I went out ’round midnight last night to put the car in the driveway. When I finished, I got out of the car and looked up, and there he was, bright as could be: Orion. Winter is here. Been cold much of this month anyway. Off in the distance, an owl woo-woo’d softly.

Back again on November 28. A good Thanksgiving to all, and don’t forget to be up at 4 a.m. on the day after for all those doorbuster sales. I plan to be asleep then, though I might be up to go to the bathroom.

The name of the place we visited recently, according to the sign over the door, is the Umbrella Tea House. That made me wonder: what was the place where Winston Smith hung out at the end of 1984, ahead of his eventual vaporization? The post-Ministry of Love Winston Smith, that is, who loved Big Brother.

That’s the kind of thing I might wonder. I didn’t even have to find my paper copy of the book to find out.

“The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens. Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass.”

So I might call the Umbrella Tea House the Chestnut Tree, just for a bit of dark humor that no one would understand unless I explained it. Orwell might have gotten Big Brother and doublethink and maybe even memory hole into the common lexicon, but not the Chestnut Tree.

Umbrella Tea House, which is in a retail strip near the Schaumburg Township District Library, is anything but dark. It’s a bright place.

It has all sorts of interesting features, such as a tip pig, and — not sure how to characterize the second image.

Naturally, umbrellas figure in the décor. Up on the ceiling.

A pleasant place to occasionally drink fancy tea, which we did.