Nothing Like Family

This year my sister Marta spent Thanksgiving with her boyfriend's family so she got our family together again this morning for a post-holiday brunch. It was great to have everyone together but with 15 adults and 4 kids it was a little rambunctious. 

With full bellies some of us took the kids to the park. It was a beautiful day and great to horse around and kick the soccer ball in the fresh air.

I love my family, we've been through a lot and stuck together when it would have been relatively easy to fraction off. It's nice to have a younger generation coming up, it makes everything more lively and exciting. And begs the question- whose next to get married and/or have kids? A question of course all of us eligible to answer don't care for.

A Sleeping Wood

In winter a forest does not die, it sleeps.

Roots drink, but drink slow.

The creeks freeze but fish still swim and water flows.

The body breathes when sleeping, the mind dreams.
The breath of the forest is quiet, all green gone.
But the dreams are vivid and long.
You can almost here them.

Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for family and Rockford and for the house I grew up in.
I'm thankful for garage door codes and blankets and cable "on demand".
I'm thankful for coffee and cigarettes and breakfast from a frying pan.
I'm thankful for audiences and iO and Craig.
I'm thankful for motorcycles and woods and poetry.
I'm thankful for cooking oil and spices and sharp knives for cutting veggies.
I'm thankful for chess and movies and pictures in focus.
I'm thankful for friends that listen and friends that talk and friends that hug.
I'm thankful for Tisher and Jimmy and fantasy book series.
I'm thankful for Beanpole and Adam and NPR.
I'm thankful for cousins and aunts and homemade whip cream.
I'm thankful for microphones and podcasts and editing.
I'm thankful for love- romantic, platonic, and familial.
I'm thankful for Mom's cranberry sauce and Uncle Mike's stuffing and Coke Zero.
I'm thankful for the companionship, support, and affection of Nicole.
I'm thankful for comics and classics and Centrum.
I'm thankful for exotic soaps and fresh tooth brushes and brand new razor blades.
I'm thankful for heat and good lighting and steam from the shower.
I'm thankful for comfy sofas and comfy beds and broken in pillows.
I'm thankful for inspiration and sobriety and stories.
I'm thankful for full moons and sunsets and quiet kisses.
I'm thankful for Stephen King and Gene Wolfe and John Irving and Terry Gross and Paul Newman and Johnny Cash and John Lee Hooker and Bill Wilson and Tom Wilkinson.

And you, dear reader, always you.

Maybe Si, Maybe No

Nicole wasn't planning on going back to Florida to have Thanksgiving with her folks so I invited her to Rockford with me. She ultimately decided she would stay in Chicago. After work my dad picked me up at O'Hare and drove me back. An hour or so after getting there Nicole called me and told me she was on a bus and asked if I could pick her up. She had changed her mind.

It was a wonderful surprise and filled me with gratitude and joy. When someone does something for you, makes an effort, puts themselves out there, it has meaning. I'm very luck and have a lot to be thankful for. Today was a great reminder.

Some Love For Top Chef

I've been a Top Chef fan since the beginning. I've diligently and delightedly watched all 11 seasons, Top Chef Masters, Top Chef Just Desserts, and Top Chef Canada. It inspired me to cook a lot more and I've come to take a lot of pleasure in it.

Top Chef is a great show because it's straight forward. It's a cooking competition show which almost entirely focuses on the cooking competition. For the most part the show is concerned only with good chefs and interesting challenges. Certainly there are some big personalities on the show or they cut the show to create big personalities but the show has never become about them. The show will play up confrontation or emotional outbursts, sometimes teasing them for an entire season, but ultimately all the dust ups are minimal and breezed over by the competitors swiftly. They are just normal moments that happen when people who don't know each other are thrown into situations with numerous unknown variables.

The show doesn't cast basket cases, doesn't deliberately throw unhinged individuals together hoping for friction. They put good chefs in interesting situations to see what they cook. The personalities of the individuals on the show come through slowly and organically. We like some of the people, we dislike others, but not because the producers predicted and designed this outcome. Of course what we see is not truth, we don't get a full sense of all these individuals, but the show is not put together to skew or slant or facilitate villainization.

I loved the first couple seasons of The Real World and Road Rules. They were great shows because they were simply real people in a situation and the camera observed. As time passed stunt casting and contrived situations turned an interesting TV show into a spectacle. Most reality shows start from that manufactured place- fake people in conflict. Top Chef has consistently steered clear of these pitfalls and focused on what it is: a show about food and the people that cook it.

Christmas Come Early

Nicole gave me a Christmas tree. It's my first, not something I'd ever have gotten for myself but a very sweet and thoughtful gift, it brightens up my apartment and facilitates some much needed holiday cheer.

Nicole: Do you want the multi-colored lights or the blue lights?
Me: Blue.
Nicole: I knew it.
Me: Why?
Nicole: I was just thinking our styles are different and after I got the multi-colored ones I knew you'd want something, something less flashy.
Me: What's the difference between your style and mine?
Nicole: Well, mine, I'd want more colors and sparkles and yours...
Me: Mine's more sedate.

"Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love." -Leo Buscaglia

Roomiez

Eli, Alex and I had brunch this morning. I haven't seen them in a while and the three of us haven't sat down together since we moved out of our apartment spring of 2012. We've grown apart a bit- divergent interests, relationships, and time- but the friendship is unchanged. Eli and Alex were my first real friends in Chicago and my first collaborates. They are two of the sweetest, easy-going, funniest guys I know. The dynamic is fluid and easy, fits like a well cut sport coat.

(This girl was very deliberately photo bombing, Eli makes this face in every picture)

Our roommate situation was relatively contentious, of which I had a large part. The discord of the past has all but dissipated and our friendship, although not as close, is strong.