This is my tomato patch I planted a couple weeks ago.



Sheri planted a couple flats of flowers but ALL of the ones in the front rows died for some reason. The impatiens are doing well.



This is along the back edge of our yard.



Our goat's beard plant.





I don't know what the problem is with our ligularia. In the past if it doesn't get enough water it will wilt and look like it is going to die. You give it a big dose of water and it literally perks back up in an hour or two. That didn't work this year. I think it might have been damaged by a frost we had and is having a hard time recovering.



Our ornamental grass had a slow start last year, but this year it has taken off. Notice our hostas are intact thanks to our smelly rotten egg-based rabbit repellant.

Our shish kabobs on the grill.



All cooked up and ready to eat.

The shish kabob turned out excellent! Better than I expected. Before we left the house this morning around 10 AM I cubed the steak into bite-size pieces and put them into a bowl of teriyaki to marinate.

When we got home at 1:30 PM I cleaned the mushrooms, but them in half and let them marinate in teriyaki for a bit. Mushrooms are very absorbent so I only let them marinate for 10 – 15 minutes.

After I got the mushrooms going I cleaned and quartered two large sweet onions. Actually they were so big I cut actually cut the onion into sixths. I skewered these without marinating, but the next time I would let them sit in teriyaki for a bit. The salt would have helped to break down the cell structure a bit and make them more tender.

At this point I started the grill, and then skewered the mushrooms and then the sirloin cubes.

The mushrooms and beef were cooked perfectly. The onion was sweet and little smoky/charred tasting, but I would have liked it just a little softer. It was still good though.

Of the three we both liked the beef the best. I expected Sheri to like the mushrooms the best, but the meat was really really good. I think the secret was the small size of the cubes. Because they were small I didn't have to cook them very long. I have had kabobs that were cut too large and they get dried out because you have to cook it too long to get the centers done.

The sirloin we got was normally around $9 per pound, but it had a sell-by date of today so it was only $4 per pound. It was a great piece of meat.

I don't know why but I have never prepared kabobs before. This is great summer food. Easy and quick to prepare. Light. It doesn't heat up the kitchen. Low carb high protein. Lean. Delicious. What more could you want?

We are going to keep an eye on the butcher shop and whenever they have sirloin on special pick some up and make kabobs.

That is going to be our main meal of the day. We have a few ears of corn and some peaches for later on tonight when we get hungry.

The outside thermometer says 92 degrees right now, but we have the blinds on the south side of the house closed and with a fan on it is fairly comfortable. No air conditioning yet, but I don't know how long that will last.

We picked up a sirloin steak, a couple big sweet Vidalia onions, and a large pack of whole fresh mushrooms. Tomorrow we are going to make shish kabob and some corn on the cob for lunch. We also got a few fresh peaches for dessert. After we eat that we are going to settle in and watch the soccer game.

We went to Meijer to pick up just a few things, and for something to do, after a nice dinner in our downtown and strolling around for a bit of people watching. We ended up spending over $100. All good stuff though.

Sheri is on call this weekend so we are sticking close to home.

For the longest time my weight was holding very steady around 232 – 233. I started to get complacent because I could eat something I wasn't supposed to and my weight stayed the same. I started having more treats because my weight pretty much was stable. Over the last four weeks or so though I added about five pounds.

I am back down to 235, but my goal this summer is to get below 230, and if I do that then get to 225. I think it is totally doable.

We planned on watching a movie tonight, but by the time we got home it was almost 9 PM so we are just putzing around the house. I put the lawn sprinkler on when we got home and I have to go turn that off soon.

A vendor is going to demo a GPS camera for me today. The latitude and longitude are tagged on every picture you take, and then there is software that automatically positions it in our GIS. We could shoot 100 pictures of construction sites in a day, come back to the office and have them all be linked in a web-based map before we went home for the day! I am pretty sure we are going to get one.

I bought a sheet of these stamps at the post office today.

I got my 12 tomato plants planted in the garden this evening. Better late than never. Of course last year I don't think I got them in until July!

I meant to pick up two packs of traditional red tomatoes, but I picked up one pack of yellow tomatoes by mistake. Oh well.

None of the sunflowers I started indoors a couple months ago made it. There are a couple holding on, but I don't expect them to do anything. I still have a bunch of seeds, so I am going to plant them around the edges of the tomato plant patch and see what happens, and maybe some other random spots around the yard. I just have to make sure Sheri doesn't go after the seedlings with her Weed-B-Gone. Maybe I will mark them with popsicle sticks.

I have purchased all of the materials I need to make this bicycle map holder. I will let you know how it works out. Here are the instructions.

I only have about one more month until my sixth-month probationary period is over at my new job. w00t!

Things are going really well there and I am thoroughly enjoying the job.

This morning we got a pretty early start. Sheri had some strawberry shortcake on the patio and did her crossword for breakfast. I made some French press coffee and started working on the pile of mail and bills that I let accumulate this week.

