The Death of Imagination

There have been a couple of memes circulating around Facebook lately reminding us of the anniversaries of great January snowstorms of the past such as the Midwest Blizzard of '78, the Chicago Blizzard of 1979 (infamous for its effect on local politics), or the Blizzard of '82 (responsible for one of the highest snowfall totals ever seen in St Louis). This prompted an interesting comment from my older brother, who said that storms created expectations in him of Missouri as a snowy wonderland (we moved there from Maryland in '76) which went increasingly unfulfilled in later years. I keep telling people who complain about what an extraordinarily severe winter this is that they simply have short memories. It's a sign of just how blasé this exceptional return to past form has made me that I hardly consider snowstorms worth mentioning in this space any more unless they actually result in work closures. monshu tells me that a couple hours ago it was really coming down, but I shrugged and went back to watching my movie. There was some yesterday as well, plus a couple inches overnight that didn't start until I was safely back home.

When I blew off the after-work event on Friday, I promised myself I would go out Saturday night despite my reservations. It was a party for someone I don't know well, and I'm just so used to everyone spamming their entire flist that I was taken aback to see that I was one of only about two dozen invitees. To dispel fears of there being no one there I knew well (compounded by the youth of the birthday boy--this was, in fact, in his big 21), I reached out to a couple of guys. It was very reassuring to discover that one of them was the host; I would've gone just for the pleasure of finally being inside his place. For good measure, however, I had old bud BDA ring up some others, none of whom attended in the end.

The apartment was in a corner of northeast Rogers Park I hardly knew existed and so exceeded my expectations that I would've passed it up had BDA not been at the door fighting the same misgivings. The first thing which caught my eye at the top of the stairs were the built-ins followed by the card catalogs. (Cupcake Man's roommate uses them to organise her jewellery.) It was a very open plan with a huge bay window in front overlooking a lakeside parklet and a small but functional kitchen in the back where I set up the bottles I'd brought. The Southern Tier Crème Brûlée Stout I'd brought along on a whim turned out to be a hit. So did the Redemption "High Rye"--though how much of that was due to its inherent quality and how much to the fact that it was the only hard liquor there is hard to say. (BDA told me he was dreaming of manhattans, so I brought along a small bottle of sweet vermouth I had stowed away for just such and exigence.)

As for the party, well, I feel for the guest of honour. Sure it was a shitty night to be out, but your 21st is a big deal and it was super lame of his other friends not to show. What saved the evening was that he was sharing the party with Cupcake Man's roommate, and she had a good half dozen there. After two drinks I was willing to chat up anybody and everybody and they were on the whole very receptive. Malört shots were downed, a fire was built in the fireplace, and eventually the guitars came out for a sing-along, finally putting and end to the dueling of Matisyahu on the stereo system in the front room and old school house/shoegaze coming out of the tinny speakers of an iPod in the dining area.

As nice as it was, I was very conscious of needing to be functional today, so I left right after midnight as the newly-legal young sprout was preparing to hit Big Chicks with his best gal pal. BDA walked me to the el and hugged me goodbye at Loyola. I stumbledashed home against the cold wind (which may be why my leg is giving me trouble today) and gabbled to the Old Man when I came in. So, selfishly, I can say it was a great night out even if by your man's lights it was probably a huge letdown. Ah, youth! If you only knew what kind of disappointment and betrayal was in store for you!

I've long felt that, as Chicagoans, we should have far more terms for different kinds of frozen precipitation than we do. Naturally I have some suggestions. I've been using these informally and would love to see them in wider use:

1. Champ--Compacted snow, particularly on a paved surface. It typically results when a light snowfall (2" or less) is subjected to heavy foot traffic before it can be cleared. Champ can't be shoveled or blown, it must be scraped. Fortunately it is generally quite easy to walk on unless it melts and refreezes as ice.
2. Churn--Dirty snow with consistency of sand. It is typically the result of heavy foot traffic through a heavier snowfall than that which produces champ. It is intermediate in colour and consistency between loose snow and slush, being off-white to light grey and not as wet and clingy as slush. Its sandlike consistency makes it difficult to walk through.
3. Névé--A term borrowed from glaciology for snow which has been compacted due to partial melting, compaction, and refreezing.
4. Snirt--A mix of ice, soot, and other forms of road filth that develops from roadside névé. In colour it can range from dark grey to black, is sometimes hard to recognise due to an accumulation of trash and duff on its surface, and can persist into the first few days of spring.

Right now the temperature has climbed above the freezing point for the first day in weeks and, as a result, we have a lot of churn that's converting to slush. Then, when it drops below freezing tonight, the slush and champ will become ice. I really wish I didn't have to leave the house tomorrow, but Madame Butterfly is tomorrow and no one has stepped forward to take my place. However bad our neighbourhood is in terms of huge puddles of dirty meltwater at every streetcorner, downtown will be worse.

