Yasou, Athens!

August 30, 2021

I’ll start with the big news event, Miles has arrived in Greece! He flew into Chicago on Friday evening (right smack into a very humid and hot spell, which we are very glad to say broke today). Saturday evening we invited Liam and Kat over to send Miles off with a nice dinner and Greece-related activities.

The menu: ribs with a paprika rub, spinach salad with almonds and dates, corn on the cob, and poached peaches with hibiscus flowers, vanilla ice cream and a crunch topping.

John prepped the ribs early in the day – as seen from the cup of coffee in the frame.

Once the ribs went on the smoker, we had a lot of down time. This is what active parenting of 20-year-olds looks like:

It was very hot outside but we lasted outside until about 3pm when we had to retreat to the air conditioning!

Meanwhile, inside the peaches poached up very nicely in the oven.

Dinner!
Dessert!
A game! Since Zeus on the Loose has since relocated to Naperville, we played 7 Wonders, with many references to ancient Greece. I don’t remember who won but I lost very badly because I didn’t stock up on resources enough in rounds 1 and 2. There must be a lesson in there.
We found a score card that showed Colette and Colman’s initials! Colman tied with someone but it’s hard to read who.

On Sunday morning, we walked over to Jeff & Judes for breakfast on their patio. It had just rained but the patio was drying out nicely and we enjoyed bagels, smoked salmon and corned beef hash.

After some re-packing of Miles’s duffel bag we were ready to head to the airport. Miles arrived at about 9am local time in Athens, and spent the day getting settled into his apartment. Hope to have photos soon!

In other news, here are the words to go with the next set of photos:

Chicago and Illinois have returned to having mask mandates in indoor public places, and the silver lining is that the signage continues to be witty. I got a new bike! My old one had a complete breakdown, and we debated rebuilding but decided to just go new and I really love it. Pratt beach (aka Toby Prinz) up near the Groves is a great swimming spot. We went to a concert at Millennium Park – so much fun after a long time not doing things like that!

And we also went kayaking at Busse Woods (sort of on the other side of O’Hare) last weekend – really great and so many large birds! See all the comorants in the tree? We had really enjoyed watching comorants, the way they dive all the way into the water and then pop up surprisingly far away from where they started. But seeing them all in one bare tree was kinda creepy!

Καλή εβδομάδα!

or, Kali evdomada. This means “Have a good week!” and is apparently an appropriate Monday greeting 🙂

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