Countdown to Christmas

So, I'm at home today, trying to get over a sore throat. Hopefully it won't get any worse come this weekend when we fly home to England.

The past week or so have been pretty crazy, two mondays ago the remnants of our fall soccer team, Barcapool, met for one last hurrah at Redmond's, to watch the Bears trash the Rams. Left to right, in the first photo, you have Stephanie, Holly, Me, Pam and Seth:




Thanks to Steph for the pics. Do y'see the sweater? It's been my number one piece of clothing since I discovered it in our closet, it says 'Lee's Construction' on it and was evidently designed to withstand the elements. I don't know why but I've enjoyed being overtly 'blue collar'.

Thursday we had our housegroup's christmas dinner, a few gifts exchanged, some settlers of course, and a big white bow not pictured here for my sake:


Saturday we went to two different christmas parties, one was a massive children-infested (in a good way) cookie contest at the Fullers and then we moved onto the Cadys for to bop the next few hours away. Sadly there are no pics as we forgot the camera.

Sunday, Erika and I skipped church in the morning and went to a different service to which our friend invited us in the afternoon, a Christmas special. The highlight must have been the 50-strong choir singing the Hallelujah chorus.

During the weekend, Erika's cousin gave birth to a baby girl, Congratulations to Elizabeth and Zach, and welcome to Isabel:



Finally, my father-in-law makes the best Santa you could imagine:

End of another quarter

So, tomorrow afternoon I'm sitting down with my partner TA to grade the last exam of the Molecular Biology class for sophomores (3rd years) at Northwestern. Finally, that along with my penultimate class (in which my group got the best grade for their projects by 0.04 points! *self-congratulatory slap on back*) means the next quarter I can just worry about research....I hope....

Quiet White and the Christmas Light(s)

Well, its been a while since I blogged something. Thought I'd write again before Janna makes a point of it. The November weather was unseasonal, as it should have snowed on thanksgiving according to Mrs. Parsons but it didn't, in fact it was an extra 20 degrees almost for the next week. Then the snow came. A heavy white blanket settled over NE Illinois overnight, and we all woke up to winter and to find our cars missing.

Well, we didn't get ours towed this year, but we'd learned our painful lesson years ago, nothing worse than standing in the snow in early morning sub-zero temperatures and looking at an empty 'my-car-used-to-be-there' spot.

Last weekend, Erika and I went to the annual church dinner and dance at a golf club in Glenview, it was a nice evening, a buffet dinner with plenty of food and, surprisingly, a few kilograms of Baklava. We had ourselves a friendly table with some girls from housegroup and also and got to know a few more people from church. Erika, Janna & Emily are the three wide grins below:


The very next day, we enjoyed a spontaneous breakfast at IHOP with Janna, Emily, and Robin. It was nice to see the latter, an interpreter for me at church and also at some of my meetings at Northwestern. It always gets a little strange knowing that you're friends and yet have a professional relationship at certain times of the day. Speaking of which, I was accused of a different interpreter of becoming an American Deaf person the other day simply because I was attempting to have a conversation with her in the middle of a lecture. Apparently, a lot of deaf people do that with their interpreters and it took me a long time to warm up. I know that the professor noticed, but honestly, what could he say? :-)

After breakfast, Erika and I went to get a christmas tree, we'd spotted a temporary open air lot that had opened up on sheridan road, complete with a little caravan and a grizzled war-vet type lashing the tree to the car for us and reminding us to keep the water topped up. We got the thing decorated in one day, so along with the winter Quiet White, we got the Christmas Lights.




Peace, for tis the season.

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. John 1:9

The end of another season

Well, I'm sitting on my couch, having washed the mud off my hands and trying to wind down from a late game of football. It was probably the second most fun game I played this season, the first being the aforementioned mud-fest. The game tonight started at 9:30pm, in close to sub-zero temperatures, and it was 0-0 all the way into double OT when the opposition finally scored the golden goal. Being a playoff game, that finished it for us, not with a bang, but a whimper. Though the whimper was partly because the late game meant so few of us were up for another trip to Redmond's, our magners-on-draft-and-irish-nachos sponsors. Well, can't blame us, it was close to 11pm when we finished.

It was pointed out to me by a lovely lady recently that things had been quiet on the blog-front. I concur, and this post is in part dedicated to her. Though, in retrospect she doesn't keep a blog of her own, which makes her point moot really. Anyway, here's to Janna, middle English literature teacher extraordinaire.

I am currently blogging from a firefox plugin I discovered the other day, called 'performancing'. If you're a firefox user and a blogger, you should check it out, it saves having to keep logging in, but its not good with the pics so I'll have to log in anyway. But the pics are a bit sparse today. Being me, I forgot to take the camera tonight and so have no picture of the team in all our muddy glory. But the picture wouldn't have had Courtney (FL), Stephanie (Kenya) , Erika (Preggers), and Fernando (Jail) so perhaps it would have been severely lacking anyway.