There was a chance I'd go into the office today. Not a good chance, mind you, but enough of one that I didn't automatically take the day off. If I didn't drink too much or stay up too late cleaning up, I might've gotten a decent night's sleep. The latter condition was met, but not the former: I accepted two cocktail challenges, which was at least one more than I needed in order to keep a clear heard. Both qualified as successes.

First Scruffy challenged me to make the blueberry liquor he'd brought before drinkable. I knew I'd need to cut the sweetness and settled on lemon juice since lemon is a natural pairing for blueberry. But I was stumped on the strong until I happened to think of sloe gin. Three parts gin to one blueberry plus a squeeze (about half a tablespoon) of lemon juice ended up being about right, at least according to two other tasters.

The Douglas fir eau de vie brought by lhn and prilicla also suggested a gin-based solution: a three-to-one "fir-tini". I momentarily considered using the Letherbee's until I recognised this for the insanity it was and went with Bombay instead. This eau de vie is considerably more mild than the infamous "Pine-sol liqueur" and I think more could be done with it. Having had a particularly successful fir-flavoured chocolate in Toronto, I'm particularly interested in trying it in a sweeter preparation. (The fir-tini is, as you might suspect, rather dry to say the least.)

Afterwards I found a nearly-empty bottle of cognac (as well as a bottle of vin santo the Old Man had completely forgotten about) and decided to usher it gently into that good night. The party was down to a pleasant core of a half-dozen and I was no longer having to hop up to open doors or mix drinks, so I could sit back and enjoy my guests. They never got to be too many; the one advantage to the terrible travel conditions is that it allowed us to spend a generous amount of time with everyone. Not as much as we might've liked (with the exception of Coleman, who wasn't even on the guest list but got wind of the gathering and crashed), but then it never is.

Luckily for us we'd bought supplies close to the date so we'd held back and, as a result, don't have more leftovers than we can handle: just one turkey breast, most of a smallish ham, a pound or so of gingerbread, and some bits of salad. Oh, and a shitload of chocolates and fudge, but that stuff keeps. The black cake was an even bigger hit than last year; hardly any survived the day. And hoppin' john (both veg and non-veg), beet salad, and Snore King's sugar cookies were all big hits.

If my hangover wasn't excuse enough, I had two other solid reasons: the snow, which was over nine inches by morning with wildly varying amounts predicted for the rest of the day (that's Lake effect for you); and a summons from an old friend. A college buddy--president of the queer student group when I was secretary and leader of the coming-out group before me--who'd I'd gotten in touch with as a result of the oral history project was in town for a conference and wanted to meet up.

As monshu can attest, I had cause to regret my promise to meet him. But my mid-morning the snow was tapering off and I was beginning to feel more human. I dozed on the train, but the bracing air made me a bit giddy. From the first moment, he was exceedingly warm and we spent a good two hours at the Purple Pig catching up and rehashing old times. He was dubious about the pig's ear, but I sold him, and in return I let him order the caponata, which I ate most of along with the charred cauliflower. Never before have I eaten so much in the way of vegetables and so little in the way of pork there.

Afterwards I swept into Eataly on an errand from the Old Man and left with my arms full. I really would like to be able to leave that place sometime without dropping $30+. But now I know that they do a fine cup of molten chocolate and porchetta that isn't a patch on what I had at Porchetta & Co. in Toronto. Tomorrow I'll be able to tell you if their fresh squid ink pasta is really worth the top dollar it commands.

Had I been thinking more clearly when I was trying to get myself out the door, I might've been able to make plans with bunj as well and complete my last gift exchange of the season. But as it was, I escaped downtown just as another "snow squall" was beginning to complicate the commute. When I reached the hood, visibility was down to a block or so and diminishing rapidly. Then, after an hour of getting cozy, the snow abruptly halted, the sky cleared, and for one thrilling moment everything was suffused with a rosy light.

Needless to say, there won't be any of that when I rise tomorrow to face my first day of work in nearly two weeks. Clearly I've got as much of a knack for retirement as the GWO. Shame I haven't earned the right to exercise it.

Prognosticators seems to agree on a cold and snowy winter for us this year. From what I've so far, it looks like we're well on track even if last night's "winter storm" fizzled. I awoke to maybe a centimetre or two of powder. On the way into work after my teeth cleaning, there was a brief and lovely sunflurry. Tonight the mercury is supposed to plunge to -18℃ (that's zero Fahrenheit, monshu you metricophobe!).

