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Snow Day and City News Cafe

Feb 5, 2015 | News

We are Second City.  We wear the title with pride.

Sometimes you do not want to be first.  We gladly let Boston have a greater snow accumulation last week while we had our fifth largest snowfall ever recorded in the Second City.

Most of the city was still wondering where the plows were and how they were going to get out of their house or their cars out of their garages.  I had one mug of coffee before grabbing the trash

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knocking off enough snow so when I lifted the lid on one of my broad shoulders to get the bag in I did not dump snow all over myself and headed around the corner.

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Intrepid souls were beginning to make ruts in the snow so I moved on around the next corner and down to The Six Corners.  There I encountered Marc who had cleared a nice three foot path on the Cicero side of the Klee.  Six Corners needs thirty like him.  A little talk but he has to finish and get the Milwaukee side done and I need my second mug of coffee.

At City News Cafe I am greeted as Ran Doll by our friend who wishes to be known as Portage Hat.

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I tell her that I would like a mug of French coffee.  She tells me the French are not growing coffee these days.  I tell her I mean French Roast.  She says she knows but does not budge.  I look at the dark roast options and ask for the one called City News.  This type of exchange is what I call Chicago Friendly.  The coffee taste like French roast to my Texan taste buds.

Coffee and humane human interaction is what I came for so I drink my coffee and we talk about the snow, truffles and soup.

The snow you have seen and I will show you more later.

Truffles.

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Champagne truffles are Cheryl’s favorite but she does not make those but as she has gotten more into making many kinds she has made a dark chocolate covered white ganash truffle that we enjoy.  On this day she has a peach one she would like me to try but my taste buds are not set for sweets right then.

There are other things I might enjoy on another day and likely have.

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Very nice teas and an already mixed spiced Chai.

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An assortment of oatmeals.

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More truffles and hot cocoa.

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An assortment of baked goods and biscotti.

All wonderful and sure to delight all ages.

Oh, soup, today she has made green chili soup and wants to know if I would like to try some.  Green Chili before ten am?  Sure!!!  Texas, no beans conversation is had.  Chili is very nice and has the proper components to make my scalp sweat.

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So properly fortified I have two more stops through the snow to make.

Thank you Portage Hat!!!

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Author

  • Randy Baxley

    So how does an old guy who loves Python open source programming write a bio? Very few people still living ever bread boarded a program so maybe we do not start there. Some folks may have seen an 028 or an 029 keypunch machine. Still ancient history. I guess this is where I put in that I tried Pre Vet Med at Texas A & M. I found out that I was not that smart. I hitch hiked to Puget Sound. Bought into and worked in a plywood mill. Joined the Air Force then later back to Houston. Knocked around as a cowboy in hippy land for a bit. A friend said "Randy, you ain't no dummy." So I went back to school at the University of Houston. I took hours there and elsewhere from about ten universities in whatever interested me. Those ranged from drama with the same docs who taught Randy and Dennis Quaid to theoretical mathematics. I settled in the Computer Science Department. I continue to be lifelong learner. Maybe we start with my being 547 pounds from the problems sleeping an N24 schedule come with. Needing to be trained in using the RTA systems which include the CTA systems. The trainers not asking me if I was claustrophobic before putting me on a train that goes into a tunnel. Perhaps we move on to having gastric bypass surgery, losing a lot of weight and moving to Chicago proper from Schaumburg where Caffeinated Connections was one of my favorite things. There I had spent five of my ten years repairing mobility devices as a field service rep for a major in that field. We moved to where there is an official taxing and shopping district known as The Six Corners. There I needed to help my wife and her bad knees find ways to work that involved as few stairs as possible. That led to an understanding of the lack of information easily available for where and when there are working elevators or escalators. So trying to solve this led to an open source project to make travel and job search information easily available and first virtually then in RL for friends I have met along the way of many differing abilities so different perceptions of what accessible means. So the plan is to try to find places and folks of interest locally and in that open government hacking areas and write blog post about them. Loving the intersection of 2nd Life and RL this will hopefully lead to our own Caffeinated Connections over by here.

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