I'm putting a couple of belated pics here just for the sake of it. About a month ago now, Chad, Erika, Emily and me went to a 'hawks game and even met Tommy the Hawk. The only highlight as our team got blanked like 4-0. Thanks to Chad for sending them to me belatedly:


It was my birthday last friday, and I was well treated to breakfast-in-bed, a dinner at Red Lobster with a Bahama-mama and accompanied by my Sugah-mama. The celebration was on saturday night and we had a joint do at Seth's (who's a few hours younger than me) with a few friends to hang, scoff pizza, and play Settlers. The Parsons, despite being new to the game, have continued their winning streak much to the despair of the Seavers. We need to pick our game up! Gladly though, it seems we've won a few more converts.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was re-reading William Gibson, well he wrote 8 books in all, and I'm now in book No. 7. Enjoying every minute of it, I think this one, 'All Tomorrow's Parties', is probably a close second favourite , perhaps competing with 'Count Zero', to be the runner-up to 'Neuromancer'. My sister sent me a book, 'Arthur & George', the abstract reminded me of another book I read last year, called 'Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell', which I recommend, but there's no magic in this one, seems more historically accurate (not that there's anything accurate about magic either...). Thanks Amber, I look forward to the time I have for it this weekend, in between Xbox, football and turkey.

Anyway, I'm blabbing, I think my lungs have returned to their normal capacity, g'night...

Low Blow

So I'm watching SportsCenter, as any male american does, and they were talking about something that happened on Monday Night (American) Football, the video made me giggle so many times I went onto youtube.com to find it. Rest assured, within 24 hours, someone had posted the video on the site:


For the non-americans, if you watch the first few seconds after the scrimmage, you'll see a yellow flag flying, that's the 'whistle' for a penalty. Give it a few more seconds (40 to be exact) and you'll see what the penalty is.

Clubs are Trumps

So, we just spent a weekend in Michigan with Erika's folks. One of her cousins got married and it was a pretty typical affair. The nicest part was getting to play cards with her family and the boring part was having nothing to read but science papers on the way home.

Here's a couple of pics. The oldies in front of Erika are her grandparents (on Pam's side). We forgot to take the camera to the reception so nothing there.

Clubs are Trumps is a euchre-style card game that involve losing your money. It mounts up in pennies and nickels and if you lose you generally end up paying anything from 30 cents to over a dollar. I think I won about a dollar and 17 cents in my first game, and lost 48 cents in my second. What I like is that they're serious about it, they'll get up and dig every penny they find that counts, like I got my two cents change from Erika for two quarters. Though I hear Chad still owes Doug :-)

I love 'That 70's Show', its the kind that would probably make your spouse roll her eyes when you stop on it while channel-browsing but the quips make me laugh. Here's a classic:

"Wow Hyde, you're serious about this, you're leaning forward, you've got your sunglasses off....you're freaking out man!"

Mud

So we finally got to play a game on Monday, my local football team, because games had either been rained out or our opponents didn't show up. We did have a pick-up game when the latter happened last time and I think it helped us as a team, because we played really well on monday, won 2-0 and our resident hard-core Catalan finally scored! (Roger had been incredibly unlucky for over a year with his shots, could never seem to get the ball in the net). The best part of the game was the mud, brought back memories:



Also posted here is a picture (hard-copy) sent by my sister of my 2 year old nephew. It was a nice surprise to get the picture in the post and I've placed it in the optimal position on the bookshelf opposite our couch. Thanks Amber!


Gretchen and Adam kindly sent us some lovely flowers too, thank you!


Went shopping yesterday, on my own, decided to give Erika a break from the drudgery, especially because of you-knowwhat. Spent half an hour trying to find some sun-dried tomatoes for her meatball recipe. Got home, found out I went to the wrong store and spent about $70 more for doing so. Damn...

Congrats also to Erika for going full-time. After two years working part-time at ETHS and scrounging extra maths classes, she was offered another class last week to officially put her on the tenure-track. Yea, they do 'tenure' in high school here, weird.

Erika and I watched a good movie last night: "On a Clear Day", British, so of course it was good. I recommend it, especially to my family.

So today, we're going to a Blackhawks game, Chad is in town and tomorrow night I'm hoping to visit the Matsuokas and get blitzed by the li'l ball of energy called Koji.

Well, eventual weekend, friday night, after Erika got off at the Firehouse (ya, should be the last time she works an extra job for a looong time), we went to see Tiff and Carmelo. They got married this summer. Flashback photo:

He is a master drummer from Haiti (bit of a celebrity there apparently),

playing with his band at a local restaurant.



