I have talked about the list of movies that we keep in www.imdb.com that we want to rent. Well, just for your curiosity, here is what is currently on our list. The second column with the number in it is the average rating from all of the other IMDB users. We have the list sorted by this, from best to worst.
(I do not know why there is all of this blank space between these words and the start of the table. It has happened before and I have not been able to figure it out. Just keep scrolling down. Sorry.)

Road to Perdition (2002)	8.0
Blood Simple (1984)	7.8
French Connection, The (1971)	7.8
About a Boy (2002)	7.7
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)	7.7
Waking Life (2001)	7.6
Atanarjuat (2001)	7.5
Monster's Ball (2001)	7.5
One Hour Photo (2002)	7.5
Signs (2002)	7.5
Bourne Identity, The (2002)	7.4
Last Orders (2001)	7.3
Easy Rider (1969)	7.2
I Am Sam (2001)	7.2
Pacte des loups, Le (2001)	7.2
Pollock (2000)	7.2
Barbershop (2002)	7.1
Romper Stomper (1992)	7.1
Barfly (1987)	6.6
Tadpole (2002)	6.4
Horse Whisperer, The (1998)	6.3
Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)	6.3
Blow Dry (2001)	6.2
Super Troopers (2001)	6.2
Cecil B. DeMented (2000)	6.1
Dahmer (2002)	5.6
Master of Disguise, The (2002)	3.2
Bowling for Columbine (2002)	9.0
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)	9.0
Pianist, The (2002)	8.6
Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)	8.6
Far from Heaven (2002)	8.2
Hable con ella (2002)	8.1
About Schmidt (2002)	8.0
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)	8.0
Catch Me If You Can (2002)	7.9
Adaptation. (2002)	7.8
Gangs of New York (2002)	7.7
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)	7.7
Red Dragon (2002)	7.7
Ring, The (2002)	7.7
Real Women Have Curves (2002)	7.6
Roger Dodger (2002)	7.5
Secretary (2002)	7.3
8 Mile (2002)	7.1
Bloody Sunday (2002)	7.1
Auto Focus (2002)	7.0
25th Hour (2002)	6.7
Antwone Fisher (2002)	6.7
Sång för Martin, En (2001)	6.1
Heartbreak Hospital (2002)	5.6
Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)	5.4
They (2002)	4.3
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
James Bond 007: Nightfire (2002) (VG)

Mom and Dad are in Columbus for New Year's Eve. They are going to the party at the Holiday Inn with Fred and Greta. What fun! Before the party, they are going to check out Polaris Mall and Easton.

I am actually getting some things done at work.

I went upstairs for lunch. They had a limited number of things out, but it was still good. Today was hot dog day, and for some reason I have been in a hot dog mood lately, so I had a hot dog with chili, sauerkraut, and pickled hot peppers. I also had a chicken breast with tomatillo sauce, turkey meat loaf, sweet cous cous with raisons, apricots, and another fruit I can't remember, some ham strips from the salad bar, some crumbled blue cheese also from the salad bar, and I think that is it.

I am looking forward to fresh shrimp, and artificial crab legs tonight. Sheri is the one that actually wanted to try the crab legs. It is in California rolls, and she likes those, so she thought she would like to try it plain. She doesn't normally like shrimp because of the firm texture it has. She describes it as a "pop" when she bites into it. She did have shrimp that she liked at a Japanese steak house. Maybe I will fry her a few in seasame oil and see if she likes it that way.

I am getting really bored at work. I hope Sheri can leave soon.

I have had one comment back so far about La-Z-Boy furniture, and it was an "I have no opinion."

Mom and Dad are going to Columbus for an over-night trip. I think they should do more of that: Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago. Or even two or three day trips to New York, D.C., Philadelphia, etc. Find a couple of cheap flights a month or so ahead of time, and then just go. Even if they just try out some of the local restaurants and sit in a coffee houses watching the locals, walking through a museum, etc. It doesn't have to be an action packed, no free time, kind of trip.

The office is dead today.

Didn't go grocery shopping for New Year's last night because I was feeling crummy. We will probably leave early today and pick up food before we go home. Hopefully the stores won't be too crowded, and they will still have some decent pork loins left.

Shawn can't get "Brad" out yet, so for now I am just "Uncle". I miss hearing it already. I haven't played the video for Sheri that I shot in Toledo yet. Maybe we will watch that tonight. I have about 40 minutes of video on the MiniDV tape (the digital tape format that our camcorder uses). Maybe I will copy that to an archive VHS tape tonight, and then start at the begining of the MiniDV tape again.

I think this picture is spooky. It's just not something you are used to seeing.

The weather service is saying that it is possible we could have a winter storm here Wednesday night and Thursday morning, but the system is still too complex to make an accurate prediction. They said they need to wait a few more hours to see how everything works out. That could be kind of cozy; sitting in front of the fireplace, watching the snow storm, eating pork loin. I would have to bring the snow blower up from the basement.

I was thinking last night that maybe I will put together some model railroad track on a 4' x 8' piece of plywood, and maybe build some legs for it or set in on a couple of saw horses. I wouldn't do anything fancy with decorations, just a place to run a train every now and then in the basement. Maybe get some switches and cross overs. If I ever did want to get more involved, the track and plywood would not go to waste. I could just pry it up and reuse everything.

I think I discovered last night that the blogger editing interface is not designed for Netscape Navigator (which we use at home). It does a lot of weird things, including corrupting links and image references. So if you use Navigator, and also want to blog, don't.

I have uploaded the pictures I took at work today to the internet, and most of them are on this page. To see all of them, just click here.

This one of the Sears Tower turned out good. The sun had already set, but the way I had the settings on my camera made it seem lighter, and also gave it a dramatic effect. I might try ordering this from printroom.com to see how their prints turn out.

The foundation of the new Hyatt building they are building on Wacker Drive.

The view from my window. It was overcast and foggy today.

My lunch from the cafeteria today.

The lobby of my building.

Outside my building on Madison Avenue.

My messy desk. (Mom, that is the tangello you sent back with me. It was pretty good!)

Our Network Control Center where the monitor our global data network. It is about 30 feet from my desk.

The kitchen and coffee area on my floor.

The sculpture in the elevator lobby on my floor. They have a lot of original art work in the building.

Here is an article about babe Nigella Lawson, from the British cooking show "Nigella Bites".

I also found out today that "Nigella Bites" is not just on the Style Network. Her show is on E! every Friday morning at 7:00 AM Central time. I might have to set the VCR.

I haven't received any comments or e-mails yet on peoples perception of the La-Z-Boy brand. Even if you don't have an opinion one way or the other, I would like to hear that. Thanks!

I just went out to my doctor's office web site to get the telephone number and doctor's name, and they now have a form that patients can fill out on-line to request an appointment. Cool! They also have a form to request prescription re-fills.

I want to find a new doctor in Chicago, though. It is a pain to have to take a day off just to see the doctor. If it was in Chicago I could just take the L at lunch time for an appointment.

I also need to schedule an eye checkup. I will do that after the first of the year.

Well, it is lunch time and I have done very little today. I hope to make the afternoon more productive.

I am on my own for lunch; Sheri has a doctor appointment. Which reminds me, I wanted to try and schedule an appointment for one of my days off this week.

People at work noticed that I shaved my goatee off fairly quickly. One woman noticed in about 5 minutes; another one the second she saw me. One person said it makes my face look fatter without it. I think I have had it for about three years.

I brought our digital camera to work to take pictures of my office building at Dad's request. I have taken some interior shots, but it is cloudy and foggg today, so I probably won't be able to get a good shot of my view.

I woke up feeling better than I thought I would. My throat was barely sore. My nose was runny and needed blowing, but I wasn't congested and forced to breath through my mouth. I have to blow my nose about every 10 minutes, so I will probably get some Puffs Plus with lotion tonight.

I think we will also go grocery shopping tonight for New Years food. New Years eve will be finger food: chilled shrimp, crab legs, cheese & crackers, fruit, etc. New Years day we plan on doing a pork loin in our electric counter top rotisserie, stuffing, and sauerkraut.

I need to get to work on my TPS reports. We have to start including a cover sheet, which is a pain, but I will get used to it. ;-)

I think my sore throat from this morning is turning in to my annual cold. Lots of nasal activity; head feels stuffy; have a general "out of it" feeling.

Went to the La-Z-Boy store this evening to look at recliners. Our current recliner is old and on its last legs. Sheri wants to buy a new one this week. I think this is what the shape of the chair looked like. The fabric she likes is like an old fashioned carpet parlor carpet. Please leave a comment below on your opion of La-Z-Boy as a brand. Is it over-priced cheaply made crap marketed to rubes, or is it a good quality product that is an excellant value. Or does it fall somewhere in between those two extremes. The chair we were looking at was somewhere in the $700 - $800 range.

