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Joe's Journal

joe
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01/26/2022 00:39 #60874

a real winter
Category: weather
This feels like the first real winter in a while. Like snow stays on the ground and no thawing.

I always feel the need to get out and walk around after it snows. One, because besides peak summer, Buffalo looks best covered in a layer of snow. And two, part of me thinks snowy winters will be mostly gone in the near future.

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01/26/2022 00:36 #60872

Christmas time
Category: holiday
But this time in-person. Cookie decorating with my family, Christmas Eve with both (e:Paul) and my family and then hosting (e:Paul)'s relatives for a big famy party.

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01/26/2022 00:34 #60871

Christmas cookie delivery
Category: bikes
A lil late but (e:):terry and I whipped up hundreds of Christmas cookies to deliver.

I scoop cookies small so we had a lot of plates. Scotchies, ginger snaps, raspberry thumbprint, chocolate chip and Italian ricotta cookies. Almost all delivered by bike, with (e:Paul) too!
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12/09/2021 01:36 #60868

Last day in Chicago
Category: travel
(e:paul) left before us so (e:terry) and I had one more day before our train left at night.

Turns out in a big city you need to plan your day in advance, because a lot of things we wanted to do needed to be reserved.

We did manage to find a tasty Kurdish breakfast. Tofu scramble, fresh bread and a lot of dips. It was called The Gundi's on North Clark.
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A lot of L rides and walking around. We tried to go to the free Lincoln Park botanical garden but they required tickets in advance.
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Kept on walking around through the old town and eventually took the train back downtown. I showed Terry the crazy beautiful dome in the Chicago Cultural Center and the 7 story Macy's.

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A quick stop in Boystown before we left, a last dish to eat some mediocre deep dish, and we were on the Amtrak back, heavy unicycles included.

Chicago is pretty amazing, I definitely think I could live there.

12/09/2021 01:29 #60867

Field Museum
Category: travel
Saturday we spent the time with (e:terry)'s family going out to the Field Museum. It has to be the largest science and natural history museum I've ever seen, in a huge stone building near the lakefront.

We were there for about 5 hours and saw 5 exhibits:
1. A Monsanto sponsored exhibit on soil ecosystems
2. An 3D movie about a Titanosaur, the mind boggling fossil they had in their atrium
3. A lame exhibit about color in nature - basically they had a bunch of taxidermied animals and some plants grouped by color
4. An exhibit about the evolution of life on Earth
5. An exhibit about Chinese history

The evolution of life exhibit always makes me go nuts. The billions of years it took life to appear and evolve to basic life forms, mass extinctions and evolution again, all summed up in tiny exhibits, always makes humanity feel like such a blip.

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Later Paul slept while (e:terry) and I gaybared. We met a ton of people and went from SoFo lounge, to Touche, to Cellblock.

SoFo was like Ohm with a big patio and kind of bear crowd, Touche was a kink/old man leather bar, and Cellblock is also sort of a kink bar (you can get your drink in a dog bowl).