The Daily Parker

We had our coldest morning since February 17th today, cold enough that Cassie didn't want to linger sniffing her favorite shrubberies. The temperature bottomed out at 7:45 am, hitting -8.6°C at IDTWHQ, a cold we haven't experienced since 8:25 am on February 17th. O'Hare hit -10°C at 8 am, also the first time since 8 am February 17th. Tonight, going into the first day of astronomical winter, the forecast predicts it'll get even colder before warming up a bit on Monday.

Unrelated to the weather are these two things I liked from the past week. Yesterday I went over to a friend's house to help her set up a new computer and back up her old one. It turned out she was fostering this little guy, Hayes:

She texted me last night to say thanks and also that she's going to fork over the $495 adoption fee for him. Because of course she will. He's a sweet Lab-something mix whose pregnant mom got rescued from the side of the road in Arkansas. He'll have a much better (and longer) life with my friend than he would have otherwise.

I also liked the way the sun played around with the Civic Opera Building and 110 North Wacker (the mirrored building behind the Civic Opera) on Tuesday afternoon:

My new office is farther west than my old one, but still facing north, so it won't get any direct sunlight, ever. That said, on Tuesday I discovered that the mirrored windows at 110 North Wacker will give me pretty intense reflected sunlight, which is almost as bright. I'm still only going in once a week, but it's a nice perk.

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago has performed Händel's Messiah 145 years in a row. Our 146th will happen at 7pm Saturday December 14th at DePaul's Holtschneider Performance Center and at 2pm Sunday December 15th at Millar Chapel, Evanston.

We've gotten really good at this. And Josefien Stoppelenburg is the absolute queen of melismas. Don't miss this!

Also, kudos to the UK Home Office. I just applied for my UK Electronic Travel Authorisation, paid my £10 ($13.06), and almost immediately got approved. It helps that (a) I just entered the UK twice in September with the same passport, and until the UK decided Americans could use the EU passport lanes, I was in the UK Registered Traveller programme. So they've vetted me quite a few times already.

When will I next go there? I hope January. I haven't said a lot about it, but I moved to a new practice at Milliman on November 1st, and half my team—not to mention, my boss—are in England. I really need to meet them in person before too long. The other half of my team are in Seattle, where I also need to go soon, when I can work it out with my friend who brought Hazel through my house when they moved out there.

So, I'm aiming for Southampton in January and Seattle in February, because who doesn't love passing north of the 48th parallel in the winter?

The US Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow provides me with a long-awaited opportunity to clean out the closet under my stairs so an orphan kid more boxes will have room to stay there. I also may finish the Iain Banks novel I started two weeks ago, thereby finishing The Culture. (Don't worry, I have over 100 books on my to-be-read bookshelf; I'll find something else to read.)

Meanwhile:

• Even though I, personally, haven't got the time to get exercised about the OAFPOTUS's ridiculous threat to impose crippling (to us) tariffs on our three biggest trading partners, Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum used our own government's data to call bullshit on his claim that Mexico hasn't done enough to stop the flow of drugs into the US: "Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours."
• The UK will start requiring all visitors (even in transit) to register with their new Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme as of January 8th—similar to how the US ESTA program has worked for the last 16 years.
• Evanston, Ill., my home town, wants to protect bicyclists on one of its busiest streets, which of course has a bunch of stores panicking. (Note to the merchants: bike lanes don't hurt business, and in fact they encourage more foot traffic.)
• John Scalzi mourns the loss of Schwan's Home Delivery and it's bagel dogs.

Finally, as I mentioned nearly five years ago, today's date is a palindrome if you happen to study astronomy. The Julian Day number as of 6am CDT/12:00 UTC today is 2460642. Happy nerdy palindrome day!

I was just there this past weekend, and I really think they could have mentioned something:

Ravinia Brewing Company — now Steep Ravine Brewing Company — will host a farewell party Dec. 14 at its Logan Square taproom, 2601 W. Diversey Ave., though it will still use the space to brew beer, according to a press release.

Steep Ravine Brewing Company will retain the brewery’s signature “Tree Guy” mascot and award-winning beer portfolio, the company said in the release.

The Logan Square taproom closing party will feature special beer releases, a “curated menu” and a chance for the brewery’s fans “to reminisce about the incredible stories that shaped the taproom’s journey,” the release said.

This is the 19th place I visited on the Brews & Choos Project to close.

Yesterday, the OAFPOTUS once again said something so blindingly stupid that the only appropriate response had any regular person said it would be peals of laughter. Had any other incoming president said it, it would elicit genuine surprise and alarm from all parties in Congress and even friendly newspapers like the Wall Street Journal (especially the Journal).

But since we're talking about the biggest troll ever elected to public office, a man who puts Zaphod Beeblebrox to shame (since Zaphod at least had a plan), a man who can't say "hello" without bullshitting, the only appropriate response is to ignore him unless he follows through with the threat. In fact, I would say that the only sane response is to ignore everything the OAFPOTUS says or posts on Xitter, doubly so if Stephen Cheung hurr-hurr-hurrs immediately after.

Look, the guy loves getting reactions from people. He's a 12-year-old boy of below-average intellect saying whatever pops into his head to shock his mother's friends and win points with the other mouth-breathers in his 7th-grade class. But until he actually does something (meaning his aides have followed through with the institutional process actually required to fuck something up), his words are completely meaningless.

If we have learned nothing from the past nine years, I hope we have learned this. (The New York Times has not, but that's a different post.)