After looking at furniture, we went to a new grocery store that is right behind the La-Z-Boy store on Route 59 called Michael's Fresh Food. The white-bread sounding name is very misleading, because the store is very very very ethnic. They had six different kinds of feta cheese in the deli; and not just a few pieces of each. They probably had 20 pounds of each type sitting in brine. A huge meat department. A very large seafood area with huge whole fish. Lots of unusual things. Too many to really describe here and do it justice. The prices were reasonable. Everything looked fresh and clean. Most of the store employees and cutomers spoke with some type of accent, whether it was Mexican, Isrealie, Indian, etc. And the store was busy too, which is a good sign. I think it has been open for just a little over a month.

The pictures below are things that I would like to order from the train catalog I picked up in Toledo. I don't want to buy them to run on a track; I would just like to build a nice narrow shelf and display them. Maybe in the upstairs office where I could see them everyday.

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This is what we ride to work in every day.

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I brought a sore throat back from visiting Toledo. I woke up this morning and made myself some hot Earl Grey tea. That helped a lot.

I had a good time visiting. My family thinks they have to plan exciting and new things for me to see and do when I visit. I have lived there most of my life, so I have seen most of Toledo. I don’t go there for the city; I go there to be with my family. Just sitting around the TV, talking, drinking coffee, watching Shawn dance is just perfect for me.

I got into Toledo on Thursday around 4:00 PM. Unloaded a couple of things at Mom and Dad’s and then went to Tim and Lisa’s for dinner. I mostly had leftover Honey Baked ham for dinner. They seemed to be upset that they had leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner, so I was trying my hardest to make the ham disappear.

Friday morning Lisa dropped Shawn off with us (Mom, Dad, and myself) and we ran some errands. First we went to a little bar/restaurant for breakfast. They have something called “The Egg War Special”. You get two scrambled eggs, a decent amount of hash browns, and two pieces of white toast for $1.35. If I had that deal near here I would probably go at least every weekend.

Then we were going to go to a map store (I love maps), but the store had closed. Poop.

Next on the itinerary was a model train store so that I could buy a couple of manufacturer’s catalogs. Even better, they had a catalog from Walthers. This catalog is like a catalog of all the manufacturers in one giant catalog; over 1,000 pages! It was $20, but it should keep me occupied for a while. I don’t plan on taking up model trains as a hobby, but it is fun to look at, and I might buy one or two things just for a bookcase display. I would like to get a train just to display, not run, on a narrow shelf somewhere in the house. I want to get the cars and engine that we ride into the city on every day. This one looks a little like it, but not quite.

Finally on our trip we stopped at Food Town to pick up the 7½ pound standing rib roast for our holiday dinner that night.

When we got back home, Shawn was starting to get cranky-tired, and I didn’t sleep that well the previous night, so the two of us went upstairs for a nap. Mom put him down in his own little bed, and I laid in the regular bed that was right next to his. He cried for a while, but it wasn’t a real cry. It was a fake cry that he uses to get his way. Uncle Brad doesn’t play that, so I just let him get tired of crying, and then he finally just laid down too (with his butt in the air). I don’t think he ever fell asleep because he was fidgety most of the time. I got a little bit of a nap though. One time he tried to climb out of bed when I had one eye open. I sat up and leaned over quickly and just looked (scowled) at him; didn’t say a word. He just slowly climbed back into bed without saying a word.

After my nap, I brushed my teeth and went downstairs to hang out for a while. Mom was making our family’s spinach salad for dinner that evening. I watched TV with Dad and talked for a while. When Mom was done with the salad, we packed up and headed over to Tim and Lisa’s. That was around 3:00 PM.

Tim and I were responsible for cooking the rib roast. Fortunately for us, they are pretty easy to cook. We put it in an open roasting pan, rib side down, covered it with olive oil, and then rubbed garlic granules, salt, fresh ground pepper, and thyme over the whole thing. We inserted a digital thermometer probe into the center, and then put it into a 325º oven. We set the timer to sound when the internal temperature hit 120º. We took it out, covered it with foil, and the internal temperature continued to climb to about 141º.

We also tried Yorkshire pudding for the first time. It tastes like a popover (because the primary ingredient is eggs) with a beefy taste (because you add a ½ cup of the pan drippings when you take the roast out of the oven. You just mix up the egg, drippings, flour and a little salt, pour the batter into a 9” x 9” pan and bake it for 25 minutes.

The prime rib turned out better than any prime rib I have had at a restaurant. Unbelievably good. As long as you use an internal thermometer with a temperature alarm I don’t think you could screw it up. Easier than roasting a turkey. Tim and I divided the four ribs between us after dinner. We spent several minutes gnawing on the them after we were done eating the main portion of dinner.

Late Saturday morning we all went to brunch at Nick’s. Nick’s is a diner with good homemade food served in enormous portion sizes. I don’t think it would be a visit to Toledo any more with out a meal at Nick’s. It is usually breakfast, but he also makes a very good hamburger with fresh cut fries.

Tim received a $40 gift certificate to Anderson’s from work, so we went there after brunch so Tim could buy a programmable thermostat. We also strolled around the store looking at the after-Christmas specials. All I bought was some windshield washer fluid for the van.

Went back to Tim and Lisa’s and watched Tim install the thermostat. Took him about 10 minutes. Worked perfect the first time. Then we just sat around, had some coffee, watched what I had shot on my camcorder so far. I think they thought my scenes were too long. It was only my first 40 minutes. I will learn.

The drive back to Chicago was uneventful. Traffic wasn’t too bad. Mom packed a little care package for me, in the tradition of my Grandma B*. A little baggie with 5 or 6 slices of very good hard salami; a little tin of the Christmas cookies she made, and a can of Diet Caffeine Free Pepsi. I finished the salami and crackers before I left Ohio. She also put a cute little love note in the bag for me!

I got home about 7:45 PM. Sheri helped me unpack the van, and then she opened the presents that were sent home for her. After a couple of the gifts, she commented that my family is finally starting to “get” her. I think this was a particular reference to the plastic horse that poops little brown cola-flavored candy turds from its butt. She liked everything they picked out for her though.

We went to bed pretty early.

I don’t think we have too much planned for today. She is still sleeping. I have some bills to catch up on. We are looking forward to the short week. I am taking Thursday and Friday off (in addition to the Wednesday holiday). Tuesday will probably be a short day, too.

Merry Christmas!

It looks like we had about 3" of snow last night. It looks beautiful outside. It looks like Ohio is getting hit with winter storm warnings in Toledo and freezing rain followed by a nice covering of snow today. We are are not forecast to have any more precipatation; just a nice benign covering of fluffy snow.

Yesterday afternoon after work we stopped at Menards to pick up a box of artificial logs. We had talked before about buying a smaller artificial Christmas tree so we would be more likely to set it up. Takes up less room; not as big of a chore to haul it upstairs, set it up, decorate it; doesn't take up as much room. So we wandered over to the Christmas tree section, just to look, not to buy, and they already had all of their Christmas items 50% off. We got this really nice 4½' tree for only $12.50!

We are so in the 21st century: we picked up a string of Christmas lights, and the bulbs were all LEDs! You are going to start seeing LEDs in more and more applications. They are already very common in traffic lights, and as brake lights on trucks and buses. They use less energy per llumen hour than incandescent, and last for years and years and years. The LED Christmas lights are on the tree, but you can't see them in the picture because the flash from the camera overpowered them.

The fish fry went well last night. We made the beer batter too thick though, and we ran out, plus it was thicker than I would have liked. When I saw that we weren't going to have enough batter, I made sure that I did all of the fish first. The fish tasted very good. Cod.

Last night after dinner we put a fire in the fire place and watched Death to Smoochy. It was very good. The cover has Robin Williams on it, but the main character is actually Ed Norton, who is Smoochy. (I just noticed now that Ed Norton is on the cover too in his Smoochy costume. My eye was always drawn to Robin William's face and I never really paid attention to the lower right corner of the picture.)

For today we rented "Finding Forrester" and "Y tu mamá también". Translated to English it means "And Your Mother Too." It is a Mexican film and has gotten a lot of attention. It is been on more than a couple of film critics top 10 movies of 2002 lists.

These are a list of things that I think every well prepared office worker should keep at their desk:

Excederin	(best for relieving headaches)
Antacid tablets	(heart burn)
Pepto-Bismol	(Montezuma's Revenge)
Dental floss	(popcorn husk, etc. stuck in teeth)
Sugarless gum	(too much garlic with lunch before a close-quarters meeting)
Stamps
Philips and flat head screw driver	(open computer, attach/remove cables, misc.)
Knife	(open boxes, packages, etc.)
Matches or lighter	(birthday cakes)

We got up early today and got to the city at 7:00 AM so we could have nice leisurely Christmas Eve breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s. Very enjoyable. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, so I drank regular coffee instead of decaffeinated. The first thing the waitress said when she got to our table is what a beautiful face Sheri has, and what nice smooth skin she had, and that she looked so wide awake and happy for being first thing in the morning. We had to leave her a big tip.

