Chicago

The Flu Pandemic

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Well, the first cases of swine flu in Illinois have been confirmed, including 2 cases where Sara works. Which, obviously, reminds me of this song, by the Flying Fish Sailors:

Nothing can cheer you up about deadly flu faster than a pirate band.

I’m not sure what the deal with the swine flu is. I feel like people are trying to make me flip out about it, but I just can’t bring myself to be that worried about it. As far as I can tell, with less than 100 cases confirmed in the U.S. (that’s about .00003% of the population if I did my math right) and only one death, it is far far less common or deadly than the regular flu. Now, certainly it could continue to grow and then maybe we should start to worry, but it seems to me like the incidence is much lower right now than the reaction.

Well, the good news is, there is a website you can go to, doihaveswineflu.org

An exciting, yet relaxing weekend

/ Shane / 7 Comments

On one hand we didn’t really do all that much this weekend, and on the other hand we had a lot of exciting things going on.

The library has passes for all of the museum etc. around us, but they are mostly always gone, or at least the good ones are. Some of them are so completely always gone that one of the librarians confided that they were probably lost. But Sara managed to snag a pass to Adler Planetarium. I was already on board with going there for free, but that was before I knew that one of the exhibits right now was Sesame Street based. We did have to pay for that part, but it was well worth the money.  Evie was in 7th heaven, by which I mean she was happy as opposed to how you feel when someone forces you to watch that god-awful show. Although she was a little young, she was just so thrilled to be watching an “Elmo movie” on this huge screen, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. It was fun in the audience too seeing all the kids get so excited and like shouting out the answers to Big Bird’s questions, etc. and all the parents singing “twinkle twinkle little star” and just enjoying watching their kids. Needless to say, it was a big hit. I would recommend the show to anyone with little kids. There was more to see at the planetarium than I expected, but it was a little boring, especially for someone Evie’s age.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one little girl’s day, we also rode the train there and back. Since the train runs right by our house, Evie has always been into trains a little bit. This was the first time she ever rode on one and she was pretty excited. The train trip worked out perfectly and we definitely plan on using it a lot more in the future.

Probably the highlight of my day, was the (for lack of a better word) hipster-ish breakfast place that Sara found, Yolk. It was sooo super easy to get to from the train, and it was delicious. The best part? Instead of toast, you can substitute pancakes! “Yes, instead of my toast I would like to substitute a second breakfast.” I paid a little extra and upgraded mine to blackberry / banana pancakes. Evie approved. It was a tad pricey for breakfast, but I ate so much that I hardly ate anything else the rest of the day. Given it’s proximity to the Museum Campus, I’d imagine it could get busy in the summer, but it is huge and kid friendly.

So to top it all off, we decided to give Evie her first haircut! We only cut her bangs. They are always in her eyes and she would rather die than wear something in her hair to keep it back, like a barrette. She was really good for it. She didn’t exactly sit still, but she did okay. I think Sara’s not really happy with the job she did, but I think it looks fantastic, and not too short no matter what you might hear.

Evie has been saying a lot of funny words lately. Some of her favorites are perfect, excellent, and exactly. Like, “Hey Evie, how about when we’re done eating we go downstairs to play?” “Perfect!” Or “How are the grapes?” “Excellent.” Or “It looks like you’re putting your froggy to bed.” “Yes, exactly!”

But my favorite quote of the weekend? “And what else starts with the letter ‘R’?” “Arm!”

In other news, I started the dead and the gone and I have to say, with going on my second end of the world book in a row, all of this swine flu talk is coming at a bad time for me.

Willis Tower

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Do you recognize that building? The tall, iconic one majestically rising above the skyline? The tallest building in the U.S.? Oh, you must mean the Willis Tower of course!

A couple of days ago it was announced that the Sears Tower would be renamed the Willis Tower. I just hate that. I mean, I understand that the Sears corporation hasn’t occupied it since ’92, but when you have something that is so iconic, you can’t just go around changing names. Ugh! And believe me, it’s not going to bring you more customers, if anything, it will drive people away. We’re talking about the city that is still upset over the name change from Marshall Field’s to Macy’s almost 3 years ago.

The strangest part was that, reading the article it sounded like Willis didn’t pay to have the name changed and will not take up a significant portion of the building (only 3.5%). There is some confusion over that part, so I may not completely understand, but that is even more heinous. I could understand if the company was giving them a few million to stay afloat in this economy or something. Money talks. But the way it sounds, it is completely arbitrary.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, at the very bottom of the article, they throw out that the building might be repainted silver. Silver! A new name *and* a new color? Preposterous!

Savory Cupcakes

/ Shane / 6 Comments

My love of delicious cupcakes has been a topic of conversation on this blog, but what if the cupcakes were savory and not sweet? For example, what if they were meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting?

Enter the Meatloaf Bakery.

I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, but I think I like it. I haven’t tried them of course, but I would certainly be willing.  I would think the trick would be to keep from thinking of them as cupcakes. But I get a craving for meatloaf now and again, and I bet you can make some really delicious meatloaf if you put your mind to it.

Link courtesy Dabu. Dabu, why don’t you have a blog?

Garden Season II – Potential Hiatus

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Just when I write a nice post about the garden, we hear word of its ultimate demise. I mentioned before that there was some doubt about its future and, according to the most recent transmission, the garden will be closed in the “fall of this year” to be used as “staging during construction” of a new building. The semi-good news is that the University “would be willing to help relocate the community garden to a new site”.  This is only semi-good because A) there’s no where that could possibly be as convinient for us as where it is now, and B) who knows what that means in terms of our plot personally (i.e. the garden may be smaller and we may be bumped, the individual plots may be smaller, etc.)

On the other hand, someone made an absolutely awesome webpage for the garden! As a programmer, it does my very soul good to see such a beautiful, clean, focused, professional website. And it contains everything you could ever need. Including the wiki for gardening tips was a stroke of genius! I didn’t see anything to indicate the identity of the creator of the webpage, be it an individual or company, but I would certainly recommend them based on this web page alone.