Speaking of extreme weather, Dad e-mailed me the other day to ask if I remembered what year our house in Finksburg was flooded. As it happens, I'd been researching this back in the summer and determined that it was Hurricane Eloise (probably downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it reached us) which dropped over 14" on our little corner of Maryland. According to Dad, the owner's motivation for selling to us was getting washed out by Agnes in '72, which dropped 15" on Carroll County, earning it the designation of "Storm of the Century". If you compare maps, you'll see that the storms followed very similar trajectories, dumping most of their precipitation when they collided with the northern end of the Blue Ridge (which form the western boundary of Frederick, the next county over).

He's recently started plugging away on his autobiography again and is finally into the years I have some dim memory of, which should prompt some interesting discussions between me and my siblings this Christmas. He's been treading gingerly on events involving our mother and has even offered her the chance to review those portions before he shares them. He apologised to her for some of the dumb stuff he did while they were married, which prompted her to do the same. It cheers me to hear them coming to terms with those years after all this time.

Yesterday the world was melting and I felt it was finally turning its back on winter. So I was surprised and dismayed to see the fresh snow this morning, even though I was still coming home last night as the drizzle began to freeze. There's wasn't much of it, but enough to cover the green grass that was beginning to show everywhere. I was hoping it would all burn off before noon, but it's still below freezing up here.

I'm not sure what this means for the daffodils which were already sprouting in the south-facing lawns. Many of them already got tricked once several weeks ago and I wonder if they'll even survive another shock. The crocuses seem not so easily fooled, but I'm surprised not to see a single snowdrop anywhere. Despite all the talk of "global warming" inspired by the mild winter, the daily highs are running about 10℉ below average right now.

I couldn't resist sending my youngest nephew a gift for his birthday. But since I'm not allowed to have a favourite, this means I'm condemned to send each of the little bastards something this year. Trouble is, his is the only one I can remember consistently, since it falls smack between St Patrick's and St Joseph's. However, Sis was feeding me the dates last night and, if I haven't munged them, now I've got a hook to hang each on: IMI is St Crispin's Day, ECI is the feast day of St Louis (our hometown's namesake), and AWI is Sts Peter and Paul.

It's funny what feast days were retained in our local traditions and which were lost. St Nick's is a big deal--we celebrated it both at school and at home--but Carnaval was forgotten completely, even though we lived in a city founded by Frenchmen and heavily salted with Rhinelanders. I guess that's what we get for importing so many of our priests from Ireland. We didn't even get pancakes on Shrove Tuesday!

1. der Schneematsch, der Schneepflutsch (Alem.)
2. de natte sneeuw
3. la nieve medio derritada, el aquanieve
4. la neu mig fosa, l'aiguaneu
5. la névasse (Can.), la tiaffe (CH)
6. y slwtsh, yr eira tawdd
7. an bogoighear
8. błoto pośniegowe
9. 녹기 시작한 눈
10. 雪泥 xǔení
11. 雪泥 せつでい

Notes: As you might expect, areas outside the snowbelt tend not to have a single-word expression for this. Hex Frenchies, for instance, would probably say neige demi-fondue like their Iberian neighbours. Aguanieve and aiguaneu both translate as "watersnow" and technically refer to sleet or graupel, but as the former is used for "slush" by some speakers, I assume its Catalan equivalent could be, too. Bogoighear is literally "softice". 雪泥 combines the character for "snow" with the character for "mud", and the Polish expression is literally "snowy mud".

We had that most hideous combination of a slight warm-up followed immediately by fresh snowfall and a freeze. The walks were free of snow when I went in yesterday, but the banks on either side had trapped large puddles of dirty water everywhere. By evening, these had become semi-concealed expanses of slush; I was a half-hour late getting home, leading me to abandon my plan of watching Stellet Licht in the Old Man's absence.

I cursed Scooter for running the snowblower at 11 p.m. even while I recognised the wisdom of getting the sidewalks cleared before they set up. Almost none of our neighbours had the same foresight, meaning that I had to penguin-waddle most of the way--perhaps unnecessarily, since the ice was so rough with tread prints and other indentations that it actually gave good purchase. Normally, I would look forward to admiring the snowscape on days like this, but I've had to keep my eyes on the pavement ahead to avoid ending up on my ass.

We had a trivial amount of snow today. I was in a windowless office during the thick of it and came out to the same weak flurries as yesterday, but judging from what I saw on the walks the flakes were big and fluffy for a while. Actually, the effect was rather odd, the opposite of what the city normally looks like in winter: Enough accumulated to cover the pavements, but too little to top the grass.

I learned from Tom Skilling's blog that it was lake effect snow, and there's more expected tomorrow. He also says that the background conditions have shifted to favour snow for the first time this year. I hope so. Yesterday I was about to check his blog to confirm my suspicions that this has been one of the driest winters on record. You all know me, I worry about the poor little plants, how they dry out without their protective layer of frozen water and what a lack of snowmelt means for the health of the ecosystem.