The train and the sidewalks were very empty this morning. The office is very quiet too. I have a few things to do, but for the most part it will be a slow day.

The weather report says we should get 1” to 2” of snow tomorrow.

We think for New Year’s Eve we are going to slow cook a pork loin in our electric counter-top rotisserie, along with some of my now-famous stuffing, and some steamed cabbage with a little onion and butter.

Since today was a maid day (she lets Goliath out while she's cleaning) we have a little extra time after work. We used that time tonight to eat dinner, and then go shopping at Meijer for Christmas Eve and Christmas day food. Just for the heck of it I entered everything we bought, and then sorted it from most expensive to least expensive. I am always curious to see what other people have in their cart at the check out line, so this is sort of a cyber-peek into our cart:

• $8.33 - 2 lbs cod filets
  
• 6.00 - Downy fabric softener
  
• 5.99 - Starbucks whole bean decaffienated coffee
  
• 5.69 - honey
  
• 5.00 - 6 cups Kraft pizza cheese
  
• 4.49 - reduced fat Jif peanut butter
  
• 3.69 - reduced sugar Aunt Jemima maple syrup
  
• 3.58 - 1 lb mushrooms
  
• 3.39 - reduced fat Ritz crackers
  
• 3.39 - spinach flavored fettucine noodles
  
• 3.19 - Parmesan cheese
  
• 3.08 - 1 lb hot Italian sausage from butcher's counter
  
• 2.99 - Oscar Meyer fat free bologna
  
• 2.94 - 6 frozen burritos
  
• 2.89 - 1 gallon fat free milk
  
• 2.50 - Eggo frozen waffles
  
• 2.29 - 1 box saltine crackers
  
• 2.09 - 1 liter Pellegrino sparkling mineral water
  
• 1.99 - 1 box frozen soft pretzels
  
• 1.99 - 5 lbs King Arthur unbleached flour
  
• 1.98 - 2 two liter bottles lemon-lime club soda
  
• 1.50 - 1 box graham crackers
  
• 1.45 - sliced green olives
  
• 1.30 - 2 boxes instant vanilla pudding
  
• 1.29 - Cremora liquid non dairy creamer
  
• 1.29 - fat free Cool-Whip
  
• 1.27 - Duncan Hines chocolate frosting
  
• 1.19 - 1 box Drake batter mix
  
• 1.19 - 1 large yellow sweet onion
  
• 1.19 - 100 coffee filters
  
• 1.13 - 1 green pepper
  
• 1.00 - 2 grapefruit
  
• 0.88 - 2 liter caffiene free Diet Pepsi
  
• 0.88 - 2 liter Fresca
  
• 0.83 - 1 bottle Mexican hot sauce
  
• 0.79 - 2 liter caffiene free Diet Dr. Pepper
  
• 0.79 - 2 liter diet cherry 7-Up
  
• 0.79 - frozen Fresh-Like french cut green beans
  
• 0.55 - confectioner's sugar
  
• 0.50 - 1 star fruit
  
• 0.40 - 1 orange
  
• Total = $97.69
  

We will probably just work half a day tomorrow. We will then stop by the video store to stock up on movies. Stop at Menard's for some artificial fire logs, and then head home and start cooking fish, onion rings, and mushrooms.

I got the last of the tuition reimbursement forms submitted at work, and I paid my tuition on-line today. That means I am all ready to begin classes in just 15 days. Yeah!

I am excited to get back to classes, because I really do enjoy taking MBA classes, but I am also excited to finally complete my MBA, which I have been chasing for what seems like forever. If everything goes as planned, I will have my degree by June!

To get your name on the national "do not call" list for telemarketers that is administered by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association), do the following:

1. Click on the link below.

2. Fill in all of the required fields at the bottom of the page. (These fields will have an asterisk to the right of the field name.)

3a. To register for free, click the “Register by mail” button. This will take your info and put it into a page to print out and mail in.
--or--

3b. Click the register online button. This will get your name into their database immediately, but it will cost you $5.00.

[Click to enter your phone number in the DMA's do-not-call database.]

For Christmas Eve dinner we are going to have a fish fry. We are going to the store tonight to get a couple of pounds of cod. We are also going to cook onion rings and mushrooms along with the fish. For dessert we are going to get some fruit (grapefruit, oranges, and star fruit), and might make an enclair casserole (vanilla pudding, grahm crackers, and chocolate on top).

For Christmas day I am going to make some fresh buttermilk biscuits in the morning and hot coffee. For lunch we are going to make homemade pizza. We haven't done that in a while. I will make enough so we can have leftover pizza in the evening for dinner or when we want to snack.

A co-worker gave me a fleece blanket for a Christmas gift. It is mostly green with a stylized forest and moose image at the center. She bought the fabric, and the broad-stiched the edges. It looks very nice. I can't wait to use it. Like a loser, I didn't get anything for co-workers.

The movie that Sheri picked up for herself is called Mourning Becomes Electra. It was originally turned into a movie in 1947, and then re-made in 1978 and is an adaptation from a Eugene O'Neill play.

Summary:

Eugene O'Neill's updated version of the Orestaia. In New England, after the American Civil War, a war-weary Agamem--er, Ezra Mannon comes home to his unhappy wife (Christine) and loving daughter (Lavinia). But Lavinia's ex-suitor, Adam Brant, has become Christine's lover, and together Adam and Christine plot to poison Ezra. When they succeed, Lavinia turns to her brother Orin to help bring the lovers to justice, but when they succeed, Orin goes mad and his suicide note may come between Lavinia and her new suitor, Peter Niles.

I think I will just read the Sunday paper on the couch while she watches the movie. She has always been the one into literature and good writing in the family.

When research is publicized, say, that says eating fish once a week will reduce cholesterol, blood pressure, etc., so everyone goes out and buys fish oil pills. Or that the tannins in grapes lowers cholesterol, so the health-food stores start selling concentrated grape extract pills. Or that the capsicum in peppers lowers blood pressure, so people buy capsicum pills and take those everyday.

When are they going to publish research that says:

Your mom was right. You need to eat a well balanced diet from the four food groups. (Well, now it is the food pyramid.) Make sure to get a good variety of grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, poultry, and, fish. Limit the amount of fats, especially saturated fats, and processed sugar.

Click on the icon to the left to see all of the pictures that Sheri took while she was visiting in Columbus! (The images on the page that comes up are also clickable. Click on them to see a larger image.)

I picked her up at the airport with no complications. Only ticketed passangers are allowed past the security point, so my plans of getting a bite to eat and watching planes and people come and go didn't work out.

I took the camcorder to take some footage inside the airport, so that didn't work out either. I took a few minutes though.

After I picked her up we went to Golden Coral for lunch. Up to that point I hadn't had anything to eat all day, so I was hungry. My plan when I go there is to have a big salad with just a little bit of dressing, and then a bowl of soup. By doing that I can avoid the bad foods on the rest of the buffet line like carbohydrates (mashed potatoes, french fries, mac & cheese, etc.) and eat the vegetables and lean meats. It actually works out well for me. I have written about Goledn Coral before, and it is not like the other "troughs" like Ryan's Steak House or Country Buffet. The food is much better. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables cut up right in front of you. Very few fried foods.

We also stopped at the video store and picked up a couple of movies. We will watch "Minority Report" tonight and "Brazil" tomorrow. She also picked up an older movie set after the Civil War to watch on her own, but I forget what it is called.

Golden Coral was our one meal for the day, but I might pop some corn to nibble on while watching the movie.

As the dog sensed me waking up this morning, he starts to get excited and prance around the bed whining to be let out side; tail wagging, happy ears on, panting, you get the picture. All of a sudden all activity stops, ears drop, he sits down right next to the bed. He mouth turns into the smile he gets when he is getting ready to vomit and then his body starts to undualte and make that sloshing sound. That means I have about 15 seconds to get a garbage can for him to expel his stomach contents into. I almost grabbed the camcorder to document it, but I didn't know where the tape was queued to and didn't want to tape over anything. I will have to make sure I keep a tape queued to the right position and in easy reach. It is really funny to see him start smiling. When he is all done vomiting he must feel better because he starts running around again wagging his tail prancing to go out.

Luck is the residue of design.

Man, does this little bugger look tasty. In case you have not heard, they (by they I mean them) have developed a genetically modified chicken that has no feathers.