After Sheri finished her crossword she cut the grass and then did some touch-up around the yard with Weed-B-Gone. After that she was ready for a break so she went out for a bit of clothes shopping. She didn't get anything, but on the way back home she got an oil change for the car.

After I got done with the bills I did a few more chores around the house. Chopped up the pineapple we got a couple days ago; applied some rabbit repellant around the yard; and a couple other things I can't remember.

Sheri was so anxious to get the bikes out that she brought them up from the basement without my help. I got the tires inflated and the plan was just to go for a short ride around the neighborhood. We decided to ride to the little shopping strip that is about a mile from our house to mail a letter. When we got there we discovered the mailbox had been removed.

We had a quick conference and decided to backtrack and go to another mailbox a little farther away. After we got the letter mailed we had another conference: go home or explore the new bike path the city is about halfway done building. We decided to see where the new bike path led.

We ended up biking all the way to the nice little downtown of our city. We went to our local independent coffee roaster and each had an iced coffee at the sidewalk tables and watched all of the people walking up and down the sidewalk. Really nice.

Before we got up to leave we started thinking about what to do for dinner. We decided to stop by the grocery store on our ride home and pick up a few things. I got a few pork chops, fresh salsa, and fat free sour cream. I grilled the chops and then sliced them up in thin strips and we made tacos with some excellent fresh tortillas we discovered. We ate on the patio and had strawberry shortcake for dessert.

We ended up riding about 10.5 miles. I also used the heart rate monitor I got last weekend. It worked great.

In today's Sunday newspaper ad section Office Depot had the Microsoft wireless laptop mouse on sale for $10. It is normally $30. It works great and I think I am going to go pick up at least one more. You do not need to mail in a rebate. It is $10 at the cash register. The package says the one AA battery it takes should last about 6 months.

After picking that up at Office Depot we stopped at PetSmart to see if there were any dogs to say hi too. We also picked up two pounds of small Scooby snacks to have on hand for the neighbor's dog we like.

From there we went to Walgreens because they had a good sale on cosmetics. While Sheri was picking out her stuff I wandered around the store and I came across the second incredibly good deal of the day. The Timex heart rate monitor usually retails for around $50, and they had it on sale for only $26! I got the last one too. Last year I was kicking around buying one, and probably would have eventually even without the bargain-basement price.

We have a stationary exercise bike with a built in heart rate monitor and I love using that because it ensures that you are both:

a) not overdoing it by making sure your heart rate does not go over your high target, and
b) makes sure the 30 minutes you are taking out of your schedule to exercise is actually benefiting you by making sure your heart rate is high enough.

There have been times I have been on my regular bike and I didn't know if I was pushing myself too hard or not. Maybe it just felt like I was because it was hot or thirsty? I didn't know. With this monitor I will have more productive rides because I will know for sure what my body is doing.

It has an upper and lower limit alarm. If it hits the upper limit you know to back off before you hurt yourself. If the lower limit goes off you know to kick it up a notch to make your exercise time really count.

I have read a few studies that said exercising above your recommended heart rate does not burn significantly more calories or give you any extra health benefits, and could actually be dangerous. If you do not get your heart rate high enough you are missing out on all of the benefits of your exercise time. Keeping your heart rate in your zone is the best way to make the most out of your efforts.

There is a transmitter on a strap that goes around your chest and transmits your heart rate to the watch. I tried it on and it picked up the signal and my heart rate right away. I got on the bike to see if the two numbers matched up. They did to within just a few beats from each other.

Sheri got a paged to a bridge call while we were out, so we had to cut it short and go home. When we got home she could not connect to work, so she had to drive into work to fix things. I didn't have anything going on so I came with her. I am sitting at the desk next to hers writing this and using my new wireless mouse on my laptop.

When she is done we might go to the Starbuck's next door for an iced coffee and see if there is anything we want to do on this end of town. We are spitting distance from O'Hare for your reference.

We were watching a movie, but Sheri got paged to a bridge-call, so I turned the TV to Sabado Gigante (good eye-candy to watch without volume) and I am going to make a batch of guacamole. It sounds like a network problem so I don't think she will have to get too involved. Just hang on the line in case they have a systems issue.

I like going down to the river and try to get the geese to bite my fingers. Today I was successful.

click for close-up

I don't know how it works in the ladies room, but in the men's room if you walk in and every urinal and toilet bowl is being used, you are obligated to say "It looks like a full house."

You are also obligated to say it in such a way that indicates you think it is the funniest and most original line ever quipped.

This picture was taken mere minutes ago as we sit in Burger King having breakfast. I am picking out a hotel on the Internet for a trip I have coming up while Sheri works a crossword.

We just got back from the grocery store where we discovered a new pasta product from Barilla called Barilla Plus. Here are the amazing ingredients in the order listed on the package:

Semolina (same as regular pasta)
Lentils
Chickpeas
Oats
Spelt
Barley
Egg whites
Flaxseed
Wheat fiber
Durum (same as regular pasta)

One 2 ounce serving has 17% RDA of protein and 16% RDA of fiber. It also has 15% of the RDA of ALA Omega-3.

