Skittles is thriving. He’s shed again, I think this is 5 times now. We cleaned out his cage and took the opportunity to take a photograph of him. . Usually he stays all buried under the newspaper or inside the the various sculptural elements in his habitat, so it was good to get a good look at him! He is an albino (see the light colored eyes)  corn snake, about 2 feet long.

We saw a great show at the Lookingglass Theatre with the Groves tonight, it was an acrobatic/circus version of the myth of Hephaestus, involving at one point two guys on a tightrope connected by a pole on their shoulders on which there was a woman sitting on a chair, balancing on the pole carried by the two guys, terrifying to watch, especially given that we were on the top row of theatre seats, so we could see ankles wobbling as they walked across the rope. Afterwards the acrobats were in the lobby, and Miles, with his love of all things…

Hang on, a few explanations will make this all very clear. First, the Daily News is a part of Miles’s day at school. Each day they write up a “Daily News” sheet then read them out to the class. They bring the paper home every night. On this particular day, Miles wrote he was proud of his brother. Miss Pantoja (actually it was Mrs Acevedo, the school assistant principal) had a second cousin visiting from Ireland and Liam was chosen to be his host for the day. “He will be working with my brother” because Liam was taking him to…

Work began tonight on the 7-month old leaking water main in front of our house. In the dark, with snow falling heavily, the ground frozen and covered with ice and snow, a crew arrived, knocked on doors until all the cars were moved, and started digging. Very exciting for a while, then it was just very loud. Let’s hope that tomorrow morning we will still have water coming out the tap and we won’t have water in the parkway!

Last week in New York I had an opportunity to go to Conor McPhearson’s new play “The Seafarer.” It’s set in North Dublin, where all the characters are degenerate drunks who spend most of their lives in the pubs of Kilester, Raheny, Bayside, Sutton and Baldolye. It’s was really excellent, and while the whole audience enjoyed the hilarious dipiction of a miserable three weeks spent in Grainger’s in Baldoyle, I thought I got an extra bit of enjoyment out of it, knowing the place itself. The cast was great, with Jim Norton, Conleth Hill, Ciaran Hinds, David Morse and Sean…

Mayor Daley would be proud of us for how we spent Sunday–we went to the Art Institute, which is free for all of February, we ice skated at Millennium Park, we sat in the warming tent and had a hot chocolate by the ice rink, then we went to check out the Paintings Below Zero installation of ice painting right by the bean. All exceeded our expectations! We focused on the ancient Greek galleries at the Art Institute, to let Miles see some of the real coins and pottery that show the Olympians and heroes–the Athena coin with an owl…

This weekend was the bald eagle viewing weekend at Starved Rock so we went to take a look. And of course we had to go for a walk through Matthieson Park as well, always fun any time of year. This time, much of the river in the dells was frozen solid so we could walk across it. We saw several frozen waterfalls and one section of lake that was 5 feet of solid, perfectly clear, ice. Miles’s friend Cyrus came along too.

They’re just so classy looking!

We’ve gotten this in the mail a couple of times. See the bottom picture that I’ve circled? I think she looks like me, but I know it’s not because I don’t have a jacket like that. Weird though!

Thought you’d be interested in the photo’s of Robert and Bronagh’s new baby, Anna, who was born on the 6th of January, weighing 3.4kg (7.7lbs) and 50 cm long. He sent us some nice photos, of Anna, Bronagh, himself and Moya. Apparently all is well, with Anna sleeping and eating great.