I have the downstairs looking pretty good. I have a big stack of old magazines that I sorted all over the bedroom floor last night. I think I will get that mess organized and then go to bed.

Sheri's plane is scheduled to arrive at O'Hare at 12:57 PM. I think I will leave here about 11:00 AM so that I am not driving like a maniac, and so I have a little time to people watch at the airport.

I needed to lay on the couch for a little bit, about an hour, but now I am up and moving. I already loaded the dishwasher and have that going. Sheri called and I talked to her for 15 - 20 minutes. I made a quick stop on the computer, I am typing this, and then I am back downstairs to finish staightening.

I have loud Italian classics on the stereo right now. (Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, etc.) I lost interest in the French Connection. It is not a movie you can watch while you are doing other things.

OK, back to work.

There is nothing worse than getting busted for "picking your feet in Poughkeepsie".

The French Connection is on AMC (American Movie Channel) at 7:00 PM Central. I think I will have that on the TV while I do house cleaning. I have been meaning to see that movie. It is on our "to rent" list.

I would much rather just sink into the couch and veg out all night. I feel sleepy. I think I will make a pot of iced tea too. Give me a little boost, plus Sheri will want some when she gets in tomorrow. She is an iced tea freak.

On my way home. I feel a little tired. But I think once I get outside into some fresh air I should be OK for an evening of house cleaning. Also, like I mentioned before, putting on some good house cleaning music will help too. Something I can yell along with. Violent Femmes? Rolling Stones?

I got some good things done at work today. That should allow me to have a better weekend. (Clear conscience = more relaxed weekend) Except I just received an e-mail that I have some paperwork to fill out that is due by Jan 1 that I have not started on yet. When they upgrade all of our PC's to Windows XP, only approved and scripted software will be allowed to be installed. There are two applications that I have been made owner of that are not approved for XP. The paper work is to get the software submitted for approval. Not too big of a job, but ther is a lot of hoops to jump through. I guess I will do that on Monday.

My bamboo plant at work hasn't done much. I was told that it does not need any fertilizer, so I didn't give it any. But then I started thinking. I needs something to "eat"; maybe just not much. So I took a pinch of house plant fertilizer and diluted it in a 20 oz soda pop bottle. Every few days as I need to add water to replace water that has been used by the plant or evaporated, I use the week fertizer solution. I started this a couple of weeks ago, and the plant has started a growth spurt! I think I notice new growth daily. So if you have some bamboo, try watering it with a very week solution. You can barely tell that the water I use has a slight blue hue to it.

I think the blogspot.com servers are having problems. I've noticed that an error message pops up when you load my journal or Sheri's. It is not affecting Lisa's journal, though, so maybe it is the code for the comments that we installed, and maybe they are having a problem with their servers.

Is anyone else getting the same error window popping up? Leave me a comment and let me know.

I've also noticed that the archive links on our journals are not there anymore. That is an automated feature of the blog, not something that we put in.

P.S. Not enough of you are using the comments. It would be nice if this was a little more interactive. Leave me a comment for crying out loud. Make an old man happy. ;-)

I couldn't coax a poop out of Goliath this morning, so I hope I don't have to clean up a mess in the house when I get home tonight, but I probably will.

The company is providing a Christmas lunch for us today in the cafeteria dining room. Don't know what is on the menu, but you know I will be sure to let you know.

I was tired this morning, and ended up taking the second to last express train in, but I don't feel too bad now.

Tonight will be a cleaning marathon to get the house back in order for Sheri's return. Do dishes. Clean off counter and kitchen table. Pick some things up from the family room floor. Straighten up the bedroom a little. It actually isn't too bad. I'll put some good music on the stereo and turn it up load. That usually gives me a boost of energy and makes the work go faster.

I want to get some of that stuff that you put on your windshield that makes the rain just run right off so you don't have to use your wipers, and put it on the back window of our Lumina. The van has a wiper on the back window, but the Lumina does not. We had a heavy rain this week while I was driving the Lumina, and I realized that my vision was obscured quite noiticably.

I have noticed this non-city owned street cleaner that has been working around the loop. I would also notice it quite often hanging around the construction site that I have written about where they are building the new Hyatt skyscraper. I finally realized this morning on the way to work what it is doing. It is following the huge tractor/trailor dump trucks that are hauling away mud and dirt from the construction site and getting mud and dirt clods all over the place. I bet that the city made them do that. Very nice. Cleaning up after thenselves.

I am up way way too late for a school night. I will be paying for it tomorrow. Wish me luck. Peace out.

Well, after two trips back forth between work and DePaul, I got my student ID, student number, and registered for class. I wasn't registered because my advisor, who said she was going to register me, hadn't registered me. This became apparent when they tried to create my ID card which requires you to be registered. The ID card people got my advisor on the phone and then handed it to me to straighten things out with her.

She mumbled lots of "That looks strange." and "Hmmm, I wonder why...". The scariest one was when she said "The computer says the class is closed." Grrrrr.... I was not in the mood seeing as how this was my second visit there. She put the phone down for what seemed like 20 minutes, and then picked it up and said I was registered. The ID people entered my name in, and sure enough I was registered. She must have pulled some strings since she made a mistake.

I went over the first time to get my log-on ID so I could print out my tuition statement so I could finish up the tuition reimbursement forms at work. When I got back to work after getting my ID, I logged in and the system did something weird and then kicked me out. When I tried to log back in it said my password was invalid. I called the ID office and they said to call the network help desk. I called them and they said to call the ID office. The help desk technician put me on hold, called the ID office and staightened them out, and then transferred me there. The ID office people said they could reset my password but that I would have to come into the office and show a photo ID. I WAS JUST THERE 30 MINUTES AGO AND TALKED TO YOU IN FREAKIN' PERSON! The policy is in place to protect my information in case someone wants to see what class I am registered for or how much tuition is. Grrrrrr..... So that's why I had two trips there.

Tuition for a graduate class at DePaul is $2,520! Holy crap. I don't think Ashland was more than $1,000. Work covers it 100% plus books and fees.

I bought a DePaul tee-shirt from the student bookstore while I was there. I was going to pick up any books I needed, but the professor has not sent the bookstore what books he will be using this semester. I hope that is not a bad sign.

Now that I am an old time crusty old Chicagoan, I usually don’t bother looking out of the window on the train ride too and from work. For some reason today I put down my paper and watched the Chicago skyline materialize on the horizon. I felt like a tourist seeing it for the first time. The sun reflected off of the very top section of the Sears Tower like a giant fire ball. Very cool.

One time, when we first started taking the train into the city a couple of years ago, we got on the first car of the train and I stood the entire way in looking out of the front window. (Going into the city the train travels backwards with the engine pushing. The engineer sites on the second floor in a special compartment with controls. On the first level there is a window that lets you look straight ahead where you are going.) The other passengers must have thought I was a rube, but I didn’t care. I was excited about being in the city, and it was cool.


I need to go to the DePaul University ID card office at lunch today to get a logon ID and password. I need that so I can log in to the University’s web site and can pay my tuition for next semester. I will take the L there and back at lunch, and probably try something different to eat while I am there. I will get on at the Washington stop at Washington & Wells and take the brown line to the Library stop at Van Buren & Dearborn. I will get on the orange line to get back. (Click on map to the left.)

Our kitchen looks like a bachelor’s kitchen. I think my job for tonight is to load the dishwasher and do a little house work before Sheri gets back.

I feel so bad. We have been getting everyone's beautiful Christmas cards these last couple of days, but we didn't send any out this year. I feel like a bad person.

Thanks for thinking of us, though. Next year we will get on the ball.

About once a month at work they have what they call the “IT Road Show”. During lunch a person from an area will get up for an hour and talk about what their department does. Show some demonstrations. Answer questions. To encourage attendance they also offer free lunch. Nothing fancy, but still a nice treat. Various sandwiches. Pasta salad. Potato salad. Cookies. Pickles. Today was the second one I attended. It was about network latency, and tool that is available for us to simulate latency on our applications. I plain-speak: A program that I am writing that reads a database in Chicago works fine here, but a user in Australia might have problems because of how long data takes to travel their and back. This tool lets us simulate that delay so we can make our applications more efficient.

The IT Road Show I went to before was the group that delivers market data to the traders. Market data is information from Bloomburg, Reuters, etc. about stock prices, government reports, etc. Since we pay the market data providers for each feed, the tool that they built controls who gets to see what data, how much data they see. For example, a person trading oil futures doesn’t need to see data about farm production.

It is supposed to get up to 57° in Chicago today! But, as you can see in the radar to the right and below, we are supposed to have rain all day.

I just got home from running some errands, and the dog is acting a little wierd; like he did something bad while I was gone. I can't find anything though. I was in the kitchen unpacking some things and looking through mail, when I suddenly realized the dog wasn't around. When someone is in the kitchen he is always there hoping for a scrap of food to fall on the floor. I look around the corner into the dining room. Nope. Laundry room where his food and water is. Nope. Family room. Nope. Waiting by the back door to go out. Nope. He has been standing at the top of the steps for a few minutes, apparently waiting for me to come up. Weird. Maybe he liked sleeping most of the day in bed with me and wanted to get snuggely again. Who knows.

I'm feeling better, but I am worried about staying up late because I slept a lot today. Then I will be crap at work tomorrow. I think I will take a melatonin soon.

Mom left a message that she has a seven pound Black Angus standing rib roast on order for my visit home. Yum!

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
-- Albert Einstein

This is how I explain myself.

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
-- Thomas Jefferson. 1743-1826

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe."
-- Abraham Lincoln

Staying home from work today. Didn't sleep much last night. Don't feel good.

Got out of bed about 45 minutes ago. Ate some Apple Jacks out of the box and made a good pot of coffee.

Don't know what I will do today. Feeling better, but kind of weak/sleepy/yucky still.

I still have the check book to balance from 4 statements ago. Maybe that would be a good sick-day job. I should probably get out of the house at least for a little bit today. If I don't, by this evening I will feel really gross and pent up and won't be able to sleep again.

Had a good walk with Goliath. I plotted our course in a map program when we got back and we walked 1.2 miles.

I got a little warm during the walk because he makes me walk fast, so I think I will take a quick shower before I go to bed.

I started a head-ache before I left for the walk. It is a little better now, but still annoying. My nose burns a little bit too. Might be related. I will check the humidifier before I go to bed and make sure it is full of water.

I am chairing a meeting tomorrow morning. I always dread that. Fortunately all the people in the room with me are friendlys. Any friction is either 750 miles away, or in London.

The dog is zonked on the bed behind me in the office.

I just talked to Sheri a little bit ago and she said she misses our SoniCare toothbrush. She took one of the dentist hand-outs we have stashed away for her visit to her family, and said she has gotten very used to the good clean scrubbed feeling you get with the SoniCare. I guess that goes on the list of things that we would replace if it broke.

I came home to a big pee spot in the living room, and long thin strips of paper all over the office from the shredder being tipped over and rummaged through. In spite of that I am still going to bundle up and take him for a walk around the block.

I had dinner at home.

Lean Cuisine - chicken in white wine sauce; mashed potatoes
some peanuts and almonds
the rest of the havarti cheese we got in Wisconsin
a glass of milk

I probably won't do too much else after getting back from the walk. I might have a bill to pay, and maybe call Sheri.

Lunch from the company cafeteria. Northern Italy on the international table. Excuse the spelling; I don't want my food to get cold.

gnocchi with arugala and roasted red peppers
slice of grilled eggplant
polenta
asparagus rissotto
beef boulinasse (sp?)
cold cauliflower salad
apple, blue cheese, walnut, and fresh greens salad
spaghetti squash
breaded chicken cutlet

George Regan Bunn, of Bunn-O-Matic coffee maker fame, died on Saturday, December 7 at the age of 87. I think I will have a cup of coffee in remembrance.

We just got back from PetSmart and we got the Gentle Leader Training Collar by Premier Pet. The only reason I got this one was that it had fitting guidelines by dog's weight, where as the other one had fitting guidelines by breed, and I wasn't sure were Goliath's pedigree fit into their chart.

I couldn't find his old metal pinch collar with the spikes pointing inward before we left, so he was a handfull in the store. I put the new training collar on in the store (which was also a handful). As the instructions said he would, there was ten minutes of fighting, resistance, and trying to scrape it off. Once he realized that the more he did that the more uncomfortable it was, he was perfect. Much better than the pinch collar. Amazing even. I new from looking at the design it would work but I didn't think how dramatic it would be. I can control him just by holding the leash between my thumb and forefinger! That is why halters are used on horses - it takes very little strength to control a large animal by their head rather than their very stong neck.

I took him over to the park across the street were two boys were flying a remote control plane. He wanted to lunge and go nuts, but when he did that it made his head turn back and look at me! It took him a minute and then he realized he would have more fun if he just settled down.

Get one (Dauber and Bear)! You won't be sorry. I had a big stupid grin on my face on the way back from the park because he was a totally different dog. He just trotted along at my left side with actual slack in the leash. He knew that the proper place was right by my side, and any direction I went must be the direction he wants to go. Amazing.

Just heard back from Mom, and a standing rib roast for my visit home is a go. I went to the USDA web site to find cooking temperatures for beef. They had the following guidelines:

Doneness	Temperature
Medium Rare	145º
Medium	160º
Well Done	170º

I think I am going to take Goliath to PetSmart and pick up one of these training collars.
This is what they say about them:

---

Halti Training Head Collar
(The picture of the dog that looks a little like Goliath.)
An effective alternative to the choke collar, enforcing the simple principle that a dog's body will follow where his head leads him. (Bitches may need one size smaller.) Size Chart: M (50 to 90 lbs.), L (90-150 lbs.), XL (150 + lbs.)

Gentle Leader Training Collar by Premier Pet
(the picture with the Dalmation)
The Gentle Leader Headcollar works by putting light pressure on your dog's muzzle and at the back of the neck; replicating the way a "pack leader" gently yet firmly grasps a subordinate's muzzle in his mouth. This sends a clear signal to the dog that YOU are the leader. Along with using positive reinforcement and small food rewards, many dog lovers find they're able to significantly alter their dog's undesirable behavior in a very short time. The Gentle Leader can help you teach your dog to sit, as well as prevent jumping and lunging or tugging during walks.

Because the Gentle Leader is different from any other training collars you may have previously used, it's important to read and follow the complete instructions that are included.

The Gentle Leader is available on its own, or in a Starter Kit which contains one Gentle Leader Headcollar, along with a matching 4-foot leash and step-by-step, 35 minute training video. Gentle Leader is used and recommended by PETsMART's own obedience training instructors.

---

I think I will also go to a drive-through for a little lunch while we are out.

Just got off talking on the phone for 20 minutes with my mother. She said that she tries to keep Shawn aware that he has an Uncle Brad by pointing to my picture and telling him that it is me. Hopefully when he sees me I won’t be a total stranger then. It is neat that she does that. It is also kind of sad that she has to.

I really enjoyed seeing Dylan as much as I was able to in Columbus. To Dylan it seems that the world revolves around Uncle Brad. “Is that bigger than Uncle Brad?”, “Don’t feel afraid, Ben, because Uncle Brad is big and will protect us.”. The highlight of his Thanksgiving trip was going down the basement with me to make “things” at my work bench. This involves cutting, drilling, and gluing various pieces of scrap wood together. I am so cool.

I think the secret is that I still think simple every day things are just as fascinating as he does. We spent 10 minutes watching the ice tea maker make a pot of tea. We just talked about what it was doing. Talking about why the ice made the cracking sound. How the cold water turned into hot water and shot out of the top. I also think I am just a big kid, and like toys just as much as they do. Kids can sense that. I also don’t talk down to kids or talk baby talk.

I am looking forward to seeing Shawn in two weeks. It sounds like he is old enough now to interact with me and pal around. I hope we can hang out and do guy things like Dylan and I did when he was two.

Mom said that her and Dad said that they wouldn’t have anything to write about if they started an on-line journal. Like I have anything that is earth shaking and extremely fascinating? I just write about stuff that occupies my mind, which is just every day ordinary things, and apparently people find that interesting enough to stop by and read every day. I average about 14 visits per day, and the average visit is a little over 9.5 minutes.

We talked about any kind of food I wanted while visiting. She mentioned that Tim had talked about doing a standing rib roast. I am all for that. I also suggested Yorkshire pudding. Yum. I am getting hungry just thinking about it.

It just struck me that I don’t know how my side of the family likes their beef cooked. When I first started going out with Sheri she would get everything well done. I have her down to medium on hamburgers, and medium-rare on steaks. I am about the same, but I can also go done to rare on steak. Filet mignon I would defiantly order rare. My favorite cut is the strip steak. I could go lower on hamburgers, but that is more of an e-coli issue than preference. Also, hamburgers less than medium are messy to eat. They drip too much and make the bun soggy.

My eyes are getting heavy. I think it is time to brush my teeth and go to bed. I think I will listen to my police scanner for a while.

Tonight Sheri and company took Greta out for a surprise 60th birthday party. (Her birthday is actually on Thursday.) They took her to Ruth's Chris Steak House. Sheri called tonight and told me she started with a house salad with lots of crumbled blue cheese. For her steak she got a filet mignon done medium-rare. Their side dishes are huge, so they all shared creamed spinach, sautéed mushrooms, asparagus, and potatoes au gratin. For dessert she ordered the creme brulee. They also had a nice very dry wine with dinner that she said was very good. They got a limousine to pick up Greta and go to dinner.

