They announced on TV that it was going to be a white Thanksgiving. They showed impressive satellite photographs with an ominous haze over the Midwest. It reportedly snowed in other parts of Illinois and Ohio, and even in Boston, but here in Peoria, it was zilch, nada, ille.
It rained all day on Wednesday though—icy, pissing rain with the wind-chill driving the subzero temps even down. I sat up half the night on the eve of Thanksgiving, not wanting to miss the first snow of the season and the first snow of my life. I went to bed a disappointed woman and stayed in it most of Thanksgiving as a protest against the unsporting weather. But little did it care.
On Friday, I realized to my chagrin how deceptive the bright sunlight was. The six-minute walk to the bus transit center almost froze me to death. And when I struck out like a dude in the evening to capture the winter sunset, it took mechanical devices to get my numb fingers unstuck from the camera and straighten them.
Saturday became cooler, but adamantly no snow. I was in a dangerous mood because the housekeeping lady had provoked me in the morning. She walked into the room, took a look at my shoes and asked, “Been shoe shopping again, haven’t you?” I didn’t know they kept track of my secret little fetish! Thank God I hid all my new clothes, far away from their mocking gazes!
So I shopped for idiosyncratic stuff in the mall—an absurdly expensive bracelet cooed over by the saleswomen and a “designer” calendar. The lady at the counter first complimented on my choice and when I was paying, said, in a surreal moment, “And you smell nice too!” Ah well, a friend recently told me that in some Samoan tribes, it is an accepted social norm to compliment women on their breasts, so I shouldn’t probably split hairs here.
To erase the trauma and shame of this event, I spent big time at Borders and bought DVDs and books for big bucks. Rest of Saturday was happily spent in a movie marathon—some profound and some hilarious. If you want roll-on-the-floor funnies, don’t miss “Lake House” starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. It is side-splittingly funny to watch them trying to be deep—Keanu is going through his “Kerouac” days and spouts Nietzsche, while Sandra claims that her favorite author is Dostoevsky!
Then I watched a genuinely funny movie called “Beauty Shop”, starring Queen Latifah and Kevin Bacon as the Austrian via Nebraska hair-stylist par excellence, complete with highlighted and styled long hair, stylish clothes, and a hilarious German accent: “I call ze shots here, ja?”
I also watched a very unusual movie called “The Prime of Miss. Jane Brodie”, starring Maggie Smith. It takes the concept of a charismatic fascist and puts it in the benign microcosm of a girls’ school and gives you a ringside view of how dangerous a magnetic, whimsical, and megalomaniacal person can be, if unchecked. I later found out that the original book by Muriel Spark is on the Times 100 list of the greatest novels of 20th Century. Here’s a link to the review: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,the_prime_of_miss_jean_brodie,00.html.
By the time it was Sunday, I had resigned to my fate of no snow. It is in that spirit that I set out for a picnic at the Kikcapoo Creek winery ungloved and carelessly attired. When we got out of the car, we realized that winter meant business – it was teeth chatteringly cold.
And as we walked from the parking lot to the winery building—“Hello, what is this soot like thing falling on us? Is it snow?” Damn right it was!
The show put up by the Weather Gods was completely awesome. First the snowflakes were tiny and we could catch sight of individual jewel-shaped crystals. Then they got gradually bigger and bigger, snow started falling thicker, and the wind got drivingly icy. It snowed for a good half-an hour, just enough to cover everything in white that turned a gray, desolate landscape into winter sparkle! Wow!
We, of course, went mad. This is what we did: we drank some wine, got warm, ran out and jumped around in the snow, ran back in when it got too cold, drank some more wine and did it all over again. I tasted six different wines that sustained me for quite some time. I also discovered a tiny lake and a gazebo near-by, looking like a Japanese painting after the snow.
It rained all day on Wednesday though—icy, pissing rain with the wind-chill driving the subzero temps even down. I sat up half the night on the eve of Thanksgiving, not wanting to miss the first snow of the season and the first snow of my life. I went to bed a disappointed woman and stayed in it most of Thanksgiving as a protest against the unsporting weather. But little did it care.
On Friday, I realized to my chagrin how deceptive the bright sunlight was. The six-minute walk to the bus transit center almost froze me to death. And when I struck out like a dude in the evening to capture the winter sunset, it took mechanical devices to get my numb fingers unstuck from the camera and straighten them.
Saturday became cooler, but adamantly no snow. I was in a dangerous mood because the housekeeping lady had provoked me in the morning. She walked into the room, took a look at my shoes and asked, “Been shoe shopping again, haven’t you?” I didn’t know they kept track of my secret little fetish! Thank God I hid all my new clothes, far away from their mocking gazes!
So I shopped for idiosyncratic stuff in the mall—an absurdly expensive bracelet cooed over by the saleswomen and a “designer” calendar. The lady at the counter first complimented on my choice and when I was paying, said, in a surreal moment, “And you smell nice too!” Ah well, a friend recently told me that in some Samoan tribes, it is an accepted social norm to compliment women on their breasts, so I shouldn’t probably split hairs here.
To erase the trauma and shame of this event, I spent big time at Borders and bought DVDs and books for big bucks. Rest of Saturday was happily spent in a movie marathon—some profound and some hilarious. If you want roll-on-the-floor funnies, don’t miss “Lake House” starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. It is side-splittingly funny to watch them trying to be deep—Keanu is going through his “Kerouac” days and spouts Nietzsche, while Sandra claims that her favorite author is Dostoevsky!
Then I watched a genuinely funny movie called “Beauty Shop”, starring Queen Latifah and Kevin Bacon as the Austrian via Nebraska hair-stylist par excellence, complete with highlighted and styled long hair, stylish clothes, and a hilarious German accent: “I call ze shots here, ja?”
I also watched a very unusual movie called “The Prime of Miss. Jane Brodie”, starring Maggie Smith. It takes the concept of a charismatic fascist and puts it in the benign microcosm of a girls’ school and gives you a ringside view of how dangerous a magnetic, whimsical, and megalomaniacal person can be, if unchecked. I later found out that the original book by Muriel Spark is on the Times 100 list of the greatest novels of 20th Century. Here’s a link to the review: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,the_prime_of_miss_jean_brodie,00.html.
By the time it was Sunday, I had resigned to my fate of no snow. It is in that spirit that I set out for a picnic at the Kikcapoo Creek winery ungloved and carelessly attired. When we got out of the car, we realized that winter meant business – it was teeth chatteringly cold.
And as we walked from the parking lot to the winery building—“Hello, what is this soot like thing falling on us? Is it snow?” Damn right it was!
The show put up by the Weather Gods was completely awesome. First the snowflakes were tiny and we could catch sight of individual jewel-shaped crystals. Then they got gradually bigger and bigger, snow started falling thicker, and the wind got drivingly icy. It snowed for a good half-an hour, just enough to cover everything in white that turned a gray, desolate landscape into winter sparkle! Wow!
We, of course, went mad. This is what we did: we drank some wine, got warm, ran out and jumped around in the snow, ran back in when it got too cold, drank some more wine and did it all over again. I tasted six different wines that sustained me for quite some time. I also discovered a tiny lake and a gazebo near-by, looking like a Japanese painting after the snow.
What an experience!
Comments
Heck, you missed "adoring"!