Events

I just realized that my short complaint about the cold front that came through Saturday was The Daily Parker's 9,000th post since it re-launched as a modern, continuous blog on 13 November 2005. (I still maintain that it was a blog from its inception on 13 May 1998, but the term "blog" hadn't been coined yet.) In the "modern" era, I've written a mean 495 and a median 505 posts per year, with a standard deviation of 66.3 (1.36, 1.4, and 0.27 per day, respectively). For the 12 months ending November 30th...

Our performances at Holy Name Cathedral and Alice Millar Chapel went really well (despite the grumblings of one critic). But part of the fun of serving as president of the chorus meant I got to go back to Holy Name this morning to sign off on 128 chairs and 4 dollies getting into a truck: They say Mass at noon every day. The window the rental company gave me was "ESTIMATED to arrive one hour before or after 10:53 AM." They actually showed up at 11:37. Fortunately, I had 4 of the 13 stacks you see above...

Cassie has two fur coats on, but I don't. Spot the cold front:

With all my rehearsals and performances this week, poor Cassie feels deprived of love and affection, as you can tell: Regular posting resumes Monday.

After waiting over two hours for our vendor to deliver the orchestra and chorus chairs to Holy Name Cathedral this morning, and our dress rehearsal tonight, plus two performances this coming weekend (the second one at Millar Chapel in Evanston), posting may decline slightly. That said, come to the concerts! We still have seats (pews) available. I just hope I get enough sleep between now and Sunday...

I complained yesterday that Chicago hadn't seen sunlight in almost a week. Ever the fount of helpful weather statistics, WGN pointed out that it made it the cloudiest start to a December since 1952. This streak had nothing on my winter break in 1991-92, when Chicago went 12 days without sunlight, or spring 2022, which had only 1 day of sunshine from March 21st through May 2nd. So the sun on my face this morning was delightful. In other gloominess: Julia Ioffe reports that Hamas has refused to release...

I mean, dayum: Will it help? I don't know. People who have been conned have a hard time accepting contrary evidence, as any con artist knows. But we can hope this will reach the clearer-eyed in the swing states.

US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), top contender for Dumbest Person in Congress since taking office earlier this year, finally released his hold on over 400 general and flag officer promotions he's held up for almost a year: The hold, which Tuberville began in February, applied to all senior military promotions, and hundreds of officers were caught up in its net. As officers increasingly complained of the toll on military readiness and morale, and as a war raged in the Middle East, Tuberville faced...

Forget Christmas songs: Chicago does not have the most wonderful time of the year between mid-November and the beginning of January. We haven't seen the sun all month (well, I have, but I was in California), and we had a lovely thing we call "wintry mix" during morning rush hour. It looks like we might get up to 13°C on Friday, at the cost of an obscene amount of rain dumping on the Pacific Northwest as the warm air mass makes it way toward us. Elsewhere: When the head of your climate summit is a...

Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Olfactory Brewery & Blendery, 2245 3rd St., San FranciscoTrain line: Caltrain, 22nd St Time from SF Terminal: 5 minutesTime from Chicago: about 4½ hours by airDistance from station: 800 m I really liked Olfactory Brewery, and though I'd never visited before, I really liked Dogpatch. The place has a chill vibe, good beer, and dogs whenever they stop by. I tried three beers: the (checks notes) Más o Menos Bien Czech Pilsner (4.6%), great...