Saturday morning we got up early to go tailgate for the NU - MSU game here in Evanston. We had breakfast burritos, bagels and Buck's Fizz, which is Mimosas to the yanks. Our friend Seth is in the Navy and we're were conveniently situated on the porch of the Navy ROTC center at Northwestern:

It was my first time in Ryan field despite being at NU for 5 years (I was wearing green by the way).
There were more fans there than I expected and yet it had a good gameday feel to it. MSU made the biggest comeback in the history of first division college american football, scoring 35 straight points in the second half to win 41-38. So it was a fantastic game! Well...not for all.


Erika and I went shopping after that. She'd been badgering me about the holes in my shoes and jeans for a few weeks, and I finally caved in on one condition: I get a nap before we shop. We ended up sleeping for an hour in car while parked at the mall. We sound like bums, but it was a good nap! Good enough for me to try on about 8 pairs of the jeans Erika threw over the dressing room door, if you know me, I kick up a fuss at having to try just one on.

I should pause here to mention my latest fad. I have a lot of favourite socks which are aging and have holes over the big toes, and though I'm not picky, I hated the thought of even having to go buy some new socks. So Erika supervised my first attempt at sewing up holes in my own socks last week and it was a success. I'm now hooked, there's something satisfying about the whole process, almost as if I'm rejuvenating clothing! Sad I know, but it's giving me something to do with my fingers other than read and be on the computer.

Anyway, after shopping we came home and just vegged. This morning a few friends, namely Andy and Stephen were running the Chicago marathon so we went to cheer them on. I'd never been to a marthon before and I must say I was impressed with the community spirit. Not only was the sight of 40,000 runners impressive, along with the huge variety of ages, sizes and nationalities, so was the spectators, there was so much cheering, yelling, flag-waving. I'm sorry to say that this is the only picture of the whole morning that I took, in Chinatown. If you squint, tilt your head to the left and look down your nose, you can just see the dancing dragons on the corner: We went to two different places, the 11 mile and 22 mile markers, and the crowd was just belting out. Many of the runners had their names on their fronts and everyone was just calling them out by name and encouraging them. I'd never dream of running 5 miles, but after seeing the community spirit of 26 miles, I feel I could be motivated to participate someday. But then on the way back, all the hobbling tired people with their green and yellow medals round the neck made me think a little more....hmm, it's a long 26 miles.

We hung out with Gretchen and Adam (mutual friends of Stephen and his wife Emily) afterwards, had lunch at Rock-Bottom (where I had part of my stag do back in summer of '03) and walked to Gretch's apartment. She's just moved back to Chi-town and is renting it from a friend of her father. It's right over Navy Pier, overlooking the lake and the loop, amazing place! Plush carpet, leather couch, all the works though the TV could do a li'l upgrading :-)

As for Erika, she seems to be managing the nausea well, she threw up for the first time last week but I don't think she'll do it often at all over the next few weeks which is good. She does spontaneously gag at times, which, if I wasn't so emotionally invested in her, I'd find incredibly amusing.

Mum and Dad are getting their vows renewed in the new year. It's been fun to hear about their preparations, as it's another mini-wedding except this time its your parents doing it. We got the invite to the reception and I have the food list posted here. Wanted my American friends to see some of the options, can anyone guess what's in 'Spotted Treacly Dick'? :-D

Neuromancer

Just finished reading Neuromancer for the umpteenth time in my life, I picked it up again because I was reading about Gibson earlier this week. Somehow my net browsing meant that I saw some reference to him somewhere in Wikipedia and I found myself reading his own page. Did you know that a paper was published in Nature that found more mistakes in the Britannica Encyclopedia than Wikipedia? Understandably, the paper is being contested by the former, should we have a 'Best thing to do with old and redundant encyclopedias' contest?

But I digress, I was excited to find that an actual documentary about Gibson and his views on life had been made, it went to the top of my netflix list soooo fast.

*beat*

What's that?

*Sound of leaf hitting ground*

You haven't heard of William Gibson, Father of the cyberpunk genre, King of cyberspace and Visionary for virtual reality and the net?!?!? Man, forget the Wachowski brothers, he invented the Matrix 15 years before Keanue Reeves put those sunglasses on. Anyway, like I said, I just finished reading Neuromancer for the thousandth time. nuff said.


Got some left over pics from two different BBQs this august, check out Jenny's shirt:

Beginnings

So, we have a new blog, its a follow-on from our successful trip blog but specifically for for all the random happenings in our lives here in Chicago, we'll save the other blog for when we go out travelling again (which will be this Christmas). A motivation for finally getting my finger out and writing is the expectancy of a new member of our family currently weighing in at 4mm: Foetus Seaver! Give him/her a round of applause ladies and gentlemen!




(Pssst, it's the little grey smear)

My parents sent us a lovely bouquet of flowers too, I'm posting a pic so they can see how beautiful it is. Thanks Mum and Dad!