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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!

Willow

Last week we dogsat for Willow at Robert’s house, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘Randi’, although I was also there to play Carcassonne and buy ice-cream and watch Would I Like To You? and generally perform non Willow-related functions. (She is cute, though!)

We also got to see Todd and Carolyn’s astonishingly beautiful new flat (so many books!) which, as a wonderful added bonus, also contained Katie and Brandon on a Thanksgiving visit back to Chicago. Was great to catch up with them again.

One more pre-Thanksgiving snippet: the night that Randi, Amanda and I decided to watch a film together and settled on The Princess Bride, which I had heard lots of good things about but never actually seen. And indeed, not only did it prove to be a fun and offbeat adventure comedy, but I should be clued into many more memes in presentations at work now. (That’s assuming I can remember them after Amanda and I decided that we should start drinking the leftover brandy from the mulled wine afterwards, on the basis that brandy rhymes with Randi. Actual Randi went to bed instead.)

And now: Thanksgiving in California!

Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere…

A crowded Thanksgiving table

It’s a turkey usurping the White House and making himself King. It’s satire turkey.

Everyone and their less satirical turkeys

Not ready to go back to Chicago

Everyone made a big deal of insisting that the 35°C weather was ‘unseasonably warm’ for late November, but I believe that they are all lying and just trying to discourage more emigration to the coast. Regardless, we had a packed Thanksgiving 2017 in the sun which included an enormous quantity of cheese, a game of Smash Up, a packed schedule alternating between the pool and the hot tub, an unfairly-judged gingerbread turkey decorating competition, a sunset walk around the hills of Yorba Linda, brunch with the Leikens and mulled wine around the fire pit at night. Also, props to Andrew at Thanksgiving dinner proper for being the first person to ever explain the Hanukkah story to me without using any circular logic.

GUESS WHICH FESTIVAL COMES NEXT?!