November 26, 2020 Part 2 of 8
I spent my dad’s whole brunch-eating period writing a post on headaches. I’m almost done with my food, and Alex got a start on his then had a dinner appointment somewhere else.
So I guess I can use the past tense, since 2/3 of us are done-ish.
Anyway, since COVID is still a thing (and getting worse — we had over 1,000 cases per day for the last couple of days), we ordered Denny’s in as a sort of faux Thanksgiving brunch.
I got an Ultimate Omelette (for Easter, I somehow ordered it without the sausage or onion, but couldn’t figure out how to do it this time, so I pulled them out as I came across them. It was still delicious, though), Alex has a ham and cheese omelette, and my dad had steak and eggs.
I’ve finished my omelette, half of my toast, and about 1/3 of my hash browns. My dad has eaten everything and is taking a post-brunch nap. Alex is still not feeling 100% so he ate some of his hash browns. His future roommates are having a big dinner starting soon, so he’s there right now.
We started having brunch for every holiday when Alex was little. Well, maybe before then.
Let’s see. My mom always wanted to go to a champagne brunch on Easter and when I was a teenager or young adult, we noticed that the nice hotel on Halsted Street — I think it was a Hilton, maybe? (cue short break to see if that hotel is still there (I found where it was, and it’s a vacant lot now because of course it is*)) had a champagne brunch. Now, if I recall, my mom was more interested in the decadence of the champagne part, but since alcohol has always tasted nasty to me, I was more into the brunch.
We continued Easter brunching once Thomas and I got married and moved to Texas. We went to Easter brunch at the Hyatt Hill Country hotel for years. After a couple of years, we added Christmas brunch (we were still going home to Chicago for Thanksgiving at that point) at what was then the Adam’s Mark hotel downtown. Eventually, the hotel changed hands and those brunches stopped.
When we had Alex, we expanded to brunch for every holiday. Alex was an awesome baby who literally was only cranky when he was tired. When he was a baby, we’d put him in his clothes while he was still half-asleep and by the time he woke up, we were there. He was nice and rested and cheerful for the duration, then, with a full tummy, he’d nap for a while and be cheerful and rested for the rest of the day.
After Thomas and I split up and my dad moved in with us, we kept going to the Hyatt Hill Country for a few years, but then my dad decided that we should go to a hotel closer to home. The brunch isn’t quite as nice, and they don’t have waffles with strawberries and chocolate chips, like the Hyatt Hill Country used to have, but it is nice (and also less expensive!).
We generally go for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but this year they aren’t having brunch, because, well.
So we did Denny’s for both Easter and Thanksgiving. What will happen on Christmas? Probably Denny’s again.
Maybe we’ll return to real brunch at some point in 2021.
*I later found an article saying that they were plans in late 2019 to put a casino at the southwest corner of the intersection between Halsted and Interstate 80, which is right there. I’m not sure if it’s going forward, what with COVID and I’m not sure if it’s going on the brunch hotel side of 174th or the other side, though.
We begin the Discworld’s “Industrial Revolution” storyline in today’s Gratuitous Amazon Link Moving Pictures. I’m not sure if I’m crazy about this arc. I really was in the beginning stages of Discworld fatigue by this point. It seemed odd that Pratchett was going to skip from the late middle ages/Renaissance to the 19th/20th Century like this. I know, the books are more social commentary than anything else. I don’t know. I guess maybe someday I’ll pick up the project again and see what I think. I’m not at the end of my spate of reading the Discworld books — I still have 12 books before I finally had enough of marching lockstep through them, but we’ll see what we get when we get back to the books someday.