Linda Clark-Borre
Merry Christmakkuh to my Beloved Friends and Family
12/25/2011 12:32DATELINE CHICAGO
Alas, no snow, but Santa figured out how to do without it in the Midwest if the loads piled under the grandkids' tree is any indication, as we know it is!
After living a year and a half in little Chico, I feel swallowed up here in Chicagoland - suburbia to be exact. There terrain is vast, and flat. They are always building roads here, and a major thoroughfare is now complete which is enabling traffic to flow with eery efficiency at least in the wee hours of the morning. The lights! The buildings alternating with vast open spaces and hopping I mean shopping centers for mile after mile after mile! The toll booths. The crisp air hurting the inside of my nose...and it is not even a cold season here (yet.) I am Home.
On the road to my destination, I worred that Chicago Gal was losing her sense of where she came from, but after a week here, I am sure to regain it.
That efficiency on the road threw me off the most. That is so un-Chicago metro area. I have so far managed to avoid using the word "freeway" here, which doesn't exist in the state of ILL. I still call freeways in my adopted home "expressways." Although I am continually corrected by natives, the nomenclature is a mere technicality in my book; where I live in Northern Cal, most all roads are express roads, hence, expressways. Chicoans complain of traffic from time to time, but folks, enjoy your road life because it is NOT HEAVY TRAFFIC. If you get backed up, it is over within minutes and not hours, so you are far better off in that sense than us native Chicagoans. If Santa did not bring what you wanted, at least be grateful for ease of car travel on the NorCal road.
And, change of subject, if you haven't had the chance - do see the movie Warrior. I am not a pugilist, but it has one of the best movie endings I have seen in a long time. Hint: the harbinger of the end to come can be found in the studio of one of the mixed martial arts trainers. Yes, it's Friedrich Nietzsche. (I did a double take). FN ended up weakened by the vagaries of life to say the least, but he still came up with one helluva phrase that applies to the storyline in Warrior: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger," which may as well be the tagline for this movie. It can also be the tagline for Chicagoland traffic on most days. Bring it on!
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