Aftermath Becomes Clear
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You Know You’re in Chicago When…
Polish Wedding in Chicago
"Are you going for the bride or the groom?" I was standing at the car rental counter making small talk with the young lady completing the paperwork for us to rent our car, and I answered without giving any thought to the oddness of my response.
"Neither. I've never met either of them."
She smiled. "How did you get the invite if…"
I started pointing over my shoulder. "She knows the bride," I explained, indicting behind me with my thumb my absent wife. I turned around to discover K wasn't standing behind me.
"Wherever she is…" I continued.
I have, in fact, only been to one other wedding where I didn't know the bride or the groom, and it was the evening I proposed to K in 2003.
There was little difference between that evening and Saturday's wedding. During the 2003 wedding, K and I sat with a group of her college friends (it was a college friend's wedding), but I really knew none of them.
Saturday, we sat with a group of folks who were from the same village as K (the father of the bride was from Jablonka) but otherwise strangers to us.
No matter: we were soon talking with them as if we'd known them for ages.
That's part of the magic of a Polish wedding: you can go knowing no one and be fairly certain you'll still have a great time. The copious amounts of alcohol certainly helps lessens everyone's inhabitions, but there's something more to it than that.
Chicago Day 2 Exploring
Chicago Walk
A 6:30 flight that necessitates a 4:15 wake-up time might get you to Chicago with a lot of time left before the 5:00 wedding that’s the reason for the whole trip, but it also drains you just a bit before anything even starts. Still, this morning’s trip was completely painless: easy parking at our local Greenville airport, quick check-in, smooth security check, on-time boarding and takeoff started the trip off stress free if not a little tired. Things went just as smoothly in Chicago when we arrived, so that put us downtown with a lot of time, a little cafe nearby, and no real commitment other than to explore the city.
We made it to the hotel without much problem (Chicago seems to be the city of Saturday traffic jams), took showers, and headed out for the wedding. Pictures from that coming only tomorrow…
Helene-Free Friday
We are fortunate indeed that I could even think of titling today's update "Helene-Free Friday." I guess it's not entirely accurate: the Boy and I did go out and get an enormous bit of wood that we'll use as our chopping block in the future, but other than that, Helene didn't impact our day that much.
Other than the fact that we still have friends family staying with us.
Of course, we're more than glad to help those we love, but it does come with certain advantages to us: three Polish women can make a batch of pierogi (we had leftover mashed potatoes from last night -- what else would we do with them?) in almost no time at all.
Most of the evening, though, we spent getting ready for our Chicago trip. We fly out at 6:30 tomorrow morning and arrive back here at 9:30 Sunday. We've got our walking tour planned for tomorrow,
and Cocia M is ready to take E for his early game tomorrow morning.
Clearly
This image was making some rounds on social media. On Twitter, I'm sure it went unchecked, but other platforms (read: platforms not yet run by megalomaniacal Nazi idiots) took the image down. It's fairly clear why: it's obvious AI.
Why do right-wingers fall so easily for conspiracy theories?
They even have conspiracy theories about their conspiracy theories:
Wednesday After Helene
There was more progress in the neighborhood today: the two trees blocking our road no longer are, and more importantly, the power up the street (due to the downed lines of those two trees) has been restored.
"Has been restored" -- the most pathetic use of passive voice ever. Linesmen restored it. Men who are working twelve to fourteen hours every day to bring power back to the millions in the south who lost it.
We should all find one linesman and buy him dinner when this is all over. Each linesman would get dozens of evenings out. Probably hundreds. And we still wouldn't have repaid them.
On our property, I worked today to remove the dam of debris that formed in our backyard creek. It was about five feet high and seemed like it would completely block the water the next time we had a heavy rain -- so it had to go. I'll finish it up tomorrow.
And in the evening, soccer practice and a walk around the fields. Surprisingly little damage there: almost no trees down at all.
One Good Thing from Helene
Tuesday After the Storm
Our street has been blocked since Friday morning when Helene took down the tree I'd expected to fall for at least five years.
"When are they going to take care of that?" L asked. "When are they going to get rid of that tree," E asked. The answer was simple, like so many things in Helene's wake: "I don't know."
We kept reminding them about fortunate we are: we had power back the same day we lost it. We never lost water. We have a home that "flooded" with about two inches of water at most, and in the basement, where we'd already prepared for just that much flooding.
Today, though, the linesmen began working in our neighborhood. They took care of the broken power pole behind our house and cleared the tree blocking our road (though that was the city's work, I guess).
And we decided it was time to do some exploring. We headed back along the creek that we've always called our adventuring area. There was a waterfall there that spilled over some rocks and enormous roots of two trees that towered over everything.
Those two trees, however, were casualties of Helene. Minor casualties, to be sure: they were tall enough to take out a bit of fencing in a backyard on our street, but that's nothing compared to the death toll that's in the Carolinas.
Heading back home, we noticed another change: without the enormous tree that was hanging over our street (and the blocking our street), our street looks a lot different.
It's not the only thing in the south that looks different thanks to Helene.
