saujanya after way too long, albeit with the good excuse that she lives in Australia now, and through her I also got to see Katie & Mike again: a couple I know largely through Goodreads, but are great. We also dogsat Willow again, played more Citadels, had brunch with Michaela and Andy, and celebrated Julie’s birthday by watching a live US Senate feed as the government shut down*. Oh, America.

Randi the Wizard

*Blogging behind the scenes trivia: this statement is actually a half-truth. Really, we celebrated Julie’s birthday on one evening, and then the next evening Joe and Julie also happened to come over with doughnuts – we are neighbours, after all – and we watched the Senate vote. But this was extraneous detail, so I simply merged the two nights together and retold them as if they had been a single event. Do you feel deceived? Just wait till you find out that Randi isn’t actually a wizard…

Catherine is showing off her nice iPhone X photos

The holidays are here, and as usual I’m stressing out to get all of my end-of-year blog content written before we leave on our Christmas trip and generate yet more content to blog about. I also managed to secure the contract to run this year’s family Christmas Quiz, which I don’t think I’ve been allowed to do since I was about five years old and asked questions like “name the the first book on the shelf in my bedroom”. So the pressure is on not to blow it this time.

Latkes!

These Christmassy and/or Hanukkahy photos (the ones with the nice focus) come from Catherine and AJ’s holiday celebratory gathering, during which Randi cooked latkes, we all made gingerbread cookies of varying degrees of crispness and whatever college football [sic] game was on in the background became infinitely more interesting when the pitch (do they call it a pitch?) started to fall apart. Play then stopped so that a harried operations dude could ‘fix it’ (by scattering coal dust?) and the TV commentators, lacking anything else to talk about, began to commentate earnestly on this repair job instead. “This guy’s doing amazingly. Look at that concentration under pressure. Oh… oh… we have his name!”

And once that was all over we watched The Room (worst film ever made) in preparation for seeing The Disaster Artist (retelling of how the worst film ever made was made) this week, which was amazing and very funny. It’s probably still funny without seeing The Room first, I guess, but I’m not sure why anyone would let that opportunity go by.

The incredibly meat-like Impossible Burger

In the last few weeks Randi and I also saw Voyeur (a documentary about journalist Gay Talese and a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades: it’s honestly a bit of a toss-up about which one has bigger problems) at a Dinner & Docs event. I also made a quick two-day trip to Palo Alto during which I was excited to try the Impossible Burger. It is a really impressive attempt to re-create a meat burger from genetically engineered plants, and it was totally delicious.

I do fear it moves us a step closer to the nightmare future where the next generation, able to enjoy all of the pleasures of eating meat without any of the downsides, smugly update their morality and then charge their parents and grandparents with meat-related crimes over bitter family dinners. I can see it all now. You hear that, next generation? I preempted your outrage.

At the 2017 Groupon Holiday Party

Last weekend we also partied at the Groupon holiday party at which T-Pain did not appear (I was indifferent about that, but the party was nice), played satisfying games of Dixit with Jason and Carrie (i.e. games I happened to do well in) and watched The Third Man in preparation for our trip to Vienna. This film taught me that everything in Vienna happens at a jaunty angle, and that if you want to go home again the British army is happy to buy you a plane ticket and drive you to the airport (#travelhacking). Finally, tonight we saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi with Toggolyn before we leave tomorrow. It seemed a bit long to me, but maybe that’s because my mind is already drifting to our travels, which start tomorrow. Tomorrow!

Merry Chrismukkah!