I had a frozen pizza for dinner.

Sheri is visiting her family in Columbus for a week. When I got back from dropping her off at the airport, Goliath was his usual excited self while he was greeting me. When he felt I had enough he went to the door leading to the garage to wait for Sheri. I had to open the door and let him go in the garage to make sure she wasn't hiding from him.

When we are home he normally follows us around from room to room. Tonight he mostly sat looking out of the dining room window at the driveway waiting for Sheri to show up.

There is a guy at work that has a saying I like. It is "throw a dead cat on the table". It means to present some information that changes in a major and negative way your plans, as in:

"We were all ready to go live with the new system, when the guy from accounting threw a dead cat on the table and said we didn't have funding."

I blew the whole day. Mostly playing on the computer and watching TV. I am going to shower now and go run some errands. I plan on going to WalMart, Menards, and the video store. I might go to Meijer, but I don't have anything planned to purchase there. That would just be to kill time, walk around, and watch people.

I just found out that I have been hearing the little jingle at the end of Sara Lee TV commercials. I always thought it was:

Nobody does it like Sara Lee.

Maybe this is all old news to you, but it really is:

Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.

This morning I got up early to run some errands. When I was done I thought I would stop in Burger King for some breakfast. I tried one of thier new sour dough breakfast sandwiches. Not bad, but they grill the outside of the sandwich, so your hands get greasy. I wouldn't get it to eat in the car.

I stayed there about an hour and read the Chicago Tribune. I love living in a city with a great newspaper.

No plans today except to do chores around the house. Catch up on balancing our checkbook. I am a few months behind. I also have a few music CD's we have purchased recently that I need to catalog in our database and put into the jukebox.

I have added a comment feature to my journal as well. If you just want to leave a quick note, message, question, whatever, just click on the "Comment" button under each post. A window will pop up with four fields:

1. Name
   
2. E-mail
   
3. URL for your web site
   
4. Comments

You can fill in all of the fields; just the comments; or any combination of them. I would imagine that most people will just fill in the name field and type in their comments. The comments should be much quicker than sending an e-mail, which should hopefully encourage more reaction and interaction on the site.

Enjoy!

We took a woman we work with to The Flat Top Grill for lunch today for her birthday. Sheri came along too. It was the first time she had been there. She liked it. You pick your vegetables, meats, and sauces from a buffet type line, and then drop it off at a cooking station with swizel stick with your name and table number on it. They cook it up and bring it to your table. Very good. It is all you can eat.

I have this journal set right now to only show my last 10 posts on the main page. This should reduce the amount of time it takes the page to load over slow connections.

If you want to see a post that I wrote earlier than that, just click on the appropriate archive link at the upper right side of the page.

The Goolge search engine announced today their brand new shopping site called Froogle. I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, and it is still in the beta stage, but knowing Google, it is probably worth checking out.

Sheri just got a neat feature to work in her journal. Comments. Each entry has a little link at the bottom that you can click on to leave a little note, questions, whatever. I am going to try and add it to my journal as well.

We closed on our mortgage re-financing today. The lawyers office was in the Lyric Opera House. We had to write a check for almost $1,400 dollars for closing costs. We should recover the closing costs in about 13 or 14 months with the savings in interest. Our new rate is 6.25%. We did have 6.75%. Glad to have that out of the way.

Afterwards we had lunch at the employee cafeteria in my building.

Back in early October the city of Naperville put a giant color coded map of the city in the train station. It is mounted on foam core and must be over five feet tall and three feet wide! The purpose of the map is to show residents the leaf collection schedule for different neighborhoods. The last collection date on the map was sometime in mid-November. But no one bothered to remove the map. As you may or may not know, I LOVE maps and map collecting. So last night when we got off the train, we lingered around a bit until the crowd thinned, and then Sheri nabbed it. Yeah!

Also at the Naperville train station in the morning there is a man that we have nicknamed the Angry Wheelchair Guy. He goes whizzing by people and if they don’t move he comes close to crashing into them. On the ramp to get to the underground tunnel this morning he was really flying down the ramp. Probably just let the wheels go. About 20 feet from where the ramp intersects with the main walkway he grabs the wheels with his gloved hands and skids the rest of the way to a stop! His chair started to turn sideways a little bit, and a couple of people had to move to avoid getting hit. He just kept rolling. I have seen him on Chicago sidewalks before, and if people are standing in the curb cut-away ramp to get from the sidewalk to street level, he will just about crash into them. He must think that those were put there only for him and how dare anyone else walk there.

Sheri is going to drop me off at home tonight, and then go back out and get her hair cut. She will pick up something for dinner on the way home. I am not hungry because Polly brought in holiday cookies and candy treats. Lunch was good and filling too. Maybe we will just pick for dinner.

Getting ready to walk to Union Station and go home.

I am meeting Sheri for lunch at Rice Fields again for sushi, cold Asian chicken salad, and edamamee (boiled soybeans in their pods).

I programmed a quick-and-dirty time-lapse photography calculator, and by using a 60 minute blank tape, and by shooting 0.55 seconds (the shortest time available) every 10 minutes (the longest interval) I can cover a period of 45 days! I think I can shoot at extended tape speed and get 90 minutes of recording. If that is true I can cover 68 days! That is 2.3 months!

Last night, because we had a late dinner, and because I drank too much iced tea with dinner, and because we didn’t get home until late, I was wide awake at 11:00 PM. We normally turn in around 10:00 PM. I was flipping through the instruction manual for the camcorder, and discovered that the camera has a time-lapse feature.

After going back and forth in my head for a few minutes I decided that I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t get out of bed right then and play with that feature. At this point Sheri is sound asleep.

I dug out the tripod. Went downstairs and got the power cable. And then set up the camera pointing at us in bed. I set the camera to its night-vision mode. This mode records the invisible (to the human eye) infrared spectrum rather than the visible light spectrum. There are even two infrared LED lights on the front of the camera to light up the room for the camera, but we can’t see a thing. How cool is that?

I set the stop action settings to film two seconds of video every 30 seconds. This morning we jacked it into the TV and watched our six hours of sleep while we were getting ready for work. Very fun.

I think I will do it again tonight, but will instead set it to take 0.55 seconds of video every 30 seconds.

Looking through the manual again this morning I saw that there is a “super” night-vision mode. The manual said that it will be 16 time more sensitive to the infrared spectrum than the normal night-vision mode. I will try that out tonight too.

I have started to think of other cool things I could use the time-lapse feature for:

• If we are expecting a big winter storm with lots of snow, I would like to set the camera up in the bedroom window and watch the snow accumulate on the ground. Also watch how traffic affects the snow in the street.
  
  
• Doing certain kinds of yard work. Pruning a tree. Raking the leaves in the yard. Digging up stumps. Anything that takes a while, and has slow steady progress.
  
  
• Set the camera up in the morning in various spots in the house to see what Goliath does all day.
  
  
• Painting a room in the house.
  
  
• A batch of bread dough rising.
  
  
• Clouds and jet contrails in the sky.
  
  
• A log burning in the fireplace.

There is also a stop-action feature that I want to experiment with. The camera comes with a cordless remote control. I could set the camera up on a tripod on the kitchen table, and then get some modeling clay and make Gumby movies!

I don’t know if this kind of stuff will turn into a hobby, but it sure is fun.

Finally got the right UV filter for the camcorder. We went to Hooter's for dinner as planned. The Best Buy and Hooters we went to is in an area (Downers Grove. See the red star on the map below.) that we haven't explored too much. I think we will start heading up that way more often. Lots of stores, restaurants, etc. Not as much traffic to contend with as our regular places have too. Didn't get home until after 8:30 PM.


Got home and put the UV filter on the camcorder. (Not to filter out UV rays, but to protect the lens. I would rather replace an $8 filter than ruin an expensive camcorder with a finger print or a scratched lens.) As long as I had the camera out I shot a few minutes of Goliath just being Goliath. Fun.

We are going to catch the 6:12 PM train home.

We are both staying a little late at work today to finish some things up.

We need to go to Best Buy again tonight to exchange the UV filter for the camcorder again!

After that we will probably go to Hooters for dinner. Sheri has been craving their Buffalo chicken sandwich.

I have started seeing people use the word Google as a verb for searching the internet with www.google.com, as in "I googled different ways to cook mushrooms." I find that annoying. It is like trying too hard to be hip, cool, etc.

In downtown Chicago most of the building entrances are revolving doors. Otherwise the lobbies would be freezing from the doors being wide open. I hate it when the people that are too good for revolving doors use the regular doors. Cold air just whooshes through the lobby. On top of that, the regular doors are their for handicapped people in wheelchairs, so when you open one of those doors, it goes into automatic mode and opens up all the way, and stays open for like 30 seconds. Jerks.

