We were up and out of the house by 8:15 am to get to the Holiday Inn for a Book Club Program that Trudy was partly in charge of. It is a monthly group which normally meets in different people's homes. But they put on an annual program which is open to more people and they bring in a special speaker. There were 71 people signed up. We had to get there early to help with some of the set up and to make sure everything was ready.
Someone had brought small vases of flowers to put at each table.
It was a big room
Interesting light fixtures
I like this poster which was in the restroom.
The person who brought the flowers had particular ideas of what to do. She gave me the job of putting some greenery around the vases. I helped set out the name tags. Each person had been assigned to a table. Trudy and I were at table #4.
These were our flowers, note the greenery at the base. I did that.
Martina was the speaker and she had a lot of setting up to do but she took care of it all herself.
People started arriving at 9:30 am. They had a 1/2 hour of visiting time before the program. It started at 10 am.
Trudy's co-leader spoke a bit about the Book Club itself. She announced that whoever's birthday was closest to Martina's birthday, Feb 16 would get the flower centerpieces. That was me at our table so Trudy got a nice vase with flowers.
Trudy introduced the speaker. She said that she was sorry that Martina would not be able to join them but Flo the Flapper was there instead. Cute.
Flo came out to talk about Chicago in the 1920s.
She was a very entertaining speaker. She stayed in character the whole hour. She talked about all of the changes that happened in the 1920s and why it was called the Roaring 20s. She talked about the true story behind the movie "Chicago".
Chicago was rebuilt
Entrance to the underground, which was created when buildings were actually raised.
This lead to the Speakeasys
Alcohol, getting rid of the girdle, the music (jazz and blues) and dancing, cars, the Bob haircut, more independence for women ... So many changes during this decade.
I really enjoyed the speaker.
At 11 am the speaker finished and it was time for lunch. We had baked chicken, mixed vegetables and roasted potatoes. My piece of chicken was too tough to eat but I liked the rest.
Delicious apple dessert with caramel sauce.
Trudy had to help with all the clean up as well when the program was all overs. It was after 1 pm when we left.
The rest of the afternoon was yaking time. We fit in a short walk, Trudy had some phone calls to make.
She is going to be going to a fund-raiser at a pre-school of one of her niece's kids on Saturday night. Her niece was trying to come up with a theme for her team. It was decided that they would be a box of crayons. So each person was supposed to dress in a different color. Trudy spent a bunch of time texting back and forth and taking pictures of different possibilities. But who had matching pants and shirts of one solid bright color? I think that they finally decided that they would wear a solid color top with a pointy cone hat of that color and wear black pants. That made it a little easier.
It was fun watching this whole process. Checking out different possibilities.
We had pizza for dinner. It was a mushroom, spinach pizza. We added sliced pears to it. It was tasty.
More yakking. Too much stuff to talk about and not enough time. What an enjoyable time!
The end result of Trudy's costume.
