Winter continues, long, tough, but beautiful.
My wife took these pictures of our house today, in the midst of our latest “snow event,” which they say could leave ten or twelve inches of new white stuff before it’s finished.
A video of the Gregory Maguire event that my daughters attended last month has now been posted at the spiffy Borders Media site. You get to see a pre-interview, the reading, the audience Q-and-A, and a few seconds of the book-signing. Oh yeah, you might catch a glimpse or two of the girls, as well.
To watch it, just click here: Gregory Maguire
While you’re at the site, you might want to check out a few of their other productions. The Ann Arbor Borders (Store 01) has hosted an awfully eclectic selection of authors and musicians. It’s nice to see their brief visits preserved as first-rate video productions.
As a fan of Christopher Moore, I’m kind of partial to this one.
Last weekend, my wife and I ventured downstate for our first visit with the girls since dropping them off at the University of Michigan in late August. It was a good time, and of course went by far too fast. It was reassuring to see them doing so well — mostly adjusted to dorm life, mostly settling into their classes, mostly well on their way into this new stage and this great adventure in their lives.
We had the grand tour, ate some wonderful food and saw a football game that was … well, not a good game, not precisely. In all honesty, Notre Dame looked as if they’d struggle to beat a decent high school football team. But after U of M’s rocky start, a win was a win.
On Tuesday, back home and back at work, I was very envious that the girls had the chance to attend a reading and signing with Gregory Maguire, who ranks right near the top of my personal “favorite writers” list. The author of Wicked, Son of a Witch, Lost, Mirror Mirror, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and a passel of children’s books, Maguire was visiting Borders’ flagship store in Ann Arbor to promote his newest, What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy.
I would have happily let a fairy, rogue or otherwise, take away a few of my own teeth for the chance to attend this event, but I’m so pleased that my daughters now have such great opportunities available to them, just moments away. A signed book is a marvelous keepsake, no doubt, but an evening spent listening to a world-class writer discuss his work is truly a lifetime gift.
… or rather, there are too many of them.
I could fill a dozen blog posts and still not come close to describing the things I’m feeling right now, just a scant 24 hours before my daughters walk across the stage to get their high school diplomas.
Rather than blather on endlessly and unsuccessfully, I’ll say it as simply as I can:
Congratulations, girls. I love you.
Back home safe and sound, after a long day.
We left Chicago bright and early and made it to Milwaukee in plenty of time for the opening of the gates at Miller Park. The game was great, a 6-3 Cubs victory. It was good to see the Cubs get solid pitching from Carlos Zambrano, and to play ball the way it should be played: make contact, get on base; make contact, advance the runners. Also good to be snug under the roof, after our chilly White Sox outing the other day.
It was a toss-up whether there were more Cubs fans or Brewers fans in the park. Certainly, the Chicago fans overpowered the Milwaukee folks during the 7th inning stretch singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” with “Root, root, root for the Cubbies” easily drowning out “Root, root, root for the Brewers.”
After the game we meandered our way north, and on the spur of the moment I took the opportunity to show my daughters the place where I lived for the first 11 or so years of my life. It was the first time they’d ever seen the old homestead, and the first time for me in probably 20 years. To put it kindly, the place needs work — new paint and a new roof would be a good start — but it was nice to see it again.
Finally, we hit the freeway and made a beeline north, with a stop for dinner in Green Bay our only other diversion of the trip. It was a bit disheartening to drive the last hour or so in a steady snowfall on slippery roads, but not unexpected for April in this part of the country, especially when most of the east is also shivering and shoveling.
Now it’s back to the grind, wondering how a week could have possibly gone so fast.
Medieval Times is pretty much unchanged in the 12 years since we visited last. It’s still cheesy, hokey, corny, overproduced — and it’s still a tremendous amount of fun. It pulls you in with brute color and spectacle, with clanging swords and thundering hooves, music, fog, drama. It grabs you and hangs on tight, and it doesn’t let go until the lights come up at the end of the night.
And yes, the girls said it held up for them, too. They were not only able to enjoy the show through adult eyes, but appreciate the production as well. After their backstage experiences, which have included working on the local stage crews for several Broadway touring shows (Aida, Miss Saigon), they could see and understand the sheer amount of work it takes to put on a performance like Medieval Times, from the lights, sound and effects to the costumes, sets and props.
And besides, they got to take a photo with their knight.
We had a slight mishap on the way to the Western Suburbs. No, not on the Chicago streets. Driving in Chicago is always interesting, but never as nightmarish as people make it out to be. Our mishap occurred before we even escaped the parking garage — an extremely tight, cramped labyrinth where traffic up and down the ramp shares a space about a lane-and-a-half wide, and where every corner is impossibly narrow and sharp, especially for us, in our oversized Northern Michigan pickup truck. We were entering the last turn, a right-hand maneuver of more than ninety degrees, around the wall and into the skinny lane at the pay booth. There was a car coming up at the same time, so I eased over as far as I could, a little farther, and a little bit farther still, and that was when the truck decided to strike up an intimate relationship with the wall. To quote Stephen Sondheim: Boom. Crunch. We now have an extra-special souvenir: genuine, authentic Chicago parking garage paint embedded in the side of our truck, and as a bonus, some minor body work ahead.
Today, our last day here, will be odds and ends. We tossed the agenda and decided to finish the trip just like we started it, hanging loose and playing everything by ear. Tomorrow, it’s an early start to Milwaukee for the Cubs-Brewers game, and then back to the snowy wilds of the north.
What have we learned? A lot. The biggest lesson, I think, is that Chicago is still the best, whether you’re a resident, a tourist, or a former resident who feels like a tourist. Despite what they say, you can occasionally go home again . . . but try not to do it during spring break, unless you like to wait nearly an hour to get into every restaurant.
I’m not sure if I’ll squeeze in another post from here or not. I’m guessing not. So I’ll leave you for now with one final glimpse of the lovely Chicago skyline, captured yesterday from the steps of the Adler Planetarium. This one’s worth clicking for the full-sized view.
Those darn meteorologists sure know their stuff. They had yesterday’s forecast exactly right.
It was 31 degrees at U.S. Cellular Field, the wind chill was in the teens, and snow flurries swirled throughout the game. In other words, a typical day for spring baseball in Chicago — and we took advantage of every minute of it, from the time the gates opened to the final heartbreaking out some five hours later.
Overlooking the questionable Chicago pitching, the game was an exciting one. It was, to use that favorite term of sportswriters, a “slugfest,” a seesaw battle that the White Sox only lost because of the Indians’ Jason Michaels, whose heroic catch at the warning track prevented Joe Crede’s two-out, two-on, bottom-of-the-ninth drive from knocking in the winning runs. Final score: Cleveland 8, Chicago 7.
Today it’s off to warmer pursuits: the Adler Planetarium this morning and a jaunt to the Western Suburbs to visit Medieval Times tonight. The famous “dinner and tournament” attraction was one of my daughters’ favorite places when they were in kindergarten, and rather surprisingly, it was near the top of their must-do lists for this vacation. Will it hold up for them, now that they’re 18?
The final score was disappointing, but the Sox did fire up the famous old Comiskey Park exploding scoreboard with a couple of homeruns.
We weren’t the only baseball fools who braved yesterday’s weather. The official attendance at the game was 26,337, though the end of every inning brought many departures. I’d estimate that fewer than 10,000 fans were left by the end.