Week 4: full house, empty streets

Hello, everyone! I’ve been gearing up for our 4th week in quarantine update when this delightful piece of content landed in my lap. Nyx has been having a great time with twisty-ties that came off a bundle of parsley. John captured just 15 seconds or so of Nyx’s half an hour playing with the ties, check out the video here: https://youtu.be/Qwy_KUb068I.

After a big play session, Nyx likes snuggling with John. He and John both really like the same chair so it’s hard to know if they are snuggling or each asserting their right to sit there.

This is birthday week around here, and so it took some creativity to properly celebrate a 51st birthday, midweek, during a pandemic. But I think we nailed it. Remember last year’s amazing birthday with Anne and Brian, at Alinea in Chicago? Alinea has been taking orders for dinner takeout for a few weeks now, and it’s (no surprise!) hugely popular. They have a whole system down – there is one meal to order, you prepay and order it for a reserved time, you pull up in your car and they come ask your name, and they bring you a bag of the number of meals ordered. I picked up the two bags of food and then drove over to drop off two meals with Liam and Kat. Then home to unpack!

It came with very clear reheat instructions!

We were going to keep it a secret from John until the food was on the table, but then I realized he would really enjoy the warm-up and plating process!

Less theater than at Alinea but an amazing meal nonetheless. Here we are with food plated: salad, coq au vin, mashed potatoes (half potatoes, half dairy, oh wow!), red wine reduction sauce with pearl onions and carrots, and a roll. We had a pre-dinner toast with Liam and Kat before the meal.

Oh, did I mention pastry stars for plating? Nice touch!

Then after dinner we facetimed with Liam and Kat for the presentation of the dessert (pot au chocolate) with candle and happy birthday song!

Other highlights during the week included art club with Mom, Debbie and Maddie. We drew frogs and bunnies, then Maddie put on some rabbit ears! You can see me in the lower right, facetiming from the back yard.

The thing about working and studying from home is that you can really participate from any room. Here’s Miles in his History of the First World War class on zoom.

Garfield Park yoga was on virtually this morning, which was great as always. They did a new thing today: we were asked a survey question about would we be interested in going on a virtual tour after class, and if so, which room did we want to visit? We voted for a tour of the spring show, which won hands down. So after class, the staff person at GPC walked us around the spring flower show area and told us about the plants. The show is called Golden Hour, which refers to the light at sunrise and sunset. The azaleas at the back of the photo below were propagated from azaleas at the World Columbian Exposition in 1893!

She talked a lot about the bold colors of plants that bloom in spring. The plants have a chance to get a lot of sunlight early in the season because there aren’t leaves on trees yet, blocking the sun from the smaller plants beneath. Did not know that! In this exhibit, there is also some wrapping of trees with yarn which is pretty cool.

Later today, John and I decided to have a look at the empty city. While we had a really nice time and the day was beautiful, it’s definitely very strange to see everything so empty. Here’s Dearborn Street.

Oh, this is not pandemic related, but I hadn’t noticed this figure on the exterior of the Goodman Theater before.

Daley Plaza.

Calder sculpture!

We’ve never seen Buckingham Fountain so empty.

Grant Park is often less crowded than other parks, but today it was a vision of social distancing.

And of course, Millennium Park, completely closed and empty.

That’s about all for today – will plan on doing a 2nd April b-day post tomorrow!