November 3, 2017

Dear everyone,

The end of October has been a whirl of activity, which will continue into November. Starting from last week, Cindy and I went to a hockey game, below is a picture from our seats - - these are the good ones, where I have three games (Andy Brown and Jami Walloch are splitting the other six).  I also have some tickets in the way upper reaches of the United Center. The Blackhawks are not doing very well this year, but any hockey game is fun to watch; the players move so freaking fast.

Face off!

Last Sunday, after aikdo, Cindy and I went downtown to see our first opera of this season, The Barber of Seville.  Warner Brothers nonwithstanding (e.g, this cartoon), Rossini’s music has been earworming me since then.  I thought the opera itself was average.  Most of the music is for male parts, and the female voices did not impress me.  I thought the set was a bit blah, and the acting pushed into the farcial aspects of the opera a little further than necessary.  But we had a good time!

Immediately after the opera was over, Cindy drove me to Midway so I could fly to New York on the annual investment trip.  It took over an hour to get there from downtown (luckily my flight was after 8).  We realized I could have gotten there faster if I had taken the ‘EL’.  Anyway, my flight was delayed about 30 minutes, and I arrived at LGA around 11:45.  LaGuardia is still a mess of construction, and you have to walk to one end of the airport and take a five minute shuttle bus to the taxi stand.  Luckily, I was one of the last people on the shuttle, so I didn’t have to wait for it to fill.  I got to the Library Hotel around 12:15, so I missed the Sunday night dinner at Ai Fiori.

Monday was the day for us to walk from manager to manager.  We saw four of them, with a break for lunch. I would be hard put to say much about any of them without consulting my non-existent notes.  That evening we had dinner with my friend Michael Bellacosa, Alison’s friend Jodie, and the Weiss’s at the Seafire Grill.  We had a prix fixe menu which was quite good.  I enjoyed the squid appetizer, but I should have ordered the grilled branzino for dinner.  After dinner, Michael and I went to the fascinating Campbell Bar, attached to Grand Central Station.

It was nicer looking when I got it, I had cut it up a bit by this time

Tuesday we had meetings in the hotel.  One of them piqued my interest, a small firm that has an interesting way of ‘stratifying’ the S&P index.  You might not make as much when the market swings upwards (especially if the index is moving because of a cluster of similar companies), but on the other hand, you may lose less on downturns.  However, their index costs more than a Vanguard index, and we have not usually been interested in buying a position of stock indices.

For dinner we went to a Korean BBQ restaurant, Dons Bogam.  We had menu advice from Gabriel Brown, and my colleague Aimee Kwak.  We all sat at a traditional table (on the floor with a hole cut under the table, with a cushion and a seat back.  Roger had trouble getting out after the meal).  As Gabe recommended, we ate until we were full, and then ate some more.  The wait staff, unusually (I think) for a Korean restaurant was very friendly and very helpful.

cucumber soju

Glass noodles (Japchae).  We also had Korean pancake,s and steamed and fried dumplings for appetizers

side dishes (Banchan) #1

Banchan #2

Unseasoned  Ribeye (Deungsim)

Unseasoned short ribs (Saeng Galbi)

Marinated short rib (Yangnyeom Galbi)

Mushroom platter [my portion] (Beoseot Modum Gui)

Spicy short ribs (Maeun Galbi)

Cold green tea noodles with spicy sauce [1/2 had steak tartar]

(Bibim-naengmyeon and Yukhoo Bibim-naengmyeon)

I had a surprise when I woke up the next morning - - my flight home was cancelled, and I had been auto-booked on a flight on Thursday.  This was no good for me; I transferred to a flight leaving LGA around noon - - which ended up having about an hour delay.  So, I only made one meeting 

Wednesday morning, an interesting investment group buying senior water rights in the southwest US.

Halloween around here was terrifically cold with both rain and snow.  Since it was mid-week, we only had about 3 dozen trick-or-treaters, where we usually get around 80-90.  Lots of leftovers here at home. Then, this Saturday, instead of going to work after tai Chi, I came home, and we went to a wine tasting held at Vistro.  We ended up buying two bottles each of a Sancerre, Cabernet Franc, and a Syrah/carignan/grenache blend for Thanksgiving; we were joined by the Wallochs and the Pyles.  Afterwards we went out for a late lunch at Fuller House.

Not much is new at work.  All of the Advocate hospitals are in the process of moving to Epic (the Wisconsin hospitals have already done so).  Epic is a really good hospital patient information system - - I used it at Loyola.  However, our hospitals are moving into it piecemeal, so there are a couple of the Illlinois hospitals in the system, but most of us have yet to move over.  Christ will be the last, come this July.  The issue for me is that I get consult neuropathology cases from all of the other hospitals, but I don’t have Epic access.  So I can’t look up pertinent patient information like laboratory values, patient history, etc.  This is a big problem for me, and no one seems to know how to fix it (or no one cares enough to get me into contact with someone who can). Well, just fourteen months to go.

Ok, time to turn on the Bears to see if they can pull out of their slump (answer - no).

Love,

H.