Date With The Dean

After a week of nursing my back, nursing my sick Little Squirt, and nursing a kitty with conjunctivitis, I was treated to an evening out on Thursday, by the former Dean of the college where Super Hubs works.

It wouldn’t be a January evening in Chicago without record cold temps. It was -8*, the coldest night of the year so far. I would venture to guess that next December 31st we will still be referring to that evening as the year’s coldest. Even for Chicago, it was phenomenally, ridiculously frigid. I layered clothing upon clothing, and packed the backseat of our car with blankets, preparing for the worst. (I feared an Epic Car Fail on the freeway, with AAA ignoring our calls. Super Hubs and I would be stranded and shivering all night, our frozen bodies not discovered until the morning. It was not a way I intended to spend our Date Night.)

But we arrived in the city without incident, other than when all the traffic on the Kennedy came to a complete halt. Apparently the President of China had just arrived, and we all needed to sit in our cars for 15 minutes without moving while his motorcade drove through.

We met a few of Super Hub’s co-workers at Tavern at the Park for drinks, first. It’s always interesting for me when I am around the co-workers. They are brilliant academics with all sorts of degrees and opinions and interesting travel experiences. I find them fascinating and intense, and occasionally intimidating, as they discuss something like their experiences of teaching a class in Uganda, and I’m all, “Well, that sounds like fun! I’ve been busy taking my cat to the vet.” I spent a big part of the hour enjoying my appetizer. (Flatbread with prosciutto, figs and gorgonzola, sprinkled with truffle oil. Oh. My. Gosh.)

Our little party than headed to the Harris Theater to join the rest of the party for a jazz concert. If jazz was a food, it’d be melted butter. Mmmm...so yummy, smooth, comforting! I am completely enamored with jazz, and thoroughly enjoyed the concert, after I silenced my phone alarm. It goes off every 12 hours at 8 and 8 without fail to remind me to take my asthma med. It’s a responsible little thing, even ringing persistently if my phone is off. So, because I have no idea how turn the alarm function off my phone, I sat through the first half hour of the concert anxiously awaiting for the sound of my alarm so I could rapidly silence it. My quick-fire finger managed to quiet the alarm as soon as it rang. No one was the wiser, except for Super Hubs, who glared at me.

For the final fun of the evening, we made our way over to the former Dean’s beautiful home. It was breathtakingly cold as we parked on a side street and walked the block to the condo. The doorman directed us up the elevator, and we entered the unit to an intimate party. We were here specifically to help entertain the Hong Kong program people. We spent a month in Hong Kong with the kids back in ‘01, and I can talk Hong Kong with the best of them. We shared delicious stew, corn bread and salad overlooking the sparkling winter sky through the bay window. It was magical.