Hello! Chicago

Well, I made it to Chicago. My daughter Shimaine and I left San Jose at 6:45 am and got in at 12:31 pm Chicago time. The plane ride was smooth and there were no incidents, just the way I like it. The picture above is the terminal at Ohare Airport. I tried as hard as I could to get everyone to stop for a photo, but they wouldn't listen, oh well, I guess they're in a hurry to get to their destination.

My brother Ray and nephew James picked us up at the airport in their van. Now, let me talk a little about the ride from the airport to my sister Jove's house, where we were heading for her annual Thanksgiving feast. My brother's van is not a bad looking van, the interior and exterior are in great shape and the engine sounded great for having 240 thousand miles on it with no major work having been done on it. I didn't mention anything about his 3 speed automatic transmission, that's because it's a 2 speed transmission. His transmission in the van is going out and it now only has 2 speeds, 1st and 2nd, and every now and then it would kick into 3rd gear, but then it would drop to 2nd for no reason at all. Let me throw out a couple of adjectives that describe the ride to my sister's house: jerky, hopalong, possessed, bull-riding and oh yeah, slow. Note to self - find out if my medical covers chiropractic treatments. Because we hardly ever got out of 2nd gear, we had to travel 50 mph or less, and I emphasize less, in the slow lane. We were traveling so slow that one time, this guy on his 10 speed bike pulled up next to me and asked if we needed help, I just told him we had transmission problems and that we would be ok, he said fine and sped up past us.

We finally arrived at our destination and let me tell you, my sister had a spread out. There was turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, 3 different dressings, Lumpia - that my sister Rita made, brockley, vinaigrette, bread, kugele - Lithuanian potato pudding, buns, gravy and a few other dishes that I didn't recognize. There were close to 30 or 40 people in her basement feasting. The basement was wall to wall with people and was setup like a banquet room, the food was on one table and the people were seated at their own tables with name tags. You walk up, get your food, then go back at your table and eat. Since I already had turkey, from my daughters party that she had last weekend for some of her friends, I only ate kugele. I figured that I can get turkey whenever, but I only got kugele when I visited Chicago. Oh, I didn't mention that upstairs in her kitchen, was were the desert was kept. She had the kitchen table filled with cakes, cookies, breads, cookies, muffins, jello, brownies, cupcakes and oh yeah, cookies. She must have had 5 or 6 different plates of cookies. All in all it was a great dinner. Kudos to Elaine - my brother-in-law's sister, who I understand did a lot of the cooking.



The above picture is my niece Erika and my mom relaxing in the atrium.

This last picture is my nephew Michael and his wife Allison (cute couple).

After the feast, my sister Rita drove me to my mom's house, were I was spending the night and Shimaine went to my brother Ray's house, where she was spending the night. I got to my mom's house in time to watch "Ugly Betty" and "Gray's Anatomy" after which I went to bed.