The temperature in my neighborhood fell below freezing around 4am and kept dropping, bottoming out just a few minutes ago at -1.7°C, the coldest it's been since March 18th. So despite valiantly holding onto their leaves later in the year than I can remember, the gingko and maple trees around my house finally surrendered to the inevitable:

All those leaves fell in the last couple of hours. In fact I tried to get a photo of them just pouring off the tree, but that's hard to capture in a still photo.

Cassie found all the new smells irresistable:

The little darling also pulled so often this morning that she almost completely detached her leash from her harness, and so had to walk the rest of the way to school tethered to me through her collar. Neither of us liked that very much, but at least she stopped pulling right away.

Note to self: budget for new harness every 8 months.

This morning's stand-up meeting begins in a moment, at the only time of day that works for my Seattle-Chicago-UK team (8am/10am/4pm respectively). After, I have these queued up:

• EJ Dionne lists some bright spots for progressives in the late election, and points out that we have won the issues that the Right no longer talks about. But actor Joel Gray warns us that Cabaret isn't as far from where we are as we'd like.
• Robert Wright says Pete Hesgeth has an Islam problem that disqualifies him for taking over the Dept of Defense.
• Charles Marohn has moved off Xitter*, "but not for the reasons you might think."
• The Chicago Transit Authority is heading for billion-dollar losses by 2031 if it can't secure new funding sources—or cut costs.

Finally, a new paper found something I've long suspected: small amounts of alcohol actually do help you speak a foreign language better. (Large amounts do not.)

* The X in "Xitter" is pronounced "sh," as in Xi Jinping.

Welcome to stop #118 on the Brews and Choos project, which announced its bloody closure just three days after I visited.

Brewery: Ravinia Brewing, 2601 W Diversey Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Blue Line, Logan Square
Time from Chicago: 16 minutes
Distance from station: 1.4 km

I reviewed the original Ravinia Brewing location in the historic Ravinia neighborhood of Highland Park so early in the Brews & Choos Project that Covid-19 had only just started entering most people's awareness. Almost by accident two of the beers my Brews Buddy and I tried were the same as the first Ravinia beers I tried in February 2020.

The Steep Ravine IPA (7.2%, 22 IBU) and the Baldwin barrel-aged porter (6.5%, 35 IBU) tasted just as good as they did 4½ years ago. We liked the new ones, too, with a big caveat. The Ludwig barrel-aged Oktoberfest (6.9%) "taste[d] like an Oktoberfest, but more so: more intense, syrupy flavor," she said, with which I completely agree. The Diversey Station juicy session pale ale (4.0%) had a good fruit-hop balance and will come up again next time I visit.

We differed a bit on two other tastes. Of the Infusion of the Week (see above, bottom right), she said "It's growing on me. Once I got accustomed to the rosemary, I could adjust my palate, and it just works." I said, "this beer is not for me." And of the Casa de Guava Berliner Weißbier, with its cloying, sweet, overwhelming guava flavor, she said it was "clean and refreshing, tart but not too tart, nice finish." I gagged involuntarily and, after recovering, said "no, oh no, oh no no no." (This is why we make a good team.)

Since we had just completely failed to finish the outsized pretzel at Pilot Project, and despite the 2 km walk between the two, we simply had no appetite for tacos. But the tacos at their Highland Park taproom are excellent, and we've had them several times before Ravinia Festival concerts.

Finally, in a couple of months, Ravinia Brewing will rebrand as Steep Ravine Brewing because of the SLAPP suit brought by Ravinia Festival. No one wanted this, except probably Ravinia Festival's legal department. And if Illinois' anti-SLAPP law had broader protections that included trademark disputes, Ravinia Brewing probably would have won a countersuit. Alas. I'll update the Brews & Choos reviews once the re-brand becomes official.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Many, difficult to avoid
Serves food? Yes
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #117 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Pilot Project Brewing, 2140 N Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Blue Line, California
Time from Chicago: 14 minutes
Distance from station: 500 m

Pilot Project has an unusual business model. They partner with fledgling breweries, work with them on their beer recipes and styles, help them with marketing and distribution, then gently fling them from the nest once they're established and can fly on their own. And they're pretty good at it.

After a 6-km meander through Logan Square to work up an appetite, my Brews & Choos buddy and I sat down at the Pilot Project bar and had an extended conversation with bartender Rebecca about the beers and their stories. Including our flights and sip-sized tastes of a couple other beers, we tried a lot of them. We also had a ginormous pretzel (seriously, it'll feed four people), and a pitcher of water.

My flight had Funkytown 1984 pale lager (5%, complex for a lager, long finish, not too sweet), Pilot Project's own Mountains Calling hazy IPA (6.3%, kind of malty for a hazy, really drinkable, beer buddy said "Ooo! I like that a lot"), their Tree Talker West Coast Pale (5.3%, very west coast, very hoppy, not my favorite), and their Brushfire Imperial stout (8%, lots of chocolate, coffee, and vanilla).

My friend had the Two Falls Hazy (6.5%, lovely apricot and apple notes, good balance), Azadi Brewing's Manali Hazy IPA (6.8%, balanced, not strongly fruity, good), and Azadi's Doorsa basmati rice lager (4.6%, effervescent, very light, interesting flavor).

She also tried a thing called Donna's Pickle Beer (4.4%), about which we had a mild difference of taste. I gagged, swished some water, and grabbed a hunk of pretzel. She said she "would absolutely love this after a hot run in the summer" and wants to run to the brewery with a bunch of other athletes as soon as it gets warm again.

We will absolutely go back, but only one of us will drink beer brewed with pickle juice.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? One, avoidable
Serves food? Pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes