one of the little-known-by-those-outside-chicago cool things about chicago is that we have a chocolate factory right downtown and sometimes the air is filled with the yummy sweet pungent smell of chocolate. tonight as i was walking home it was hard to ignore and i am really having a difficult time not breaking in to the vending machine...

today was an especially silly boondoggle day. as i'm sure 99% of my readers know, every now and then i get to take some sort of cool trip or attend a really fun party of some sort. this afternoon i was invited out to the horsetrack, and this evening i went on a boat cruise out along the lakeshore. first, let me just say to all of you who envision OTB-ers at a scummy NASCAR-like track that Arlington Park is a *classy* joint, and that horseracing is the shi-dizzle. it was a beautiful sunny day (which kinda sucked since i was wearing a long-sleeved sweater -- it was supposed to rain! -- and i had to buy an Arlington Park t-shirt so i didn't sweat all over the place), and it just seems like such a relaxing yet exciting thing to ponder which of the silly named horses will win each race. i came out ahead, which helps too...

as for the rest of the boondoggle day, we came back downtown and then took a cab straight to Navy Pier to get the boat cruise. the boat cruise was hosted by our friends at UGO.com, and the main feature of the boat cruise (other than the boat cruise-y-ness itself) was that their promotional partner Gary Coleman was there. in the flesh. since he has nothing better to do. so yeah, we went cruising around the harbor for a few hours with Gary. and it was silly. he was jammin' it up on the dancefloor for awhile, and i thought i was going to burst out laughing. i didn't though, since i am a well-mannered individual (which is what i had to keep telling myself!). however, i did talk to him for a little while. there was a cameraman from A&E there filming for a "biography" special that they're doing on Gary (!) and they filmed part of our conversation, so i had to do a release so that they could potentially use the footage. i just hope they use the conversational footage instead of some sort of dancefloor footage showing me with my rump shakin' in the background!

by the way, i wanted to just put a bit of an apology out there for the people who read my blog yesterday that were disappointed by my paul hamm spoiler. i know i ruined the NBC primetime telecast for you, and that wasn't nice at all. doh. i am sorry and i will never do it again. of course, unless i am hit with some sort of crazy patriotic sports fanatism again.

go paul hamm! i am surprised that his big win didn't cause this hamm twins switchplate on ebay to get bid up through the roof!!!

Spike TV has ordered 13 eps of an animated series called Howard Stern: The High School Years, set to launch next summer.

can you tell that i've had a couple of really long conference calls today?
don't get me wrong -- i am definitely an active participant in these, but i can also read and type at the same time. i can't really think critically at the same time though, which is why blogging is a perfect simultaneous activity.

so anyhow, i enjoyed dave barry's silly little column today (in the miami herald) about olympic sailing. here's an excerpt:




ATHENS -- I went down to the sea to see the hot Olympic sailing action. I knew the action would be hot because the Olympic organizers put out a news release headlined: "Hot action predicted for sailing."

I got to the sailing facility and went through security, which has been (Don't tell the terrorists!) fairly relaxed so far. It seemed especially relaxed at the sailing facility, which is probably not a prime terrorism target because if it were attacked, the horrified world reaction would be: "Sailing is an Olympic sport?"

But apparently it is. I say apparently because, if you want to get technical, I never saw it. It turns out that the actual sailing is not visible from the land. To see it, I watched a TV monitor in the press area, which showed a bunch of sailboats sailing along in some body of water that could have been the Saronic Gulf, but also could have been Lake Erie.

Superimposed on the bottom of the TV screen, mysteriously, was the single word "Yngling." I decided that "Yngling" was probably a nation. When I grew up, there were like 10 nations in the entire world, but now there seem to be thousands, including (these are actual nations competing in the Olympics) Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.

Anyway, it turns out that "Yngling" is not a nation: It's an Olympic sailboat class. There are 11 sailboat classes, including (I am not making these up): "Single-handed dinghy open Laser," "Double-handed dinghy men Finn" and, of course, "Double-handed dinghy open 49er."

So as you can imagine, there is a lot of hot action taking place out there in the Saronic Gulf.

it's official: alan keyes is crazy! i can't wait to see obama kick his ass.

from today's Chicago Tribune:
Keyes gave a brief tutorial on Roman history and said that in regard to reparations for slavery, the U.S. should do what the Romans did: "When a city had been devastated [in the Roman empire], for a certain length of time--a generation or two--they exempted the damaged city from taxation."

Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes--federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment."

The former ambassador said his plan would give African-Americans "a competitive edge in the labor market," because those exempted would be cheaper to hire than federal tax-paying employees and would "compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited."

Keyes has discussed reparations before with statements that seem to contradict Monday's comments. In 2002 on his short-lived MSNBC show, "Alan Keyes is Making Sense," he argued with one of his guests, an advocate of reparations, asking, "You want to tell me that what they suffered can actually be repaired with money? You're going to do the same thing those slaveholders did, put a money price on something that can't possibly be quantified in that way."

are you sick and tired of the same old extreme sports? looking for a new challenge? maybe extreme ironing is for you. or tampon bowling, perhaps?

if not, well, then maybe you should just become a hard-core sports spectator. i know this olympics has brought that out in me. last night steve and i were cheering for the hamm twins like we'd been men's gymnastics fans all along. of course, the cheesy personal stories that NBC pulls out to create drama are a big part of it. they drive steve crazy! instead of telling you what's going on in the events (like what all of the crazy gymnastics stunts are called) they tell you over and over again how close the hamm twins are, and how they used to do jumps and flips around the family barn in wisconsin. steve's definitely more ticked off than i am about the coverage. i don't mind the personal stories (i guess it's the little old woman in me that likes the cheesy drama) but i do agree that it would be nice to actually learn about the sports a bit more.

here's a rant from TVGuide.com's Rochell Thomas, who sounds as irritated as Steve:
Let's hear it for our boys winning the silver! Blaine Wilson and the Hamm twins (especially Morgan) know they carried that team. But if Al Trautwig keeps talking over all the good parts during tomorrow's women's team finals, somebody's going to have to stop me from looking up his home address. For real. He was working my last nerve with his pretentious comments tonight. Gymnastics is my favorite Olympic sport and he was ruining it. Sometimes I turned just to get away from him. I mean, seriously. He must have stayed up writing that crap. After a while I had to start jotting them down. They were that over-the-top.
Among the Trautwig lines I love to hate:

"The Romanian men are knocking on the door of greatness that has eluded them...."

"He knows that this is the routine that defines who he is as an Olympian."

"He's got to be all about redemption for what went wrong."

"We are at the point where these steps are dream killers."

argh!!!!!!

go figure -- i get rid of my car and then i hear about these awesome mud flaps...

man, those peapod marketing folks are hilarious. there is pretty much always a truck parked outside of our apartment building, but i hadn't looked that closely at it before. on the way home i read the back of the truck, which says "honk if you like schlepping groceries, click if you don't" and "driver does not carry cash, only cashews."
soooo funny.

I can't believe how lame the mascots are this Olympics. For a little bit of context on just how lame they ALWAYS are, check out this timeline of Olympic Mascots or this lovely fansite with photos of some of the lovely plush created for past Olympics games. Embarrassingly bad!

Your Olympic tidbit du jour: 202 Nations will participate in the Parade of Nations, including Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. As is tradition, Greece will be the first nation into the Olympic Stadium. Tradition also dictates the hosting nation is the last to enter the Stadium. This year, the Greek flag will enter first, and the Greek athletes will enter last.

Don't let that triskaidekaphobia thing get you down today. Besides, it's nothing compared to these phobias:
bogyphobia - fear of the bogeyman
alektorophobia - fear of chickens
coulrophobia - fear of clowns, who are in fact scarey things
anemophobia - fear of draughts
aulophobia - fear of flutes
genuphobia - fear of knees

Pierogi Fest! I can't believe we missed it! Check it out: not only do they claim to have "More pierogi than there are in Warsaw!" but they have a Slovak Sing-along (probably led by Mr. Pierogi and his Pieroguettes: Miss Potato, Miss Cheese, Miss Mushroom, Miss Berry, Miss Beef, Miss Apricot, and Miss Sauerkraut) and they play Eastern Bloc Jeopardy. crazy! next year we'll have to make sure we're around...

i'm remembering a lot of dreams lately. as an overall trend, i wonder what that means. i feel like i've been sleeping just as restfully as before. and i don't think i'm going through any additional personal drama right now -- if anything my life is more settled now than it has been in months. still, i've woken up every day for the past four or five days with a very clear dream sequence fresh in my head. last night, for example, i was going to college and i showed up to my dorm in east quad to find out that i was sharing the room (i think there were two rooms around a central room, actually) with three other girls. i was my current almost-thirty self, and i was in no way going to share with three 19 year olds. i have no idea what i was doing going back to school, but i was really frustrated that THE MAN was trying to thwart me by putting me in an un-livable situation. then at some point (i'm not clear if it was the same dream or a different one) i dreamt that i drove by fort awesome, and it was painted a really hideous bright yellow with kelly green trim. i was so appalled that i can still picture it clearly. could someone in ann arbor please comfort me by doing a drive by and letting me know that it's not painted a brighter yellow than my volvo?

on saturday night my grandparents had a party to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary. can you believe it! i am so in awe of them -- my grandma is a living saint and to have raised 13 kids and stayed in love is ao inspirational.

speaking of inspirational, but in a totally wacked out way, i read about this in an article, and it's a real, honest-to-god place, whose motto is "where dinosaurs and the bible meet" -- DINOSAUR ADVENTURE LAND. make sure you watch the video since it's hilarious!

alan keyes vs. obama! crazy! it's going to be helluva ride, but i still think obama is unstoppable. i was thinking it would be fun to volunteer for the obama campaign because it would be fun to work for a campaign that couldn't possibly lose, and now i'm thinking it would still be fun, but that they may actually have some work to do to ensure victory. hmmmm...

i know i should probably volunteer for the presidential campaign since it's so close this year, but we're not really i a "battleground state" anymore. kind of a bummer, actually.

are any of you readers volunteering to help in the upcoming elections?

from this week's TV Guide magazine:

I am very upset about a recent episode of Newlyweds shown on MTV. Jessica Simpson made some not-so-nice comments about the girls who work at Hooters. I am a mother of one of those Hooters Girls, and they are very nice; some of them are going to school and some are mothers just trying to make a decent living. Jessica, maybe you should visit a Hooters -- I am sure you would meet some very nice people.
- Terry Brown, Salt Lake City

did you hear about this news story? boxing orangutans!!!
crazy...

this past week has been a real blur of work-related outings. last night i went out with my group (my fully staffed group! hooray!) and we had a really great time. who would have guessed what a crazy good bowler mike is? sheesh! is there anything that guy can't do? we were all hurting today, and it reminded me of that anecdote about new year's that i love so much:
Famed columnist Westbrook Pegler once published a New Years Day column comprising a single sentence, repeated fifty times. The sentence? "I will never mix gin, beer, and whiskey again."

my favorite work outing so far this summer was probably the trip to the horse track last week (arlington park). the park was BEAUTIFUL -- very, very large, like a NASCAR track, but *classy*. i had no idea what i was doing and i only bet a couple of dollars on each of the races we saw, and i ended up coming out ahead. i was invited to go again with another vendor in a couple of weeks, and i'm really looking forward to it. i'm definitely not going to get into it hardcore, but it was definitely fun and i'd love to know a little more so that i could maybe go a couple of times a year and have some idea what to look for.
okay, so i lied: i'm going to get into it hardcore and i'll start taking my lunchbreaks at OTB. :)

i swear too much. i should work on that.

i'm not going to switch my blog to just covering things that amuse me, although i realize that it's all i've written this week. however, i do have to add a few more fun news items, and i really don't have any accompanying personal rants...

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A Nevada couple devoured their competition in the first watermelon-eating contest sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Rich LeFevre put down 11.22 pounds of watermelon at the Swellin' with Melon contest over the weekend in Brookville, Ohio. LeFevre's wife, Carlene, took second with 9.78 pounds.
yipes.
----
Andre Tolme, a 35 year old civil engineer from New Hampshire, divided up the Mongolian countryside into 18 holes of golf and has been making his way across the 1,234 mile route (which apparently has a par of 11,880). You can see details of his ridiculous quest by visiting his website.
----
Researchers at Kyoto University studied Japanese chimps and found out that yawning appears to be contagious. (There are tons of links about this, so go ahead and make a quick search if you want to know more)
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Cable network TVLand will launch a regular 30-minute talk show, "Alf's Hit Talk Show" in October. This will mark the first time that Alf has been a prime-time regular since his NBC series went off the air in 1990.

whoa! there is a guy on a rope washing my window right now. we're about a foot apart, separated by some really crazy thick glass, 20 stories up. and he's hanging, from what i can see, by a rope with some sort of belay system. crazy. i don't think i could do that job even if it paid tons of money. maybe if it was part of a one-time dare for lots of money, like on a reality show, but i would probably have to be drugged up.
i hate heights.

creepy news of the week: Marijuana found in McDonald's frozen yogurt

p.s. if you look at the URL for this link you'll see that the person that created the link can't spell!

UPDATE - Domino's 2nd-qtr profit down, shrs hit new low
Tuesday July 27, 12:27 pm ET

'Nuff said.

i know it's been a couple of weeks, but i thought this "how to" was impressive. if you would like to throw a chicken broil as big as the one in Manchester, Michigan (which was on 7/15 this year), here's what you'll need to do.
__________________________________

Broiled Chicken, Manchester Style - Serves 14,000

14,000 chicken halves
500 lbs of butter
24 2-lb. containers of salt
5 tons of charcoal
An entire high school football team
The local fire department
8 teams of 10 men, each with their own foreman

First, have the football team make four long grilling pits. When they are made, let the fire department start up and deal with the charcoal. It's better that way. Give the coals 30 minutes to hear up.

While that's going on, send a team of men to unload the 14,000 chickens out of the semi-truck.

Once the coals are ready, put the chickens on special, pre-made grates and get those teams of men cooking.

Cook 1,100 chicken halves on each pit for a total of 4,400 on all four. Keep the pit teams turning and basting the chicken with butter and salt. Make sure the fire department keeps the coals going.

Cook for two and a half hours, then have the teams of men take the chicken to the chicken-checkers, who will twist the leg on the chicken to make sure it's done. Place chicken into a stainless steel barrel over cement-block warmers that keep the chicken at 165 degrees. Constantly check the temperature.

----

As for the sides, "there's a special cole-slaw committee... It's a standing committee of about 40 men. It's a huge operation, making the slaw by hand from a super-secret recipe." The recipe is so secret that three people each bring a different part of that recipe to the Broil. The special cole-slaw committee members cut the cabbages in two, take the hearts out and then, utilizing old-fashioned cabbage-cutters, cut it all by hand. How much cabbage, you ask? A little more than would fit in the back of a pick-up, about a half-ton of cabbage. Mix that with 105 gallons of dressing and you're good to go.

(source: Ann Arbor Current)

so while i was out of town last week, the rescheduled prince concert took place. several of my coworkers went to it, and said that it rocked. however, there was apparently also an afterparty/concert at the house of blues, and many people seem to think that it sucked. check out some of the amusing reader-written show reviews here.

ouch.

and tonight i'm missing the other big show this month, the "so hip right now" hives. i liked the hives first album a lot. *a lot*. and i've convinced my coworker (who is at the show tonight) to share with me his copy of the latest cd. i hope it rocks as much as he said it does.

since you learn something every day, i'm going to teach you a fun fact: how prosciutto (pio tosini prosciutto, to be exact) is made in parma, italy. this educational lesson is brought to you by our friends at the gourmet store Fox + Obel.

_____________________

The first step in the making of an inimitable Prosciutto di Parma consists of the careful selection of prime-grade hog. The meat must then be treated and seasoned using traditional methods carried out in a strictly delineated area of production within the Province of Parma. After the ham has been aged for ten to twelve months, salt, the only ingredient used in the treatment of the meat, may be added.

The hams are salted twice and rest for 24 days at one to four degrees centigrade before passing through a pummeling tunnel designed to take away excess salt and relax the tissue for even salt penetration. Then, one man steps forward and squeezes the ham around the bone to ensure that every last drop of blood is removed. After six months, the hams are hung to cure for the rest of their stay on huge wooden beams that stretch floor to ceiling.

The final touch in the prosciutto production is almost medieval. Each prosciutto is serially stamped with the number of the farmer who bred the pigs, the abattoir and the curer. The final stamp of the Consorzio di Prosciutto di Parma, the council that ultimately decides if a ham is good enough to bear the name of Parma, is bestowed by an independent inspector. This inspection is conducted by pentrating the meat with a pointed, four inch piece of bone taken from the femur of a horse. This instrument is quite similar to the cheese iron used to penetrate Stiltons, Cheddars, or wheels of Parmesan, but because it is porous bone rather than metal, it is far more sensitive to the sweet aromas of the ham. Once the ham has passed this final test it is on its way to customers around the world.

well, we're back from our Netherlands adventure. we had a pretty awesome week, all-in-all. we got a chance to spend time with some of steve's closest college chums and got to see quite a number of things outside of Amsterdam, which is probably something less than 5% of the tourists to amsterdam get to do, by my guesstimation.
we were there for steve's college chum sera's wedding to a dutch bloke (mo), and they had us way planned out, which was very sweet of them (although sometimes a little bit tiring). i felt sort of guilty that they had made so much effort to entertain us, and at times felt that we could have had more time to bum around Amsterdam, but i know that they enjoyed having the people they love visiting from the U.S. and that they just wanted to make the most of our time there and show us the places that they love. here's a play-by-play rundown of the week, in case you're keeping score:

sunday: thank god the day was was pretty low key because we were so tired from the overnight flight that we could barely stay awake. we met the lovely couple for brunch with a big group of their family and friends at a really amazing looking cafe. after that we pretty much passed out.

monday: the groom's dad took a group of us all over North Holland in a minivan to see some sights. so much of the province had been reclaimed from the ocean and it was amazing to see the canals -- well above the level of the surrounding fields -- still holding water at bay. sometimes the canals would run straight through a field that was up to ten feet lower than the water level. it was really surreal! we spent some time in the seaside town of Hoorn (which you can see on this map) and then went to the "Realm of a Thousand Islands" which is -- as it sounds -- an area that has lots of very small patches of land that were farmed for centuries and is now a nature preserve. the islands aren't like the more naturally shaped ones of the New York State "Thousand Islands" region. they're pretty much reclaimed in rectangular shapes, each less than 1 meter above the level of the surrounding water. the final event of the day was attending what was billed as "the world's oldest vegetable auction" where all of the farmers from the "Thousand Islands" region would take their produce (by boat, sailing right into the building) and a Dutch auction (price going down instead of up) would ensue. you can see a pretty good photo of the auction house interior here. be sure to click and enlarge the photo of the auction clock, which was probably a foot in diameter and quite beautiful. that night we went out for thai food near our hotel (which was in a really ritzy upper-east-side sort of area alongside the Vondelpark, the Amsterdam version of Central Park). somehow steve got really sick from the food later that night. since we all passed plates around, i have no idea how he managed to do that. weird.

tuesday: we bummed around Amsterdam (nothing scheduled for the group) and it rained and rained. we thought about going to the art museums (Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh) but apparently so did every other tourist in town because the lines (which were outdoors) were crazy long. we ended up at the Heinken Experience, which is pretty ridiculous but fun. they give you three beers during the course of your travel through the exhibits, which helps make it more interesting. we couldn't help thinking about the challenge that the exhibit creators must have had: "make an interesting museum about brewing beer with at least 20 exhibits" (the exhibits were numbered) and we thought of our friend bruce, who would have had some fun exhibit designing an answer to that challenge. check out the website here, if only to see the crazy list of countries that they've customized their homepage legal drinking age access to (for example, if you select "Greenland" the site will just ask "are you of legal drinking age?" before granting you site access). we were still pretty messed up from jet lag, so we didn't really do much else that day, and had a big long nap before dinner.

wednesday: another rented minivan, another daytrip! we went to the national park of the hoge veluwe, which is one of the largest nature reserves in the netherlands, and has an amazing art museum tucked inside (as well as a really nice website, so check it out). one of the really cool things about the park is that they have lots of free bicycles in lots all over the park and you can just borrow one and ride around on the trails, which we did as a big ol' group. lots of fun! evan was part of the group this day, and it was awesome to see him. since he's really dang tall he and i had the fun challenge of adjusting the bikes to our very different heights (these are bikes that stay outside in the rain, mind you, and are have pretty much non-adjustable seat and handlebar levels because of it). we decided that the landscape reminded us very much of north-western michigan (evan is from g. rapids), what with there being some sand dunes in the park and similar trees and all. that evening the dashing groom's family had us all over to their place for a BBQ. i have no idea where in the heck it was and we were all pretty much asleep in the minivan on the way home.

thursday: the original idea was that we'd all participate in a scavenger hunt that afternoon. i was able to get together with my long-lost friend pam (fellow um psych major that i hadn't seen in a couple of years), since she just finished her phd at nyu and moved to amsterdam a couple of days before. it turns out that this didn't make me the non-scavenger-hunting pariah that i thought it would since the bride wisely decided to cancel the scavenger hunt after deciding that the last minute preparations were stressing her out too much. most of the group spent the afternoon at the outdoor cafe at the Waag, which is a former weigh-house and a great spot for people watching on popular square right downtown. pam and i went off on a shopping excursion while steve drank a bunch of weissebeers in the sun and discovered that he detests the taste of campari.

friday: wedding day! and i still can't believe how awesome the actual event was. we were bused (yes, a bus and not a minvan this time) out to Naarden, which is an incredible walled city (check out the aerial photos and virtual tour on the town website. mo's parents and grandparents had been married in the town hall, which dates to 1601, so the couple had a lovely civil ceremony (in english, which was nice touch!) at the town hall. we then all went to a nearby cafe, where cake and champagne were served. finally, and most incredibly, we ended up at the Castle Muiden for the reception. the official website for the castle is here but it's all in Dutch. however, it's still worth checking out the virtual map on the right hand side. there's also a "fan site" of sorts located here. there were trumpeters heralding our arrivals, there was dinner, there was dancing, and yes of course, there were drinks.

saturday: after the wedding we all needed to recover. a bunch of folks headed with the newlyweds to the beach, but the UM gang decided to spend more time in the city, wandering around and enjoying the cafe society (we had a close to three hour lunch, i believe).

so that's it.
and now i'm completely screwed up, sleepwise. we got home today sometime 3:30-4ish and did the inevitable unpacking, laundry, grocery getting (well, we submitted a peapod delivery order) and then went out to eat. by 7:30 we were nearly asleep on the couch and we decided to go to bed. i figured i'd probably wake up sometime later (turned out it was much later than i thought when i woke up after 11!) and thought i'd putter around a bit before going back to bed, hopefully for the night. steve actually thought he'd be tired enough to sleep until 6ish, so we'll see how that goes. we're thinking tomorrow morning might be a good day to start an early morning workout routine!
i think i'll do some more laundry and turn in. g'night.

we watched "bend it like beckham" last night.   everyone i know liked the movie, but we couldn't get past the cheesiness of the musical interludes.    we kept giggling like little kids. 
 
steve got his hair cut at the barbershop in the basement of my office building.   it's a crazy little time warp of a place, and the little old russian lady that cut his hair used thinning scissors on it, which is the first time i believe he's had his hair thinned out.  it looks great.   it's still huge, but in more of a tall sort-of-way than an overall big sort-of-way.
 
today is the official opening of Millennium Park, which is a section of Grant Park that has been under development since, well, since before the millennium.   needless to say, they're not only very late in getting it finished but they're of course waaaaaaaaaaaay over budget.   however, we're fine with it since we just moved here and can reap the benefits of living right near it without feeling the sting of having paid taxes during the development.   
the coolest part, in our humble opinion, is The Bean.   it's not supposed to be called The Bean, but it is and it will be.  and it's dang cool.  we were completely entranced when they unveiled it a couple of weeks ago, and we can see it from our floor in the elevator bank of our apartment building.    there aren't that many photos out on the internet quite yet, but if i find any other cool shots i'll certainly link to them.

okay, so that fun news (see previous post) sorta softens the blow that my previous employer just replaced me (it is a bit flattering to see that it took over 6 months!) with someone at a director level, which is what i had aspired to. my guess is that the new chap is a bit older, from what i've heard. it sounds like they even relocated him to a2. oh well. at least i can comfort myself that i'm hipper and smarter than he is. :)

i was going to blog about this last night, but blogger was down for maintenance...

domino's went public yesterday. and the stock fell flat on it's face.
from forbes.com:
Domino's Pizza (nyse: DPZ - news - people ) doesn't deliver a strong IPO. The company priced its initial public offering at $14 a share, below the anticipated range of $15 to $17, and a clear indication of lack of interest in the deal. The stock opened at the offering price, edged up to $14.10 and recently changed hands at $13.87 on volume of 11.9 million shares. "Maybe if the company delivered a free can of soda with each IPO order, it would have gone better," said John E. Fitzgibbon, Jr., an analyst for IPO Desktop. "The key point is that investors read the prospectus. The company has a great name, but little else."

ouch.

alex was kind enough to write me back this morning, saying "I guess investors heard you weren't working there anymore..." and also, as only he can so eloquently say, "aw snap!"

by the way, i haven't mentioned this, but it's really exciting for the family: my cousin tami and her husband larry have just gone to china to pick up the little girl that they've adopted. i started tearing up the first time i read their weblog about the trip, and i just looked it up for an update and started getting all cheesed up about it again. their little girl, Liberty Pauline is adorable. seriously, check her out. the name is a bit odd, i know, but my cousin is really into politics (unfortunately we disagree strongly, but thank god we're in a country where we can!) and then my grandma's name is Pauline.

what a crazy day. not only bad at work, but fraught with family stress (ask me offline...) and i was too tired to deal with it all. i have been up since 4 am. yesterday i was up at 4 am as well.
ugh.
i guess i should explain why i was up so early.
i flew from detroit to boston yesterday for a work project, and my flight left detroit at 7 am (ET). the car service picked me up at steve's parents' house at 5:15, which is ungodly early. i spent a really long day in boston, finishing with our last research subject at almost 8:30 and then didn't get to bed until 11. that made it awful difficult to get up at 5 ET (4 here in Chicago) this morning so that i could catch a cab to the airport in time to catch my 7 am flight back to chicago. ugh. i can't believe i'm still up.

we had a great weekend in michigan. we got to spend time with lots of good friends and see both steve's family and my mom's side of the family, so even though it was a bit busy at times, it was great to feel so loved. :) it was neat to see how huge liam had grown, and to see tiffany, who we hadn't seen in a long time. it was lucky that we got to see christy + brian before they left for their weekend up north, and rebekah + minh before they left town for san francisco. it's a visit like that, with lots of lucky scheduling, that makes me wonder what it will be like to visit ann arbor in two years (if we're not living back there, that is). after all, when i flrst left new york i'd go back and have tons of visits scheduled and lots going on, and then over time people left town, or fell out of touch... and then the last few times i visited new york it was almost depressing. the feeling of being connected to the city and having friends there was so much diminished from what it had been, and i was back at my hotel much earlier than i would have liked. i went down to times square (i used to stay just north of times square at 7th and 51st when i was there) and spent time at sephora and the virgin megastore (both of which were open until midnight) just so that i wasn't sitting in a hotel room alone in what had been my hometown.

today i saw a really funny thing. here in chicago there are cops on horses, cops on bikes, and -- my favorite -- cops on ATVs. i was walking home from work and we live near a really fancy health club. as i walked by i saw a cop on an ATV signal to man in a porsche to pull over, and i saw the cop pull out his pad of citations. i know the cop probably didn't chase the porsche, and the guy was probably either pulling up to the health club or the garage nearby, but it really looked damn funny. and you can bet that the cop was thrilled to get to write out a moving violation!

apartment building update: many of you may know that we were originally told that a grocery store was going in on the first floor of our building within a few months of our move-in. well, it hasn't happened yet and although there had been signs of life in the open retail space, things were moving slowly. well, it's finally looking promising, since they had a building permit posted for the first time today.

apartment building update #2: aparently there were two more break-ins on friday. i am going to have to call the cops in the am. i need to finally report my missing jewelry box. ugh.


two things i've been meaning to point out (so they're not really new anymore but they're still very amusing to me or i wouldn't make the effort anymore):
1. if you weren't aware that some of our fine congressmen attended a coronation of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, you should definitely read the Salon.com coverage. apparently our congressman was in attendance -- was yours?

2. also in the not-so-new anymore but i've been meaning to share my fascination with it category, apparently there will be a Gene Simmons/Kiss themed racecar at the Chevy Rock And Roll 400 NASCAR race in september. i think this is the best thing those NASCAR knuckleheads have come up with in years! you can see photos of Gene with the racecar here.

they're already putting up the christmas ornament displays at the hallmark store in my office building. they started yesterday -- it wasn't even july, for chrissakes! sooooooo wrong!

it's funny how small a world it is. i was out tonight with a friend and while walking to the train afterward ran into one of my employees. of course, i know i was near her neighborhood, but it's still surprising when that sort of thing happens.

steve is gone tonight, back in ann arbor (sniff). sometimes when he's gone i end up staying up really late futzing around 'cause i know it'll be hard to go to sleep. i organize things that don't really need to be organized. i decide it's a really good time to clean something that's not really one of the main, obvious things that need cleaning. you know, like the medicine cabinet, which doesn't need it as much as say, the rest of the damn apartment. i *know* steve doesn't do this when i'm gone, so why is it that i have to find some sort of weird project that i can be in control of to pass the time? i guess that's the sort of odd thing that love does to a person.

things i really want to buy on ebay, but that also scare me, starting with some fun Mickey D's items:

1. Happy Meal Stacy and Todd dolls by Mattel, no less.

2. McDonald's Fry Guys Alarm Clock: just imagine how much fun it would be to wake up to this every morning!

3. McDonald's gold pinkie ring with diamonds

4. A crazy "China vs. Vietnam" board game which could be fun to check out, except that i'm a bit scared that steve would want to actually play it (and the instructions are in "some Asian language")

5. Kommissar, the board game

6. Pretty much everything from The King's Lance hand-forged armor is both nifty and scary.

7. On a very different fashion note, I can't believe there have been this many bids on this Monica Lewinsky purse

8. This Ford Pinto t-shirt will definitely impress.

And on that stupid note, I'm out...

a few more random thoughts this evening...

steve and i were walking around yesterday (absolutely blissful to have him feeling well enough to go out, to have nothing that i needed to be doing, and to have the weather absolutely perfect!) and we found an amazing little independent bookstore on michigan avenue, The Savvy Traveller, full of travel books, maps and travel supplies. they had all of the books on greenland that i'd had to order from Amazon, and they had so many wonderful maps and atlases. i could have stayed there all day! here are a few things i really wish i could have bought. although i am going to link to Amazon (since the Savvy Traveller website does not list all of their catalog) it really is so much more satisfying to browse and shop for maps and travel books when you can see them and flip through their beautiful contents that i will probably go back there when i decide to buy.

1. Atlas of World History by Patrick O'Brien. i have been coveting this for a long, long time. i read up on a bunch of atlases before getting my current one, and i've been looking for a good historical one. this one has the most enthusiastic reviews, and now that i've seen it i'm convinced i need it.

2. the full set of The Eyewitness Guides. they make me want to go to every single one of the cities. i think i may buy the chicago one just so that i can look through it.


3. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape by Barry Lopez. i think any of you reading this knows me enough to know why this is listed here.

4. Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley looked really good. a bit depressing, but really interesting.


5. i didn't see this at the store, but i think i should put Central Park, An American Masterpiece: A Comprehensive History of the Nation's First Urban Park by Sara Cedar Miller on my wishlist, and it's vaguely travel-related, so i'll list it here for fun (it's late, humor me).


i just went into the living room and heard the street sweeper below. i think he's doing donuts in the street. i guess that means it's time for bed.

yeah, yeah, enough about the beastie boys and their copyright software. i'm just glad that matteo pericoli's book "manhattan unfurled" is getting some additioal exposure as their cover art. i bought the book a couple of years ago and bought a couple of copies for NYC friends as well. i love that mr. pericoli's website has a java applet that will scroll through the drawing, so you can see new york's skyline (circa 2001) in the beautiful style of his 22-foot long drawings in a daughter window on your desktop. check it out by clicking here. it's mesmerizing, isn't it?

does anybody else want to see the movie control room? 'cause i want to see it and i'll be surprised if steve is as anxious to as i am. we agree on pretty much everything in life (which is really damn lucky) but movies sometimes are difficult. he rented the original russian version of solaris from netflix and tried to get me to watch it this weekend, but i prety much fell asleep on the couch. maybe if we'd watched the more recent george clooney version i could have been entranced enough by him to stay awake.

i know i haven't complained about work much lately, and that's a good thing since i don't think it's just been because i haven't blogged as much: i have truly been much happier lately. my group is now fully staffed and we're getting caught up. however, now that we're starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, a new issue has emerged: everyone is the boss of us.
it's very unfortunate, but completely commmon, for online media to inhabit a confusing space between traditional media and web development. and in the ad agency world that means everyone, from the creative folks who design the websites and ad banners, to the "traditional" media planners, wants to be involved. and that's really and truly a good thing since it can create a heck of a lot of good brainpower. however, it's tough because it can really get sticky when everyone feels that not only should they be informed and involved, but they should be involved from the beginning and they should have veto/approval power.
i think this is coming up more now since we're getting caught up and we're very excited and we're trying to FYI everyone about what's going on. however, instead of the result being "awesome! thanks for sharing this -- here's something i'm working on and how it might affect this" the result is that everyone (at all levels) is coming back with "we need to be involved sooner" and "we need to be able to approve this" and "is this really the right idea for this?" (said in that tone that implies it may not be). and that's really hard. we're getting it from all sides: we've received comments and feedback from both external partner companies (a couple of whom we are constantly pulling teeth at to get the information we need) and internal folks, who constantly want to know more about what we're doing, but don't remember to cc' us on what they're doing or invite us to meetings.
i know everyone is well meaning deep down, and that they don't realize that this is a problem, so i don't really know what to do. i think it's one of those situations where i have to point out that we really *do* want thoughts and feedback, but they also should recognize that we are bringing our wealth of experience and a ton of time to each of our projects (which is sometimes why the results are not ready with much time to spare), which is why we should be given some common courtesy and the benefit of the doubt.
one coworker last week really was awesome about sharing her feedback. she said "i know you guys are realy behind and i appreciate you hunting me down and sharing this with me at the last minute. i also realize you're the experts, so can you explain this to me?" it was great. and it really put into perspective all of the other comments lately that were more along the lines of "why aren't we seeing your work earlier in the process? why in the heck are you doing this?"
i think this a huge issue because it's starting to affect morale. the goal would be for my hard-working team to feel like their work is respected and to feel like part of the team, but based on what they've told me lately, they're feeling more like they're beholden to everybody and that they're not part of a team where everyone else feels equally beholden.
we had this exact problem way back when i was at JWT in 2000 (i'm going to generalize here: we certainly didn't have this problem with all of our coworkers). our creative folks wanted to be have more of a say on which media partners we worked with since the partner sites were their creative canvases. our traditional media folks were either resentful because they weren't planning digital, or were too busy to meet with our vendors but wanted to have a say in what properties we picked. and the account people get so much more than they are with traditional media because the creative is so much more custom and labor-intensive that they start to have thoughts on what media properties we're using and how, even though they would never consider saying "we should be buying shape magazine instead of self".
so what do i do? i want our group to fit in and be loved by all of our partner teams, but i also want us to be respected instead of questioned from every corner. i've talked to a couple of co-workers on other accounts and they said they haven't had this problem. ugh. so i guess i'm lucky. maybe my boss will have some ideas...

we were supposed to be at steve's mom's family reunion this weekend, but steve is sick. seriously, if i'd known he was going to be sick this much, i would have... i dunno. i *did* know he was a sickly boy. when we were first dating he was going to come visit me in new york over his spring break and then his doctor recommended that he get his tonsils taken out. supposedly he'd be sick less if he had them taken out. so he did.
i asked steve about this a couple of days ago. "i thought you got your tonsils taken out so you wouldn't be sick so much. right?" and he said "right". i thought for a moment. "you used to be sick MORE than you are now?" "yep," said steve "i was sick ALL OF THE TIME."
rebekah's husband minh just had his wisdom teeth taken out, and had to deal with nasty dry sockets. did anyone else have the unfortunate experience of this? uck. i had such a bad problem with them that i remember it hurting all of the time despite being given pain relievers. and to make matters worse, i was going to the dental surgeon to get new bandages and got rear ended by a dump truck (yes, you read that right) on the way there. i was driving my dad's probe on s. university street and was stopped at a red light and a dump truck pulled up behind me and, well, kept pulling up. nice. needless to say, it was much bigger than the car i was driving and i missed my appointment. i am surprised that the car made it, but that was/is a tough little car, and i understand it's still running. in honor of that ridiculous car, i thought i'd post a photo of a similar probe here...

and if you are ever up for some real fun, take a look around the internet for photos of cars your parents handed down to you. there are plenty of enthusiast groups that have posted photos of souped up cars from that era that will probably bring a tear to your eye. or at least a snicker to your face.

i wasn't really in a good mood, but now i am, thanks to the funniest thing this week from zac's blog. you can check it out here.

i'm in london. and they're crazy for soccer (sorry, football) here. but they're not happy tonight.
and this country is silly for it.
so after all of my wandering around today shopping, i walked past a pub where there was standing room only to watch the last part of the match.
i stood and watched for awhile, but it was boring and it didn't look like it was going to get better, so i came back here to my trusty holiday inn and watched the last three minutes on the big screen in the common room. and England was ahead 1-0 (booooring!). and when time was up they added three minutes to the match, since i guess they keep track of how much time is wasted and then tack that on (interesting tactic!). and then the French scored. and then England f***ed up and the French got a penalty kick. and then the French won. i think the whole country is going to be in mourning tomorrow. i'm glad i didn't buy steve an "England" shirt today (i thought about it) -- it would suck to take it home and have to say "here's a really cool shirt i bought for you. while i was there the team suffered a devastating loss!") i just can't believe they were ahead going in to overtime and then lost it. nuts! well, at least it gave me something fun to do (sorta) on a sunday night while i'm all alone. travelling is fun, but it's difficult sometimes to figure out what to do at night when you're alone. i don't feel very comfortable hanging out in a pub alone. and tonight i think a pub would be the *worst* place to be. mass depression out there tonight, folks!
get this: i just read in the paper about an annual race done here in the uk where a man races a horse for 35km. this year the man won, for the first time ever. check it out. weird.

i can't believe i'm at work at this hour.
i guess it sorta made sense though, since i couldn't sleep any longer and i have to be up (and lucid) tomorrow at this hour to go through customs, exchange my currency and then find my hotel.
i can't believe i leave for london in 4 hours!

stupid news du jour: 'let the punishment fit the crime!'

update on senseo: steve doesn't think he needs one anymore. i still remain smitten by the cuisinart grind 'n brew thermal since it will fresh-grind beans, has a beautiful carafe so your coffee doesn't get cold OR burn on the warmer, has an auto shut of (totally necessary!), can be interrupted for a cup mid-brew, includes a built-in filter (no more paper filters!) and looks shiny and high tech. sigh. i just wish steve would let me have one. it didn't fit under our cupboards at fort awesome, and i don't even know if it would here, but it would make life tons better.

i thought
this whole "dewey beats truman" newspaper snafu in tampa was pretty funny. of course, i'm still a bit in shock that a team from florida won the stanley cup, but i guess i'll get over it.

i'm still at work tonight (and i'm currently going through the many, many voicemails that i missed today) because i was in a training class most of the day. it's basically to teach us the proprietary system of communications planning that our company developed. we were given our assignments last night and we're working on a faux U.S. launch plan for one of our clients, Senseo, which is a funky coffee system from Sara Lee and Philips. what's really lucky for me is that i'd actually heard of it: steve and i have been curious about for a long time due to the raving, enthusiastic reviews that our friends sera and mo (who live in amsterdam) have given the product. apparently this has been such a huge success in europe that everyone and their brother has one, and so they launched it here last fall, and now my little class is doing some fake projects on how it could have/might have launched.
after finding out yesterday that this was going to be my project i was able to borrow a Senseo from a co-worker that had worked on the actual launch, so steve and i tested it out this morning. it was really good, although i don't know if we are going to rush out and get one. steve has had it on his wish list and i'll have to ask him tonight if it's still on there (unfortunately i can't just keep the one i borrowed). however, one thing is for sure: steve and i both love the images of happy Senseo users on the website. so click and check 'em out, okay?

okay, so looking for a way to cheer up i checked out the latest photos of our main man, liam domegan, and this one helped quite a bit. thanks, liam! the devastating loss by the pistons doesn't seem quite as bad right now.

argh. frustrating pistons game.

happy venus transit day!!! (yes, i know i'm late -- but i hope you all really enjoyed it!) in case you missed out, here are some highlights:

of all of the venus transit photos out there, somehow i think this one is the best.

these guys are WAY into it. and then there's this site that can give you the gear to help you LOOK like you were way into it as well, like some nifty wallpaper for your desktop.

i really love this idea, even though it's ridiculous. the notion of having a guy in a scooter show up to drive you home is wackycool.

damn those tampa bay lightning. they have successfully thwarted my main man jerome iginla. oh well. steve and i were both rooting for calgary because:

1. you can't pick a florida team over a canadian team
2. the flames have cooler uniforms
3. how in the heck can they really be from tampa bay (as opposed to tampa)? do they walk on water, or play underwater? we're confused.

we spent a good deal of time tonight f**king around with my work laptop, trying to get the wireless connection to work with steve's schmancy apple stuff. of course, i was able to connect to the unsecured wireless connections of people with real live computers, but we had no such luck with steve's fake little apple airport. it was probably made in some cheap armenian factory.

so i got this stupid orb thing at a conference, and steve hooked it up and now i have to admit, it has grown on me. it makes a nice little humming sound and then projects all of the numbers for the fun people who have called you, as well as happy messages like "happy memorial day weekend" (i wonder if flag day is programmed in!). the funniest part about it is that whoever entered in the info for my esteemed steve's company, Applied Safety, spelled their name wrong, so when someone from steve's office calls the magical orb reads "Applied Saftey" (okay, so i'm easily amused).

did you hear about the class at the university of oregon that caused a student to get a misdemeanor for streaking? i can't find much good coverage, like a course description, but here's a decent article in the university's Daily Emerald. apparently another student was dared to object at a wedding, and i also read a blog that claimed a student was encouraged to steal a gift from a wedding reception. i'm not so sure how that would help you confront your fears (i mean, who has fears about stealing presents? i think it's more of a taboo than a fear for most of us). however, i find the whole thing pretty amusing, and i also really enjoy the letter from the dean

wow. it looks like jerome iginla is going to let me down. i guess i wasn't really paying that much attention the beginning of this game, but still... i thought he would work harder to maintain my affections...

mark your calendars now for the World Naked Bike Ride on June 12.
i like the chicago ride motto: "protest oil dependency and showcase your gorgeous self love" and i enjoy the use of the purposely misspelled nekkid/nekked.

in my continuing quest for interesting wwII tidbits today, i found this story about a faux courier's corpse and how it fooled the Germans. apparently the whole project was called Operation Mincemeat.

go pistons!

i just tried to create an additional post this morning about the printer's row book fair, which we went to yesterday. steve got really tired of the crowds and sorting through many, many books about halfway through, but not until after i had a chance to get him as psyched as i was to look through some amazing rockwell kent prints. i really dig rockwell kent. his paintings are just so-so, but his engravings rock. and he explored alaska and greenland and wrote about it! they had a signed limited edition of one of his books, N by E, that was chock-full of beautiful engravings. it was $300 and for a few minutes we really thought about buying it. so to explain our enthusiasm to you, my loyal reader, i found a bunch of rockwell kent prints online. and i painstakingly looked through them and linked to the best ones. and then steve's stupid apple browser crashed.
so please, for my sake, google search "rockwell kent" and take a look at his prints. and tell me you think they're cool.
(you guys are the best!)

i got up thinking i'd check out all of the news/photos from the big d-day celebrations over in normandy, but then found myself strangely sucked in to the brief reports of j. lo's top-secret, top-speed wedding. crazy! do you know what the funny part of the whole deal is? although it's publicly known that his last wife (who he only finalized his divorce with five DAYS ago) was a former miss universe, nobody seems to focus on that. that *shocks* me! i mean, he's not bad looking, but he's not exactly the kind of guy you'd think would snag a sex symbol like j. lo AND a miss universe! somebody should be running a story titled "marc anthony: the secret of his ladies' man success" right about now. i guess he's probably mr. smooth. it also makes me wonder if he's well hung.

so back to where i thought my mind would be this morning: d-day. i know the big hoopla was ten years ago, but i kinda missed out on that. i was aware of it and all, but i guess i was probably not as into history as i am nowadays. my grandpa reinhart was a navigator in a bomber plane over italy and north africa during the war. i've always known that, but he never wanted to talk about it. he's always been into wwII movies, and we all just left it at that. but the past few years he's definitely wanted to tell his story to us more and more (usually in bite-sized increments) and i suppose that's part of what made me more curious. although it's not really a top news magazine anymore, Time had a nice issue a couple of weeks back with some d-day vets telling their stories (way too abridged, but interesting nonetheless) and a neat map of the invasion. it got me looking for more

here's the Time microsite, which i highly recommend.
and it's sister publication, Life, has some great photos too.
There was a great map of the invasion in the magazine which didn't reproduce well online, so I went looking around the internet, hoping for some sort of interactive map (If you've seen one, let me know). I have a thing for maps, as you probably know.
There are tons of d-day maps out there on the internet, but these are some of the coolest -- very detailed scanned-in photos of actual maps used in planning the war.
i also found a cool article this morning on the Dallas Morning News website (subscription only, the bastards!) about how a major center of d-day planning, the southwick house, used a big wall-sized wooden map that was made by a toy company. check out southwick house here.

one more fun thing:
safety song of the month, courtesy of sarah daunis!

and on that note, goodnight!

i was just reading through some pulpy magazines while taking a bath (in style, people, spin and tvguide -- which i read just for the "cheers and jeers") and saw a few fun things:

the fun potty training underpants "pull ups" now come in glow-in-the-dark designs. crazy!

the trio cable network continues their stream of wacky shit that makes me wish we could see it so that i could watch the episodes of Pink Lady and Jeff that they will have running during their Flops 101 series. if you don't get trio either, you can read up on it and even check out some clips here.

apparently j. lo is as fond of the "fire island" shade of sue devitt lipgloss as i am. who knew.

"sunshine in a jewel case": yet another review of the band 'the delays" that makes me think i'd really like their album. does anyone out there have a first hand opinion?

oh yeah, and GO PISTONS!!!

erin was in town tonight so we went with her out to get some yummy food. after we dropped her off at her hotel we drove up through grant park, and the fountain was lit up and it was absolutely gorgeous...

zac's blog has really inspired me to think about how i could make my blog cooler. should i provide links to funny things? should i come up with some sort of theme? how can i make my blog better without making a lot of effort and/or appealing to anyone other than my friends? (at first i really debated making my blog private and using it only to keep tabs on my own goofy thoughts, but then thought better of it).

maybe i should provide a link to a monkey photo every day.

maybe i should find out if the "fruit of the day" newsletter is still in existence and then comment every day on the fruit of the day. of course, there are endless variations on this one: i could do cocktail of the day, tom cruise joke of the day, tasteless joke of the day... you get the picture. it's much more likely that it would be "of the week" of course, but that probably goes without saying.

i am going to decide something sometime soon to somehow make my blog cooler. dammit. and if that doesn't sound committal in a non-committal way, well then i'm not being clear!!!

in the meantime, can i put a plea out there for any female readers to let me know if there's a facial moisturizer out there that has changed their life? the air at my office is so dry that every time i look in the mirror it looks like i've got leprosy because the skin around my nose is peeling off. ew. i've put some cheap moisturizer from the CVS downstairs on my desk and try to remember to re-apply it, but i really think i shouldn't have to do that several times a day. there's got to be some magic potion that has changed a girlfriend's life that i just haven't heard her rave about yet. and dammit, it's time!

i guess i could rant about the products that have changed my life. there are

1. certain dri. love the stuff! i was a sweaty girl (ew!) but i am sweaty no longer! this stuff may be weird (you put it on at night before you go to bed) but it works.
2. kiehl's after shave shaverettes lotion. i used to have such a reaction to shaving that i couldn't wear a skirt or shorts right after shaving because my legs would be all red and bumpy, and lotion would just make it worse. well, what's the point in shaving if you can't show it off, baby! and now i can.

okay, so now that i've alienated the guys that read this, i'll stop. and i'll go eat the brownies i was baking and watch the end of the hockey game and figure out how in the heck i'm going to upgrade to sepasky.blogspot.com 2.0

i am exhausted tonight. i thought i was doing okay, but after dinner i completely and totally crashed. i fell asleep on the bed around 7:15 and steve had to wake me up and let me know that the pistons were on and that i should probably not go to bed so early since it'll mess my sleep schedule up. but i want to! i am like a walking zombie!!!
here's why: i had to leave the safety and comfort of my little home on sunday at 10 am (criminal!) and head to the airport so that i could go to a two-and-a-half day internet media conference. it amazed me, because we're still debating (arguing) over the same points that we were three years ago when i left this space! nuts! but that's not really the only reason we were there: we were provided with big name keynote speakers that (i guess) were supposed to inspire us (interesting, but not very relevant) and we were supposed to schmooze (which i did). lots of other people apparently thought that the last point meant that we also were supposed to drink lots of alcohol, but since my stomach is still acting funky (over a week now where i've had digestive problems -- maybe i should see someone about that...), i wisely kept my socializing to one or two drinks (which really were as much of an accessory drink as anything else). anyhow, the reason i am so tired tonight is that this event was at a resort on the chesapeake bay in maryland. in the past they've been in ultra-glamorous hotels in scottsdale and beaver creek. i suppose this was supposed to be nice too, but...
1. it was over an hour and a half from the nearest major airport (baltimore), which SUCKED since i had to leave before 7 to return my rental car and get on my 10 am flight (since there are only a couple of direct flights each day from baltimore and i had a client meeting this afternoon).
2. there was DIAL-UP internet access only in our hotel rooms -- a HUGE snafu for an internet conference (the weird thing is that the resort is only about a year old and that the organizers kept saying that when they booked this a year ago they were told that the hotel would be wired with high-speed access by now. i think that must have been a line of hooey since you don't usually build a brand-new hotel and then wire it later)
3. it was hot and humid and when the sun went down (and our evening cocktail parties were outside) there were tons of bugs. i wore skirts in the evenings since it was so hot, but now my legs have bug bites on them. ew.

so yeah, i went to that and then had superfun getting up early to head back today so that i could go and sit an listen to big announcements/internal meetings about next year's marketing plans. woohoo! initially the meeting was supposed to be at 2 and so getting into the airport around noon was perfect. it gave me time to reclaim my bags, get all of the way to long-term parking, find some food somewhere, change into something nice and then go to my client's office. well, two days ago they moved the meeting to 4 pm. so i ended up done at the airport at 12:30, with a 15 minute drive to my client's office. i debated driving into town to go to the office for awhile, but since it can be up to an hour each way with traffic, that would have been dumb. so i went to the mall across the street from my client's office. i very wisely decided to take out the "client meeting" clothes that i had very carefully ROLLED (not folded) and put at the top of my suitcase. it's a darn good thing, too: i hadn't noticed that the TSA had looked in my bag, and in the process they had wedged my skirt and sweater set. it looked really bad. i was able to salvage a sweater, but decided that it'd be easier to find some sort of skirt or pants at the mall than to somehow try to un-wrinkle the skirt. i must have looked like a zombie at the mall, but it worked and i found a skirt and then got the call that the meeting had been moved up to 3 pm. and then i changed and finally everything came together and went as planned. hoooray!!!

so now i'm home and half-watching the pistons, hoping they can keep their lead. i'm glad they're more awake than i am!

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happy thought of the day: as i drove home from the client meeting i drove through grant park to columbus avenue and noticed that, for the first time since i moved, buckingham fountain was turned on and the water was shooting up majestically, welcoming me back to what's starting (finally!) to feel like home.

http://www.zone.ee/usapage/pics/Chicago/Buckingham%20Fountain%202.jpg

go here now:

http://www.computerpranks.com/download/online-fun/mcdonalds_ebonics.swf

has anyone else noticed that the blogger ad banners are about monkey lamps?

SOMEBODY TELL SHARON:

i was just looking up the outdoor movie schedule for this summer, and on july 13 they are showing "his gal friday"

!!!

whew! we just got home a little while ago from being in michigan this weekend. it's bittersweet to come back here after seeing friends and family. this weekend i felt especially close to my family -- i don't know if it was because of my grandfather's recent diagnosis with myelofibrosis (!), or the pleasant discovery that even though they have kids i still have lots in common with my cousins, but i felt truly happy to see everyone. usually there's some sort of feeling of family duty that seems to almost overshadow the pleasant experience of being together, but i didn't get that very much this time. who knows: maybe it's because steve is more and more comfortable with everyone, so i can be more relaxed. ??? whatever it is, it was great. i was glad that i was there.
today was equally nice: i went to my friend sarah's shower. i am not usually a fan of the bridal shower. i think opening piles of gifts is cool, but it's weird to do it in front of a bunch of people. and showers (whether they're bridal or baby) usually have such an odd blend of older aunts and friends-of-the-celebrant, that it's sometimes hard to feel comfortable in such mixed company. however, we can't attend our good friends' wedding in july, so i was really honest-to-god glad that i could be at their shower today. i definitely "owed" it to them in terms of how much they mean to me, and the event was pretty dang nice, to boot. i got to see a couple of other friends and it was all sunny and nice out. not bad at all...
maybe i'm just getting older and all of this "i was soooo happy to just see so-and-so" is an outward sign of some sort of maturity i had been missing. maybe it's related to my having finally gotten my day-job under control, and now i'm trying to find some sort of balance and appreciate the people that mean a lot to me. or maybe somehow my hormones and the weather conspired to just put me in a good mood all weekend. whatever it was, i'm grateful, and it was awesome to see all of the people i love so much.
which brings me back to where i am now. it's still hard to come back to chicago and feel like it's home when all of the people we love are concentrated in a place four hours away. i think we'll have to start recruiting them a bit more energetically. and maybe even getting out of the apartment here a bit more often to make friends locally!
as we drove back tonight, we were listening to the CD we had made for our wedding reception. and we were singing at the top of our lungs. we spend plenty of hours together when we're tired or feeling anti-social, and there aren't nearly enough of them when we're singing at the top of our lungs. granted, it would have been even more awesome if we weren't driving through gary indiana in the dark, but i'll take it anyhow. quality time can be hard to come by.
so here i am, getting cheesy on a sunday night about the value of my friends (who really are the only people reading my dorky little blog anyhow)... i was going to write about how indignant i am over rush limbaugh comments about the abu ghraib prison scandal. steve then pointed out that everyone had heard his comments weeks ago and that i really need to get more up-to-date on my newspaper/New Yorker magazine subscriptions. i guess i'm just not cut out to write a blog of any sort of significance. so maybe it's good that i was feeling cheesy about how great my friends are anyhow, since that gave me alternate writing fodder. man, i am thinking so many random thoughts about everyone tonight. i am so fucking blessed with good friends.
zac: i absolutely love the loretta lynn album. she rocks, and so do you.
(tell penny to come to chicago for spa weekend!)
alex + sarah: you two rock. i hope you enjoy your noritake colorwave and the accent plates. i almost bought you those instead, but i figured i would buy you something less breakable. :)
erin: you are a great girlfriend. you are also the uber-bridesmaid and i wish i knew you way-back-when so i could have honored you with some such role in our big day. and of course, it would have been great to see ben there all dressed up in a monkey butler suit since he was so dang handsome for your wedding!
tom: you'll never see this (although alex probably will and may relay this to you) but i was excited to hear about your new company today, and i'll be doing my worried "becoming my mom" thing while thinking about you and ben
christy + brian: i can't believe our schedules overlapped in such a crappy way. i am excited to hear what in the heck you did while you were in chicago!
rebekah + minh: dammit i am dying to know where you are moving! rebekah, please write and tell me what you've decided!
tiffany: i haven't heard from you and with your birthday coming up, you are on my mind! did you get my email about how i saw 'giddyup' activity books in every airport i've been in lately?
keenan: please move here. it is fun here and your residency will ROCK if you move here. i swear!!! and you'd better bring that awesome wife of yours!
becky: i hope you had an awesome birthday! please upload more photos of our buddy liam. :)
tasha + john: i can't believe we missed you guys this weekend. we have the most rotten luck. maybe the next time that you're coming here while we're in michigan we can make plans to meet up in kalamazoo or something!
wendy: i hope your pregnancy is going well. i really want to see you with a big fun round belly! i bet you are a super sexy mom-to-be!!! i wish you could bring lucie here so we could have a fun girly day on the town!
barbara + bob: man, i can't wait to visit you in vermont. have i told you yet that vermont is one of the favorite places that my family went to while i was growing up? and i word that in such a weird way because it wasn't just one of MY favorite places, it was one of OURS. and your new place looks so awesome up-northy in the photo!
barbara + bill: i know you're never online (and therefore not reading this) but i think of you lots and definitely owe you a phone call!
chuck + sharon: i am so dang excited that you're working at the library! i hope you let sharon go watch your ultimate frisbee games! and i hope she's not too busy with "my gal friday" to make it to cheer you on.
bruce + vanessa: we went to Culver's Butterburger for dinner tonight (yum!) and i thought 'bruce would really dig this place" and steve agreed. seriously, for some reason, i thought of you. and i somehow during the shower today i got into a random conversation about childrens' theatre and how awesome vanessa is for her prison work.
man, my friends rock. so now all we have to do is get some of them to move here.
or add to them, i guess. i mean, we like the people we know here so far. not enough for me to be thinking specific sorts of "shout-out" things about them, but i'm optimistic that will happen some day.
i guess until then i'll just have to write my little love note shout-outs to my peeps back in A2. you guys really are the best...
with love from chicago...

This is a bit old, I know, but I'm just catching up on my foodservice industry news, and I still think it's worth sharing...

A policeman from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin did nothing to dispel the stereotype about cops and doughnuts last month when he won the first Dunkin' Donuts World Copy Donut Eating Championship here. In the contest, staged during the INternational Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association conference, Terry O'Brien ate nine and a half doughnuts in three minutes to outdo 39 other competitors.

http://www.ileeta.org/Donut_contest.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/04/16/cops.doughnuts.ap/

Something I was going to blog about earlier, but it had me too upset: I think we were burglarized. And while I know that's a bit of a dramatic way to begin a post, here's the scoop. About a month ago I brought back a bunch of stuff from Michigan, including some summer clothes. I decided to reorganize my closet, pack up winter sweaters, etc. I had my jewelry box on a shelf in my closet and took it out while reorganizing. The reorganizing took several days, and I haven't seen my jewelry box since. Steve was convinced that I must have just set it somewhere odd and forgotten where I put it, but I was really feeling weird about it -- our apartment isn't all that big, and I've looked in all kinds of odd places.
Then, the initial news came: there was a flyer under our door the other day that there had been a couple of break-ins lately. I didn't really put two-and-two together, though. There are a lot of young, college age students in our building and the letter reminded people to lock their doors and use their deadbolts, so I guess I thought that maybe these young kids were leaving their doors unlocked while going to the gym.
When I got into the elevator on Friday morning, my neighbor asked me if I'd seen the news the night before. Apparently NBC5 did a segment on the burglaries, saying that police suspect it's an inside job. Nice.

Check out the story...
http://www.nbc5.com/news/3278237/detail.html

I am pretty sure the last time I saw my jewelry box it was on the dining room table. And I thought I had just done something weird with it, like stick it in the freezer. However, I've looked everywhere this weekend and now I think I need to file a police report. Ugh.

ohmygosh it's so beautiful here today! it's 85 and sunny! the lake is filled with boats, the park is filled with people, and there's some weird sort of electronic band playing for some sort of social change outside our local jamba juice, so even the wait there is more pleasant than usual.

in a not-so-traditional method of honoring mother's day today, my mom and i got into a heated discussion about something i did wrong two christmases ago. woohoo! go, mom! way to celebrate your day your way!

on a very different note, steve and i have really gotten into watching the series of drawbridges go up. we can see two from our apartment, and we can watch as a group of boats queues between them while waiting. we'll have to take some photos and put them up. i wonder if there's a schedule for the drawbridges, so that sailboats know when they might want to aim for lake michigan (or for coming in again). hmmm...

i just KNEW chicago had a lot going for it -- apparently our Lincoln Park Zoo has a reputation as a major gorilla breeding facility. they just opened a new ape house today:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0405050177may05,1,6115273.story?coll=chi-news-hed

and for more fun monkey news today:
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/05/04/monkey.waste.accident.ap/
ewwwwwwwwwwwww!

oh dear god what is it with the phil collins and whatever musak service they have here in the biz center!?! how many times am i going to have to endure this!