Had lunch with Sheri at the Italian restaurant in the Sears Tower. She had a $10 off coupon on orders over $25.

I had the Pollo alla Picatta. It was two grilled chicken breasts on top of spaghrtti. The spaghetti had julienned zucchini and bits of sweet red pepper. A white wine and lemon sauce with capers was drizzled over all of that. Very good.

Sheri had ricotta cheese filled tortellini with a sun dried tomato sauce. Also very good.

Don't make her mad or she will rap your knuckles with a ruler!

Here is a quicky of Ben from Thanksgiving.

Sheri made a contribution to the League of Women Voters. You would not believe the amount of junk mail she gets every day from other charities asking for money. I once heard that most large charities make more money from selling their donor's names and addresses to other charities than they do from the donations themselves. There is probably, on average, one solicitation per day. We have had three in one day.

She got the membership renewal form in the mail today. I think that she would have renewed, but she was really turned off by how many different organizations they sold her information to.

We are closing on or mortgage re-financing this Thursday. The office we need to go to is right across Wacker Dr. from my office.

Have to go and pre-clean the house for the maid tomorrow.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the cabs in Chicago?

Any way, the Chicago cabbies use their horns a lot. If the traffic is not moving fast enough for them, they beep. If pedestrians are in the crosswalk after the light turns red, they beep. You get the idea. I have noticed that about half of the cabs have horns that sound very weak and tinny. My question is: have their horns just worn out with so much use, or in an attempt to not have Chicagoans totally despise their cabs, have the owners of the companies somehow turned down the volume on the horns or installed weaker ones?

Lisa has set up a blog!!

Who is next? Come on, you know you want to set up one of your own!

I have not heard anything about going to London yet, so that probably means that I am not going. Oh well.

I am having a motivation problem. I would rather be home playing with the camcorder, rough-housing with the dog, and surfing the internet. It doesn't help that it is a beautiful sunny day with no clouds in the bright blue sky. But it is 28°.

I have to document all of the open and closed issues from my 11:00 AM meeting. Blech!

The meeting lasted until after 12:00 PM, so Sheri went to lunch without me. I ate upstairs again. I usually get most of my lunch items from the international table. Today it was Caribbean. I had:

From the international table:

• bok choi and tomato salad
  
• fried plantain and star fruit salad
  
• fish with pineapple salad
  
• jerk chicken
  
• bean and beef pie

From the cold salad table:

• cold chicken and white bean salad

From the other table:

• creamed spinach

So, I am trying to get a bunch of things ready for a meeting that I called and am hosting. There will be 18 people from Chicago, Stamford, and London on the call, and I need to get some spreadsheets finalized and sent out, and all of a sudden everyone wants to talk to me. People chatting me on the company chat system. People stopping by asking questions. Grrrrr....

Went upstairs to the cafeteria and got a few ounces of scambled eggs to eat at my desk for breakfast.

I love the sitcom "Andy Richter Controls the Universe".

It is on Fox on Sunday nights. I think I like it almost as much as I like the Simpsons, which is saying something. I find myself laughing out loud sometimes.

I have been entering the serial numbers from dollar bills (and fives, tens, twenties, etc.) into www.wheresgeorge.com since November 1999.

So far I have entered 2,385 bills that total $10,123.

Of all the bills I have entered, 487 have been re-entered by someone else.

I have recieved a total of 608 hits. This is because some bills have been re-entered more than once.

I have had bills re-entered in 38 states.

We made it to Best Buy to exchange the filter for the camcorder. I asked one of the guys in the camcorder section which filter will fit our model. He said the 30.5 mm one. (The guy last night said the 37 mm would fit.) You guessed it: the 30.5 mm filter doesn't fit.

I combed through the manual again, and this time found that it accepts 30 mm filters. Back to Best Buy again.

I tried to order this Gortex hat today (the blue one) from Land's End but they were out of stock.

I want a water proof hat for when it is raining in Chicago that will keep the rain off of my glasses and head, but is light and small enough to roll up and tuck in a pocket. I have found similar looking hats locally, but they have all been insulated. The insulation makes them too bulky to roll up and stuff in a pocket, plus it would be too hot in the summer. This looks like it.

This is how Land's End describes it:

Better than an umbrella.
From golf to gardening, boating to backpacking — sometimes you need to keep your hands free. When an umbrella is too bulky, take along this GORE-TEX® Baseball Hat. It's light enough to tuck into your pocket, and the 5-piece crown has tape-sealed seams so rain can't get in. The precurved visor fits comfortably and shields your face. Inside, a soft CoolMax® sweatband wicks away perspiration. One size, with adjustable strap in back. Machine wash. Imported.

The Gortex will keep the rain out, but not trap moisture from my head.

We finished watching both movies on Saturday, "Austin Powers in Goldmember", and "The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys".

The Austin Powers movie wasn't that great. It looked like they were trying too hard to be kooky. Go ahead and rent it; it will at least keep your attention for 90 minutes, just don't expect too much.

"The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys" was better, but not great. It was cute in spots and had a few chuckles, but overall I would say that it was dark (not that dark is bad; just letting you know). Jody Foster plays a strict nun at a Catholic school.

When we came home last night, we found that Goliath ripped into two wrapped presents and ate the contents! He started into a third but must have realized that there was no food in that one and stopped.

I do not like tripe.

It smells bad and looks and feels like pieces of soft fat. It wasn't chewy. I picked all the tripe pieces out of the soup and just ate the broth. It smells like poop.

We went to Best Buy last night and bought the camcorder that I mentioned earlier. I took three minutes of video last night (Goliath barking and getting his ball) and then transferred it to VHS video tape just to see how everything works. Pretty cool. I picked up a UV filter to protect the lens, but when I got home it was the wrong size. Maybe we will return that today.

My plan is to keep in handy and try to tell the story of what's going on with us. Probably a very similar style to what I have been doing here, only in video. When something happens or occurs to me that I find interesting, spend 30 seconds shooting some video while I talk about whatever it is that I find interesting. Kind of like a video diary.

We were both hungry for dinner before we went to Best Buy (well it was 8:00 PM) so we had to stop at Fuddrucker's for a burger first. It was killing me to sit and have a nice dinner first. I wanted to get the camera first and then eat dinner while I read the instruction manual, but we both would have been cranky-hungry.

Best Buy has a 24 months same as cash promotion right now. We won't have to pay for the camera for 2 YEARS!
Returned our two DVD's to the video store after Best Buy, but didn't pick up a new movie; too late. Plus I knew I would be focused on the camera.


I am thinking about taking the camcorder to work tomorrow to capture:

1. the people waiting for the train in the morning to go into Chicago
   
2. the huge mass of people at Union Station all trying to exit at once
   
3. the sidewalks of downtown Chicago during morning rush hour
   
4. my office, including my co-workes (they'll love that), the view, and some of the facilities (kitchen area, meeting rooms, etc.)
   
5. the high rise construction project at the north-west corner of N Wacker Drive & W Monroe Street. (They are still drilling the footers. A footer looks like it goes down 40 feet and might be 6 feet in diameter! They drop a big cage of rebar in the hole and then pour concrete in. Lots of big cool machines.)
   
6. standing on the platform in Union Station waiting for Sheri, watching all the tired people running (literally) for their trains.

I made some really good French toast with the rest of the sour dough bread that Sheri's family brought from Columbus at Thanksgiving. Lots of vanilla and cinammon.

I went outside to get the Sunday paper, and there was a package from UPS on the front porch. We usually go in and out through the garage and didn't see it yesterday, so it sat outside all night. It was a Christmas box from Greta!

We are going out for an early lunch or a late dinner to El Loco Burrito. They have a sign that says they have menudo only on the weekends. I asked what it was the last time I was there. She kind of mumbled and said that it was soup with meat, and that it was really good. I looked it up on the internet today. It is soup with tripe and calve's hoof. All the web sites said it is delicious. I will be having menudo in a little bit. I'll let you know how I liked it.

I want a water proof hat for when it is raining in Chicago that will keep the rain off of my glasses and head, but is light and small enough to roll up and tuck in a pocket. This looks like it

The "Trading Spaces" episode on The Learning Channel that was just on was in Naperville!!

I made coffee and frothed milk last night, put in a fire, but we only watched 30 minutes of Austin Powers in Goldmember. Sheri was watching the 5th episode of "Taken" on the SciFi channel and was more than half way through it when I was ready to watch the movie. We didn't start the move until 10:00 PM, and by them I was pretty close to falling asleep.

