a quick word before I leave the country

So yes, we're at O'Hare, awaiting a flight to Vancouver. A few fun-filled days there of buying new furniture and redecorating the condo. No, I mean that. I'm altogether excited over it all.

A few quick things to catch all four of you readers up on things...

There was baking to be had this weekend: three batches of scones in all, plus individual Black Magic Chocolate Cakes. The former were tasty, the latter, even better than that.



Four of the cakes went with us to Rachel's for Saturday dinner. I tell you, that Rachel can put together a fine meal, thanks in part to Peachy, her consultant, and Vikram Vij, cookbook author. A rare treat to have someone cook for us, and we had an exceptional time of it.



And then we made it two meals in a row with breakfast at Nancy's. A working breakfast, you know - that Aruba presentation isn't going to write itself!

Frank lives! Gone from the Smelts for far too long, and we've not seen him since the morning after the wedding. But there he was on Sunday at Yoshi's, enjoying a VERY packed bar with us. Too packed for me to comfortably take photos until the crowds thinned in time for dessert.

Alright, a quick check-in as promised. Internet access in Vancouver will be spotty in among the work starting to put the condo together. But you four are used to my long silences by now, I know. And thank you for that.

forty

Oh yes, I AM milking this birthday. Unabashedly so.

I will have fun posts on the food, the shopping, the people in my life, certainly. I just want to take a bit of time this morning while I linger over breakfast and lattes to take stock.

I am 40 today.

I have a man I love, one whom I will marry next year. Conrad grounds me, Conrad completes me.

I have family. I have a lot of family - steps and halves and such. At the core, though, is my sister Marie. We've been in this together all my life and most of hers.

I have three of four parents. I do not have a father alive any longer, and I wish he were here to celebrate. I am not sad, do not think that, just simply wishing he could enjoy this celebration and the ones still ahead.



I have no grandparents left. How odd to realize that.

I have a good job that I will still not comment about on this blog. I am employed, I have tenure, and I have great colleagues.

I have my health. I set a goal of being in the best shape of my life when I hit 40. I think I've come pretty close, though I've indulged well in food and wine this last week or so. No matter. Do I need to lose more weight? Well, maybe re-distribute it a little more and firm/tone up more. But I like how I fit my clothes, and I am pretty comfortable in my skin at this moment.

I have friends whom I love dearly. I have former friends I wish were no longer "former". I miss some people who have moved on in my life. I am thankful for my best friend (Todd), my Best Woman (Allison), Kendall, CG, Jeph, Martin (and Mark), BTH, the SF, Darth and Heidi
and the great group from library school, our Yoshi's friends, the good friends who have stuck by Conrad since before I knew them and him,

Louise and Sandra and Wayne and others in Terrace, the Don Diego's family, the Smelts and other swimming friends like Chris and Brian and Daniel and Frank.
The list goes on, and I struggle to name every one.

I have a good life. I have said that several times to Conrad lately, and also to TK when we chat. Oh sure, I want to win that Lottery ($50 million? I MUST buy a ticket today!) and have a life of ease. But I've earned every grey hair starting to poke through, every wrinkle, every memory, ever difficulty and every reward.

So, yep: totally milking 40. Why not?

And thanks all of you who read this blog for being a part of it, too.

tree un-trimming dinner

If you cook for people, I've found, you can con them into most anything. And so it was with Frank tonight.

In past years, we've been so bad as to leave the tree up until February. Busy lives. Some sort of excuse like that. I dunno. Anyway, we did get the tree un-decorated this evening as well as taken down, and Frank was great help in accomplishing that. By the end of it all, he might have wished otherwise. I mean look, we're gay men, we go a little overboard with decorations. And imagine if we hadn't sent a bunch up to Vancouver!

Oh, it wasn't so very onerous a task, really.



We munched on cheese and olives and almonds and sipped a Domaine de Chaberton Gamay Noir before we attacked the tree. Once it was denuded and taken down, I served up dinner.

