I would tell you that it was the coldest day of the year, but that would not do the temperature justice. Besides, this is the Windy City, so the wind chill is far more important – and horrifyingly cold. The day started with negative temperatures at O’Hare, and while the afternoon sun did what it could to warm that so when we departed into the city after 4:00 PM, not even the heart and soul of our solar system can defeat the mighty force of the Chicago Winter.
At least it wasn’t snowing.
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Germans like pickles at Christmas. I learned this in Daley Plaza, where the German Christkindlmarket was setup in tents so tiny and unheated that I think the German blood was hardly flowing. So many figurines; so many pickles. No penguins, though. One tent was slightly warmed: we took our food in there, as I found that a jumbo hot dog was just two hot dogs stuck on one bun. Fascinating, these Germans, with their brown mustard and those hot dogs that are like double hot dogs.
So cooooold.
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We gathered under the clock at Marshall Field’s; State at Washington. That’s not an activity to reenact a year from now, since Federated, in its infinite retail wisdom, is stripping the Chicago landmark of its name; God forbid the Second City not have a Macy’s. That day it was still Field’s, though, and even in the horrid chill, as the winds whipped around the building and made everyone on the east side of State Street question their sanity, there was a large crowd admiring the Christmas decorations, particularly the window displays, decked out with an animated holiday story. Kids marveled at the moving puppets while their parents worked the camcorder with numb hands, watching for icicles dripping from the lens.
Inside there was WARM. WARM throughout the giant hall that greeted you upon your entrance from State. WARM in the elevator. WARM on the seventh floor where patrons dined on twenty-dollar hamburgers while the Sprinkle Fairy came around to make their hair sparkle, and warmth on the eighth floor where we gawked down at them from, claiming to admire the giant Field’s Christmas tree but in reality more concerned with that man’s toupee. And is that child in the pink pants dead?
The WARM made you happy. We (Emily and Author) just had to dance, briefly, because the WARM compelled us to, even if the lady at makeup counter next to us (who most certainly didn’t notice this time of year) would frown upon such activities. Buy some rouge already, or go back into the cold.
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People apparently go ice skating in negative wind chill temperatures; another failure of our public school system, I suppose. Expectations were for small crowds on this rink along the west border of Millennium Park, just off of Lake Michigan, but the Windy City crowds were not discouraged by the chills. Emily’s bum ankle kept us off this death trap, so we watched the others, including the Indian Kristy Yamaguchi, who impressed us with her twirling skills as well as the ability to not fall on her own ass, something not shared by many of her ice mates. We held purses and skate bags as friends passed by, some with cameras held shaky on skates, other with guardrails they would not let go of. All of them cold. None of them with hot chocolate, as we possessed, our second cups of the night. Not nearly enough.
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