Sylvia's Journal

There were few people in the office today, mostly those who had to get a work plan done in time, a work plan I didn’t have to construct but in which my name appeared for interesting pieces of work. The reward for hanging in there is interesting work with people I like to work with.

A few more people now know about my predicament of the last few months and there is some incredulity. We are a big place and much is not visible to others. I am a squeaky wheel now and think I am being heard. Maybe after this someone else’s transition from the field is going to be easier.

We have all received our Thanksgiving cooking assignments from master chef Jim. For this reason I hastened home. Axel and I are responsible for the turkey basting, the wine, the mashed potatoes and at least one dish that is not a variant on brown/yellow/orange. We are pushing the limits and are doing not only the green beans with toasted almonds and ginger routine but also a new dish with Brussels sprouts in a Thai dressing that I picked up from the radio yesterday. It is a bit of a trust fall.

My specialty, pumpkin pie, I cooked for internal consumption when I got home. Four other pies were already claimed by others with whom we will share the Thanksgiving meal at Sita and Jim’s house.

We met up with Tessa and Steve at Al’s café in Manchester. The place is closing on January 1. I had never been there so I got in under the wire. The cafe is really a bar that has long since stopped serving food after the stove broke down. The interior is unadulterated 50s with nicotine stains of 60 years on the paneled walls, several TV screens with games going on, wobbly booth furniture without the booth, sticky vinyl and the only visible bathroom for guys only.

It is not really my kind of place but I get the nostalgia thing. It is the place where Axel took our daughters to when they turned 21 – a manly kind of initiation into the world of authorized drinking.

According to one of the locals some rich people in town banded together and bought the place, just to get rid of the Budweiser sign in the window. The café will become a restaurant, a wine and tapas bar to be precise. Some people think it will be more fitting than a Budweiser place; others think something will be lost. Having never been there I had no opinion. Now I know something will indeed be lost. I didn’t mind the sign.

Back home we celebrated Oona’s first puppy birthday – she is a big dog and doesn’t look like a one year old until you ask her to do things that require serious mental processing. Unlike her older sister Chicha, Oona had no idea about how to unwrap a birthday present and quickly lost interest, letting Chicha complete the job.

For a while she teased her older sister with her new toy but lost interest. That toy was quickly dismantled when we were not supervising (the toy instructions, we discovered later, said that the toy was to be used under supervision only). Nevertheless Tessa will probably write an angry letter to the manufacturer, complaining about deceptive advertising. She likes those kinds of battles.