Here's the funny thing about me: people give me cookbooks because they know I love food, but I don't necessarily devour the cookbooks right away. It depends. It's no commentary on the books, really. I buy music (CDs back in the day, online now) and then don't listen to it for some time. Just the way I am. So it is that I finally opened up a cookbook the NBF sent me, for my last birthday, I think. I wanted a stew, but in flipping through the pages of the Jamie Oliver book, I found a better-looking recipe for chicken cacciatore than ever I'd seen before. Hmmmm.




Jeph, my friend, it was a great success. Not too many ingredients. Easy to cook. A delicious outcome. I'll be dipping back into that back, I promise, and soon. Once hooked, I'll return again and again.

Alongside the chicken I had a salad of butter lettuce, yellow tomato, radish, fennel, and blood orange. It's a great time of year for citrus, so I was pleased to have the blood orange for colour and for some tangy zing.

We looked at photos - Frank's and ours - and I brought over some cookies, cheeses, my Mum's rum balls, and slices of Asian pear. A simple dessert, but a generous one.

So, the tree is down, and the decorations will go down into storage tomorrow. I guess Christmas is over. Mind you, given the snowfall of the last 24 hours, that's a little hard to believe. Ah well... 11 weeks until New Zealand!

And that is the update from Chicago - a week of no blogging while I've babied myself through a cold. There's not too much point photographing and blogging the very simple food I've made for myself, or that I've ordered for delivery. The cold is gone. Let's see what the week ahead brings.

taking the NBF to IML

Many initialisms in that title, though as a librarian, I trade in initialisms and acronyms daily. So...

NBF = New Best Friend = Jeph. A joking title bestowed, I think, by FXK. It caught on and now it's just habit to type it and even use it in conversation.

IML = International Mr. Leather. It's an annual, predominantly-gay leather fetish celebration staged at one of the bigger downtown hotels. This year it was at the Hyatt Regency, which makes me giggle when I think that one week earlier the same hotel was crammed full of medical librarians. It's not TMI to say that we were there - Conrad and I always go only to have a cocktail with our swim teammmates and to point and titter for a bit. We're tourists in that world, and beyond the cocktail, we seldom visit for long.

Conrad and I swam Saturday morning, then gathered up the NBF and Brett to get some breakfast/coffee at Whole Foods.

We had some time after that before we were due downtown, so we enjoyed the May sunshine, strolling down Broadway until we got Jeph to Threadless where he shopped some. A cab ride later and we were downtown heading to meet some of the other Smelts.

My IML photos are pretty tame - I like to keep this blog fairly family friendly. Ask Jeph to see some of his photos and videos from the exhibits - they were a little more NSFW than these ones. What follows are photos of some of the small group of us gathered for drinks up in the bar.

Dana and Conrad.

Brett and Jeph. Poor Brett, we teased him mercilessly about the Barney-purple of his t-shirt. Jeph's own Threadless shirt (You Are What You Eat) was a fitting choice for the event.

Jeph and I scope something/one out, then stand and pose.


Dana, Conrad, and me. By this point, Conrad's broken toe was very unhappy with all his walking and standing.

Frank.

Jeph, Frank, and Brett.

Howard. Not a Smelt but a longtime friend of Conrad's from San Francisco. In town for IML. Conrad didn't get to see him much because of his own work travel, alas.

Dana (background), Luis (sweating up a storm in his latex vest), and me.

Luis, sensibly vest-less. Poor guy. Fetish gear has its own issues, I guess.

Paul, who blew me away by showing up in that leather shirt - very unexpected from a man who has brilliantly coloured swim suits with flower patterns on them!

Eventually we all went downstairs, though I got Conrad back up to the couches to rest his foot after only a half hour or so. Jeph and Brett enjoyed it immensely, however, and I rather suspect next May they'll be back in town.