...just got back from a whirlwind 22 hour visit to california for a really interesting one-day seminar on how women use the internet. considering that i'm a woman, i wasn't really surprised by anything. i mean, come on -- who's surprised to know that ivillage isn't where all of the women go when they're online? but still, it was an interesting day of discussions and there was hard-and-fast evidence that women aren't going to any particular type site (or type of sites) in vast quantities, so well, i guess that's something. i suppose i may have more to say on this when i'm not so damn tired, but really i just thought i'd stop in the biz center before even going up to my apartment, so that i could make sure that nothing exploded at work today. now, however, with the phil collins "dance into the light" (!) blaring, i think i might have to call it a day and turn in...

g'night brave internet users!

fun link that really cheered me up today (thanks, Becky!)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4146756343&category=6

i officially have two bosses now, even though when they announced the company restructure they said not to think of it that way.
i paraphrase, but here's how it went at the company meeting:
"for those people who have directly reported to one person and had a 'dotted line' reporting relationship with another member of management, you will now directly report to both. it may sound like you have two bosses, but it will actually be more clear now who you are responsible to and your current boss will still be in charge of your review, but will receive input from the other member of management that you work with."
clear as mud! luckily i work closely with both. still, it's very office-space-ish. that movie is such a great satire of how companie work nowadays that it's frightening.

we had our office move today. by 5 pm we had to be all packed up and have our computer equiptment all wrapped in pink bubble wrap. everything had a numbered sticker and the IT staff came around letting us know that all of the servers were going offline at 5:05. and they did -- i was right in the middle of submitting my timesheet (which was due at 5). doh! still, i can't believe how crazy our office looked during the course of this week, with piles upon piles of free crap from vendors and media kits and magazines and general mess! and the orderliness with which the whole thing was planned makes me believe quite confidently that all of my boxes will just be there in my new workspace when the new office opens on monday. and that will be amazingly hassle-free and wonderful. i mean, of course there will be unpacking just as there was packing, but it was all very organized. they were even taking down the company's name off of the elevator bank wall today. very, very efficient movers with their jumpsuits and tags for everything. if only we'd done that for our personal move...

hockey hockey hockey
yes, folks, it's playoff time again and the hall household provides loyal viewership to the networks silly enough to air the NHL (and i don't mean that in a bad way -- we're grateful they DO air it!) while it's not quite as much fun to watch games alone as it was to watch en masse at fort awesome, steve is still happy enough to yell at the TV while i putter around, half-cleaning, one-third reading and whatever-the-remaining-amount-is (it's late) watching the game.

steve doesn't enjoy hot-tubbing (some sort of fear of germiness, which makes me fear that he's becoming more of a hypochondriac like his mother) so i went down without him just now. it was like the UN of hot-tubbing. i shared the hot-tub with an Asian guy in a speedo and an African-American guy with big tattoos while the windows of the room were cleaned by a Hispanic building employee (who speaks little English, but is very nice and answered my questions about his web surfing habits when i ran into him at the mailroom internet kiosk reading Univision.com several weeks back). it was interesting that i noticed the multiculturalness of it all, because it's probably super common here, just as it would be in NYC. i remember that's what i really loved about living there; riding the subway or just being out around town and hearing all of the different languages and seeing what people from every different walk of life were reading, wearing, and talking about. i suppose this building really isn't a microcosm of Chicago since it's pretty expensive, but at least it's more diverse than most, if not all, areas of Ann Arbor would be. it's definitely more diverse than any of the neighborhoods that we wanted to live in around Ann Arbor, that's for sure. maybe if we stay in Chicago awhile i won't even notice the diversity, and i'll just notice it when i'm somewhere like Minnesota, and everyone around me is white...

It's a sad day for finger lickin' good chicken fans everywhere...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-first-kfc,1,2159579.story?coll=chi-news-hed
I'm glad they're putting up a museum. And to think that the preparation secret was pressure cooking the chicken!
I love that old-school sort of fast food neon sign. I hope Arby's never demolishes the rest of their remaining signs...
http://www.geocities.com/chucksphotospot/signs.html

things i'm very excited about:

spring!!!
trying out Google's Gmail (yes, i am a dork)
Kevin coming to visit
going to New Orleans for the Jazz + Heritage Festival
open-toed shoes season
Jamba Juice (okay, so this isn't exactly a new thing, but we went there twice this past weekend, so it's really top-of-mind)

i suppose it's only fair to write about things i'm also not-so-excited about. we have a big office move coming up this friday. they are shutting off everything and kicking us out on thursday at 5 pm (which is good -- i need encouragement to leave at a reasonable hour). however, in the move a lot of us are losing our offices and moving to cubes. ew. i have no idea how we'll do our group meetings and i have a lot of stuff and a big fear that it won't fit. i already have a helluva time keeping clutter under control (my office frequently looks like a war zone). i have learned that i am the sort of person in the sort of profession that either needs a secretary or a lot of space. when i have neither (such as at my last job in pizza-land) the resulting workspace isn't pretty. in addition, i'll actually have to go oustide (!) to get to the new building. it's just right across the street from our apartment building, but STILL! hmph. the upside is that our new building is connected to a much larger pedway system than the current building, so i shouldn't really want for anything. mike (my star employee) and i gave it a quick look-see today and found: dunkin' donuts, cosi sandwich shop, fedex, starbucks, hallmark, several independent delis, a newsstand, kinko's, a chinese place, a key maker/watch fixer stand, and a secret-looking doorway to a bennigan's (god forbid i ever somehow need to go there!)

a couple of pedway links:
http://www.gapersblock.com/detour/archives/subterranean_city_a_tour_of_chicagos_pedway_part_1.php
http://www.dirtyoldtown.org/blog/chicagopedway.php

maybe i should take a pedway tour from the chicago architecture foundation:
http://www.architecture.org/tours_3.html
actually, i think i should take a bunch of tours from them: some of the buildings here are amazing and i'm intrigued by the history of it all (as opposed to my time in detroit, where there were awesome looking buildings left in such sad states of decay that i really didn't want to know the sad stories of their demise).

there were tornadoes just south of chicagoland this evening. crazy! i had no idea, and i was still at work on the 35th floor. i guess i kinda assume that if it was bad here in the city the building management would do some sort of alarm/alert.

steve has been very into the hockey playoffs, and i have been watching quite a bit over his shoulder. it's neat that they ended up with quite good matchups -- both between historical and neighborly rivals. other than that he's just been working. i am trying to encourage him to be social, but it hasn't worked yet. we had an awesome picnic this weekend in the park with some fancy-schmancy stuff from the local zingermans-ish deli. and then of course we went to Jamba Juice: twice (Steve insisted!). did i ever tell you that i looked into whether or not they'd franchise to me? i was convinced after my first trip to Jamba that if only they'd let me open a store in Ann Arbor i would not only be financially set for life, but happy and healthy and probably even prettier and wittier (okay, so i'm adding those last two on just for fun, but you get the point)...

i am really anxious to check out the white stripes/loretta lynn album.

final note for the evening: i wish ralph nader would go away.

My favorite story of the week (not 'cause I am glad this happened, but I like the goofiness of it):

Close encounter with oven cools off Oliver's love story

London: Celebrity chef Jamie Olier learned recently that if you can't take the heat, definitely get out of the kitchen, at least when you're not fully dressed. While cooking a Valentine's Day meal at home for his wife, Jools, the Naked Chef took his moniker all too seriously -- with disastrous results. He elected to put the meal together while he was in the altogether.
According to a report in The Sun newspaper, the naked chef managed to burn his -- hmmm, how should we say -- manhood on the stove as he cooked away.
"I was naked in the kitchen and burnt (myself)," he told The Sun. "I really ruined my evening and my night."
The burn seemingly cooled down Oliver's ardor for the rest of the night, so, upon recovery, he took his wife to Paris to make up for causing the romantic inconvenience.

_______________________

If only Steve had been able to take me to Paris after he burnt his arm/chest/stomach in the kitchen last fall...

Okay, so on a more positive note, I was very lucky to see a good number of the people I love in Michigan this weekend. My good friend Christy had a birthday party on Friday night, so we saw a bunch of our friends there and kept Christy and Brian up until they practically had to kick us out at 2 am. I was really sad to have to go since I know we won't be doing that very often anymore. Then on Saturday I was able to see my friend Becky and her four month old son Liam and then my friends Holly and Brian and their new baby, Maya, who was born on Thursday. I took it as a lucky sign that I was home in Michigan the week that she was born so that I could meet her. I think it meant that this was a good weekend for closure and new beginnings. She was so small that it amazed me to hear that not only was I smaller than she was at birth, but that my brother was even smaller -- he was less than 6 pounds!
Were any of you loyal readers less than 6 pounds a birth?

This weekend was our last weekend to clean out Fort Awesome, and it was really sad. Not only were there completely random things left behind, but the house was pretty dusty and had a bunch of those irritating dead Japanese beetle bugs lying around -- it really did look like nobody had been there. I took both my digital camera and my 35mm camera to Michigan and ended up not taking any photos with either since the house was too changed for me to do so. I wish I had taken some when all of our things were still there. I guess I was too busy getting ready to move over the holidays (as well as enjoy the holidays!) to do that, and I kept thinking I'd be back there for a weekend, and I wasn't. When we finally were done getting rid of everything and putting the trash out and sweeping, I wrote a note to the new owners and left it on the kitchen counter. I started crying, and I'm starting to tear up right now thinking about it as well... I loved that house, probably even more than the little house that I grew up in. I was really proud of it and loved that it was a gathering place for our friends. I told the new owners that we had a nickname for it and that they could email us with any questions. I want them to take good care of her...
I am crying again. I am such a sap...