New Year's Day 2014

I baked Earl Grey Tea cookies in the morning. That was all I had time and ingredients for.
Then I spent the rest of the day at a couple of New Year open houses. Most of the afternoon was spent at Mike & Michael's house in Grant Park. Mike had prepared vegan greens and black-eyed peas and put out chips and nuts. Tweenage kids were playing video games in the living room while the adults stood chatting in the kitchen. Met some new people who had children Michael's age. Just when I started edging out to leave, when the conversation was all on parenting and not so much I could relate to, someone new came in or the conversation changed. I ended up spending the entire afternoon in the house of Mike.

At the end of the day, when everyone had left to prepare for an early bedtime and work the next day, I walked down the street with Mike and Andrew to visit the former site of Dottie's one last time before the lot is wiped clean to build a highrise. I can't imagine how the streets around Grant Park or the neighborhood will accommodate the traffic from a high-rise condo & office building there. Surely, streets will have to widened and the remaining old houses replaced with apartments soon. Too many friends of mine who live in the neighborhood are living in houses they no longer own but rent from their banks (bad timing on buying property) and I fear I'll face another mass exodus and relocation of friends. This would be a great time to buy, while prices are low, if anyone had full-time jobs and could budget for that.  Anyway, we said goodbye to Dottie's a final time, exchanged a few stories, and departed.

I ended the evening nearby at the House of Eleanor, where the mistress of the house was playing with static electricity, rubbing balloons and sticking them to guests, children and adults alike. The master of the house was especially cheerful much more loquacious than usual, chatting with other writers and enjoying the festivities. Plenty of food was spread out on the table, including savory pancakes and a cake which, like King cake, was supposed to have a charm of some sort inside it. Eleanor herself is missing two teeth in front but I failed to document it with the camera. Lava lamps lined the mantel under a disco ball.