Windy City!

I thought I would take a walk this afternoon, to enjoy the sunshine and the warm temps, and then get back to work, putting the finishing touches on my talk for the First Saturday Retreat at the Cathedral in St. Paul, MN (anybody coming?). The wind had other ideas. It had already smashed row after row of tulip to the ground in the flowerbeds in front of the Prudential tower, and from an apartment building garden, mulch was skittering down Michigan Avenue like urban tumbleweed. Along with the traffic came two full sheets of the Chicago Tribune, threatening to plaster the legs of some unwary pedestrian. It was all anyone could do to place one foot firmly in front of the other anyway!
I crossed the street, dropped an envelope into the mailbox (a little something on Chicago's bird migration status for my ten-year-old niece) and gave up my plans for a walk.
There's a turkey in the oven, to welcome our Korean visitors with something representative. And I have an experimental kind of multi-grain stuffing going: brown rice, croutons that were ground almost to dust, and quinoa. You know how they say not to try something new when you have company? Don't. Now I'm soaking some craisins in orange juice to make cranberry sauce, just to help the stuffing along.
Tomorrow we head out early (early!) to the Illinois Catholic Prayer Breakfast (thankfully, it is only a block away this year!). This was the event that was supposed to have Bart Stupak as a keynote speaker. Until he, you know. Anyway, things rev up at 6:15 with the recitation of the Rosary. We have a little book and media display to set up, and Sr. Helena (who just got back from MN) hopes to play our Father Alberione movie trailer in a loop for all to see. After the event, I have an hour or two to get my things together and hop the Orange Line to Midway; hopefully I'll be in MN before the predicted severe storms arrive in Chi-town. (I wonder...where are the severe storms coming from?)