Shopping in Chicago

To break with recent tradition, I'll start with our work week (well at least Jo's work week).  Jo was busy at work as she starts to understand her new groups.  She has expanded her role to take on, in addition to her HR stuff, the facility operations group and the philanthropy group.  That will keep her hopping a bit more, but she is looking forward to the challenges, especially as Northwester Mutual announced this week they will be tearing down an old building and putting up a new one.  I continued my work on finishing up the painting on our storm windows (the screen version of them) and are down to only two left.  This takes a while since each needs some serious patching and repairing of the wood.  My other excitement for the week was getting the main water shut-off valve inside the house replaced.  I had noticed it was dripping around the valve stem and decided since it was a 90 year old valve to not just tighten the nut around it myself.  Good call on my part since when the plumber tried it we promptly had water shooting into the basement.  Fortunately we got the water shut off at the street and the valve quickly replaced.  I'm just glad I didn't try it myself!  The rest of the week was filled with the usual chores for me and our evening exercising for the two of us.

Jo had a business dinner/gala in Chicago on Friday night so we decided to head down early to spend a little time with my sister and do some shopping.  We hopped on the train early Friday morning and after getting in my obligatory nap on Amtrak (trains are excellent for sleeping I've always found) we arrived with the rest of the commuters in overcast Chicago.  We trekked over to my sister's place and then headed out for some breakfast.  Cheryl selected a wonderful little bakery/cafe were we enjoyed chocolate (for Jo) or almond (me) croissants with hot chocolate.  Great way to start off our day.  Next up was Macy's, where my sister works, for some heavy duty clothes shopping for Jo.  As she hadn't been shopping in a while she had a lot of pent up demand and both she and my sister head the discount racks hard.  Meanwhile, I looked for a comfortable chair to sit in out of the way.  As Jo walked out with two dresses and a skirt, I considered a success.  It was also interesting to see my sister in action helping Jo select items since this is what she does for a living.  Also got to meet my sister's boss who had really nice things to say about her.

Since that took most of the morning, we headed out for lunch and then over to the Daley Plaza to see the small shops that are set up for Christmas.  Lots of interesting imports from Germany, Poland, and Eastern Europe but we only came away with two small ornaments.  We were pretty tired by then so we headed back to my sister's to review our purchases and then we were off to our hotel to get ready for our evening event.  This was a celebration for the American College which Jo is on the board of one of their institutes.  It was black tie so I donned my tux and Jo tried out one of her new dresses.  All in all, I would have to say we cleaned up pretty good - although couldn't really figure out how to effectively use my Iphone to take a picture of the two of us.  After the dinner it was back to the hotel for some rest; I was certainly tired from standing around shopping all day.


Saturday we took an early morning Amtrak home as we had a neighborhood Christmas party to attend later in the day.  It was nice talking with many of the neighbors since with the cold weather setting in we don't see as many of them outside anymore.  Sunday dawned rainy and cold so we exercised at home and then spent the morning curled up in front of our fireplace reading the Sunday paper.  After a great dinner of pork chops with peach and mustard sauce we watched the Packers squeak another win out.