Just a few minutes ago the city finally sent a crew through our neighborhood to sweep up leaves that everyone dumped at the curb back in November.

Sheri and I took a week off together last month, and I started to write about what we did, but I never finished. Below is where I left off. I left in the notes to myself. They are reminders about what I was going to write about. If you have any questions just let me know.

=============
I started writing this on November 15, 2002

Jennifer (reported to me at Bank One) is pregnant! Yay! She is due on June 12, 2003. Congratulations Tom and Jen!

Sheri and I have taken this entire week off of work together. Here is what we have done so far:

Friday 11/8/02
Don't remember

Saturday 11/9/02
Sheri did a lot of house work and I watched the OSU game. I can't remember too much else.

Sunday 11/10/02
I pruned the maple tree directly behind our family room, and took apart the dryer vent to clean out lint. I used our leaf blower to do a final blow out of the exhaust line.

That evening we rented Windtalkers

Monday 11/11/02 - Veteran's Day

Tuesday 11/12/02
When we first started discussing this vacation week a month or two ago, the original plan was a driving trip through Wisconsin. We were going to tour a bison ranch; tour the Harley Davidson factory; tour the Kohler faucet factory; tour a number of cheese factories; go to the Milwaukee zoo; go to a Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum; the Jelly Belly jelly bean center (what ever that was); the Miller brewery; and the J.C. Johnson Wax building in Racine (the very famous and cool office building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright).

Fortunately Sheri called all of these places last week just to confirm that they were open. Most of them were not! The J.C. Johnson Wax building is only open on Friday afternoons, and only by appointment. The appointment list fills up several months in advance. The bison ranch wasn't really open. It is slaughter season, but they said we could come by and maybe see some bison if they were out. Harley Davidson only has tours in the summer. Same with Kohler faucet. Poop!

So we just decided to make Wisconsin a day trip. On Tuesday we drove north and stopped at Ikea first a bought a new coffee table. I have sanded the top of the table to take of the light coat of stain that is on it, and have already applied a first coat of polyurethane. This way we won't have to worry about coasters.

At Ikea we had $0.65 hot dogs, $0.85 cinnamon rolls, coffee, and Diet Coke for breakfast.

We then headed north on I-90 to Monroe, Wisconsin. Once we got to Beloit, WI the drive was really pretty. Two lane highway; rolling hills; turkeys in the road; huge tracts of land to grow feed for the cows to make cheese.

It was about a two hour drive to Monroe. We had little trouble finding the cheese "factory" at first. I expected signs that said "This way to the cheese!" or something like that. Nope. Almost hidden. The only description that Monroe has on the Wisconsin chamber of commerce site is "Historic cheese producing region". I would have expected a little more fanfare.

Anyway, we entered the building which took us directly into the retail store. Every cheese that they make was available for tasting. Yum! Then we walked through a door in the back to the observation gallery. It was a small operation. Very interesting. In a big brine vat there were hundreds of cheese cylinders floating on end as a guy took big handfuls of salt and tossed it across the tops of the cheeses to cover them. On the other side were too guys working a big tub (5 feet wide by 25 feet long by 3 feet deep) of fresh milk, salt, and culture (cheese bacteria). One guy walked back and forth with a big contraption that was spraying the milk mixture into the tub. I think the source of the milk was the tub, so I think this was just to mix everything up. The other guy was elbow deep into the mixture. I think he was smoothing out the plastic cheese cloth that appeared to be lining the whole tub. Very cool.

We went back to the store and bought $18 of different kinds of cheese.

I guess Monroe has a lot of Swiss immigrants because there were a lot of references to Switzerland that we saw in the city. There were a few Swiss-named restaurants, and we went to one. I had wiener schnitzel and Sheri had chicken cordon bleu. Was pretty good.

Wednesday 11/13/02
Went to the Hollywood Casino in Aurora. Had lunch/dinner at their buffet, and then played the slot machines for about 30 - 45 minutes. Didn't win anything.

Bought a 500,000 candle power spotlight for the car at Harbor Freight for $5.00! Plugs into cigarette lighter.

Today I made a 4 pound batch of soap. It was 50% palm oil from a Liberian friend at work (she gets half the batch); 25% coconut oil (for lather); and 25% olive oil.

Palm oil is a deep dark orange-red color. The final color of the soap is kind of like pumpkin pie.

I scented it with 4 essential oils: tea tree oil; lavender; cypress; and patchouli.

For an exfoliant I was going to add ground oat meal. To clean out the coffee grinder to grind the oat meal, I thought that grinding some raw rice would do a good job of scrubbing any extra coffee grounds from the blades and side of the hopper. It did, but I liked the way the ground rice looked, so I used that as an exfoliant instead.

Thursday 11/14/02
Took the train into downtown Chicago.

Big breakfast at Lou Mitchells. It is an old famous diner. All the women get a box of Milk Dud's when they enter. Everyone gets a complementary donut hole at the front door. You have to go their for breakfast or lunch when you visit.
Water Tower Place Mall

Went to a Jenny Jones Show taping

Harray Caray's for a steak dinner; Sheri had filet, I had porterhouse; split sides of spinach sautéed in olive oil and garlic, and a side of sautéed mushrooms; $100 tab with tip

Took cab to Union Station to catch the 6:50 PM express train.
Took train back home
Rented Harry Potter
Stayed up till 2:00 AM

Friday 11/15/02
Watched Harry Potter
A few errands

We have a programmable thermostat for our furnace. Below is a chart that shows how we currently have it programmed:

	Weekday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning	5:45 AM/66º	8:45 AM/65º	8:45 AM/64º
Daytime	7:00 AM/57º	10:00 AM/63º	11:00 AM/64º
Evening	6:15 PM/63º	6:00 PM/63º	6:00 PM/63º
Night	10:00 PM/57º	10:45 PM/57º	10:00 PM/57º

Now, before you groan and say that 57º is too cold to sleep in, little 3 month old Ben was here for Thanksgiving, and the comment I heard a couple of times was that he slept really really well here.

Isn't this the neatest pill container you have ever seen? It looks just like a giant pill. I got it at Chiasso. I love that store. You could buy me anything in that store. Especially the clocks.

Has anybody figured out what my user name (im2xlt) here and at my Geocities site means?

It is my shirt size. As in "I'm 2XLT". I don't know if it is obvious or obscure (or neat or stupid for that matter). But now you know.

I would love it if other family members and freinds started to keep a blog (web log) on the internet. This site is very easy to get started with, and it is free.

If you are interested, just go to www.blogger.com and look on the right side of the page about half way down. You will see the words "SIGN UP". Under that are three fields. In the user name field enter the ID you want to have. My ID is im2xlt. In the password field enter the password that you want, and in the confirm password field just re-type your password. This is to make sure you entered it right the first time.

There will be a couple of screens after that asking you for your preferences. Don't worry too much. You can easily go back and change anything if you want.

It takes just a minute or two. You will have your first post up in under 5 minutes.

But if you do run into problems just send me an e-mail. I am happy to help.

After work we:
1. Stopped at the gas station and filled up the van.
2. Went to the video store and got "The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys" and "Austin Powers in Goldmember".
3. Had dinner at Portillo's. I had an Italian beef with sweet peppers and a hot dog. Sheri had a hamburger.
4. Went to the Mexican bakery to get a little dessert for watching the movie tonight.

I am going to make some regular coffee (not espresso) and steam froth some milk to stir into it. We are also going to light a fire.

This is the camcorder model that we are leaning towards. It is the "DCR-TRV25 MiniDV Handycam® Camcorder".

Best Buy sent us a 10% off coupon that is good this weekend only. We will probably end up with a camcorder before the weekend is over.

A file photograph of Fitzwilliam Hunt fox hounds exercising in Milton Park, Cambridgeshire, November 1, 2002. Long-awaited British government proposals concerning hunting with dogs are expected to offer a compromise when they are announced on December 3, 2002, banning some hunts but allowing others. REUTERS/Peter Macdiarmid

I finally got a couple of expense reports subbmitted today that I have been procrastinating on. I should get back about $600.

I also finally got the tuition reimbursement paperwork submitted to the HR department. My first class starts on January 7. I owe them one more form and I should be done with that.

My advisor at DePaul e-mailed today and said that she will be able to enroll me in the class I want.

We have been hearing a fairly consistent squeaking noise coming up through the duct work from the furnace at home. I hope it doesn't turn into something expensive. It's kind of weird as you move from room to room and hear the same squeak coming from different vents.

We have a really good employee cafeteria one floor above me. I like to get just a little bit of everything so I can taste it all. Most of it is by weight. Today I had:

water cress salad
heart of palm salad
Israeli cous cous
collard greens
cold grilled eggplant
Brazilian beef stew
Brazilian fish and coconut stew
turkey in a spiced tomato sauce