A more charitable person might put down some the overreactions I saw (e.g. four maintenance men on the CTA plaza, two with shovels and two spreading salt) to trigger-happiness engendered by a lack of action. I think Chicagoans are just morons when it comes to snow removal. Seems like they either do nothing and let the snow get trod down into a sheet of killer ice or they go ballistic with snowblowers and chemical salt when a pushbroom and a few minutes of elbow grease would've down the job just fine.

A dusting of snow in Chicago can cause consternation completely out of proportion to its coverage. I was lucky to make it to the shuttle stop on time this morning since almost nobody had cleared their walks, and in some places the half-inch of powder was laid over a half-inch of ice so you had to watch your step everywhere, just in case. In the end, it hardly mattered since the shuttle was fifteen minutes delayed anyhow even though there wasn't a speck of accumulation on the streets. I will never understand quite how that happens.

I would say that it's finally settled into winter here except that at this point these bouts of blustery cold feel just as capricious as the corresponding bouts of unseasonable warmth. monshu even said something the other day about it warming up to 50℉ by the end of the week. innerdoggie asked me if this felt like a "St Louis winter", but it doesn't, for the simple reason that St Louis winters are as dry as St Louis summers are humid. This is only the second time this season that my hands have felt dry enough to need lotion. The weather doesn't remind me of home; it reminds me of my first winter in Europe, when I learned that the dank is more penetrating than a 20 below windchill.

The other thing the return of real Midwestern winter has done is proved the worth of the humidifier we had expensively fitted to our furnace last fall. We hoped that it would eliminate the need to have individual units running in every room, but it was difficult confirm this since it doesn't come on until the relative humidity drops below 35%. It's been running since last weekend and our sinus are still happy, so we are calling it a success.

Sadly the narcissus and hyacinth that monshu had forced for Spring Festival got top-heavy and had to be discarded. If I were a good boyfriend, I would've ordered some fresh flowers for today. But we're both pretty indifferent to Valentine's so our only observance will be dining out at Ethiopian Diamond. We love it though we haven't been there in a while, and I'm wagering that Ethiopian is not going to be most people's first choice for a romantic dinner.

It's a testament to what an unwinter we've had so far that on Saturday, when I asked monshu what it was like outside, he replied, "Nasty." I pressed him to elaborate and he mentioned that it was in the 20s and kind of cloudy. I couldn't believe it. 20s, partial sun, no wind to speak of--if this were any ordinary January, we'd call a day like that gorgeous.

A couple weeks before Christmas, my determination to wear my moccasins until they literally fell apart finally paid off when a neighbour made mention of them and the Old Man, appalled, offered to take me shopping for a new pair. Unfortunately, as I found visiting Cabela's with my mom on Boxing Day, something has happened to my left foot which seems to have made it a bad fit for pretty much every slipper designed for human use. Did the muscles develop weirdly back when I was on crutches and it was having to take the strain? All I know is that if they were long enough they were too tight, and if they fit the front of my foot they were loose in the back.

At the time I hoped that it was a quirk of their sizing. But at Macy's yesterday I tried on pairs from three or four makes and it was the same problem every time. At one point, I even considered buying two pair and using only one slipper from each, but I decided the gain was too marginal to justify it. There were two fairly decent pairs of Merrell's on deep discount at Nordstrom Rack, but in the end I decided to go with a pair of cheap-ass Isotoners so that if I ended up hating them, at least the GWO wouldn't be out that much. (I'm stilled burnt from the pricey shearling-lined pair I bought him two years ago that has sat in the closet ever since, having failed to fit either of us adequately.)

After that, we headed off to Lloyd's on Wacker for dinner with Nuphy. On Nuphy, as it turned out, since we'd hardly sat down when he insisted on paying in return for all the meals he'd had at our house without reciprocating. What a mentsh! Fortunately after that, it turned out to be a good meal. Nuphy had the blackened salmon while monshu and I both went for the tuna. I was dithering aloud between the steak and sandwich, since the latter had better sides (sweet potato fries vs fried rice), and our ultracharming waitress offered to make a substitution. Sadly, that seems to have thrown the kitchen, since they sent it out with the rice anyway and by the time she'd brought it back corrected, the fish had gone a bit cold.

No matter; it was still a good piece of fish cooked well, and for less than we would've been charged at Rivers or One North across the street. Incidentally, the layout is almost identical to One North, making for a certain sense of déjà-vu on entering for the first time. Nuphy noted that the bar is smaller, and naturally it offers less of a range. (The Old Man couldn't find a scotch he liked, but at least seemed happy with his wine.) The difference was most noticeable in the sides, particularly the broccoli which was served properly steamed but without a touch of oil or seasoning, and the service, which was less stuffy. Definitely a place to keep in mind for future opera nights.

Today the weather is back to being crazy warm. Thursday finally saw the first decent snowfall of the season and it's melting away as I type this. Still worried about what that's going to mean for the plant life.