I can't go nuts eating it, but when I do eat pasta it will be much better for me than regular pasta. I have already cooked half of it and made macaroni salad. It tastes just like regular pasta. We have tried some other low carb and high fiber pasta that was too tough or cardboard tasting.

After Sheri spent 15 hours last night holding a telephone handset to her ear we thought it would be a good idea to invest in a good telephone headset. I had done just a little bit of preliminary research and it seemed a good one, not the best, but a good one, would be in the $80 to $130 range.

Then we had the thought that maybe she could just bring her headset from work home on the weekends she is on call, or maybe they had an extra one lying around. So when we left the house this afternoon our intention was just to go to a few places and price them out and read the packaging.

The first place we stopped, Office Depot, had the GN Netcom 5140, normally $80, on sale for $60. GN Netcom and Plantronics were the two brands I saw most often during my research so I felt comfortable with the brand. For that price we just went ahead and bought it.

When I got home and set it up I could hear the other person but they could not hear me. Also it wasn't working the way the instructions said it should. When I hung up the phone the call was supposed to terminate. It didn't and I still heard the call through the headset. I also could not dial when in headset mode. I had to switch to handset mode, dial, and then switch back to headset mode.

I tried another phone and it behaved the exact same way. I thought a faulty microphone could of course be way the other person could not hear me, but I couldn't see how that could be responsible for the other problem with the hanging up and the dialing stuff, and I couldn't believe that an $80 headset could have two major things wrong with it. I decided to take it back and exchange it. When I brought it back home I behaved exactly the same as the other one. Crap. The chances of two units have the exact same defect seemed to be about zero, so the problem had to be me. I have set up several telephone headsets before, and I checked and rechecked how I had everything connected, but it just wasn't working.

I tried calling their customer service line but it is closed on the weekends. I decided to just put it out of my mind and give them a call on Monday. Something was just not right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

About an hour or so later a thought slammed into my head: both of the phones I tried were the Slimline style where most of the guts of the phone are in the handset. That put the hook downstream of the amplifier. With a conventional phone the hook would be upstream of the amplifier.

Did we even have a non-Slimline style phone in the house? I couldn't remember. I guess I would go to Radio Shack tomorrow and find the cheapest conventional style phone. Then I remembered a packing box that I have not touched since we moved here five years ago. I wasn't sure, but I really seemed to remember a phone in that box.

I dug out the box and sure enough there was a phone. I plugged everything in and it worked like a champ! Then I felt bad that I returned a perfectly good headset.

I am glad we picked one up today and that I persevered to get it working because Sheri has been on the phone again for almost an hour, and it looks like she will be on for at least another two hours.

Poor Sheri. It is 9 AM and she is still on the phone. 13.5 hours. She doesn't think it is going to be fixed in the next hour or two either.

What makes it even more sucky is she thinks rather than pay her the extra 15 hours, or whatever it turns out to be, they are just going to tell her to take a day or two off.

I woke up at 4:30 am, rolled over, no Sheri. Panic. "SHERI!?" No answer. "SHERI!?" No answer. At the top of my lungs "SHERI!?" I hear a whispered response from downstairs. "what?" OK, she's alright and not blacked out somewhere.

Poor thing. She is still working. The last box got corrupted and they are trying to restore or rebuild some databases. I am just glad it was the very last box they did and not one of the first ones. Well at least she is hourly right now, and so far that is almost an extra 10 hours. From the way it sounds it will probably be at least another two hours which puts her at 7 am and 12 hours of extra pay. I feel wide awake now but I know I am going to crash hard later today.

Sheri has to work tonight, but fortunately she can do it from home. I am not sure what exactly she is doing but it involves 22 servers and several other people on a conference call. She is stopping them. Loading stuff on them. Other people do stuff. Starts them back up. It was scheduled to go from about 7:30 PM until midnight. It is almost 12:30 AM and she still has a few more to do. At least she can do it from home.

I want to go to bed but I will stay up and keep her company. We got a pizza for dinner so she could pick on it if she got hungry. I have made coffee. Read a little bit of the book I am reading about coffee. Surfed the Net. Played with my GPS. Made iced tea. Drank iced tea. When it is time to go to bed I know the coffee and tea are going to start wanting back out and I probably won't sleep very much. We have a brunch date with her Starbuck's friends tomorrow morning. (Actually this morning now.)

I started 12 sunflowers in 6 starting pots about a month ago and they are ready to be planted outside. I want to do it this weekend but I am concerned it might be too cold. I have rabbit repellant to spray them with once I plant them. I will plant the rest of the packet of seeds in the ground around the sprouted seedlings.

Work is going well. I feel like people appreciate and value my work which is always a nice environment to be in. Plus I enjoy it most of the time. I think I am ready for a day off though. I can not take vacation or sick time for my first six months there. Stupid. I wonder if they would change that rule if a new hire came to work with the flu and got the HR director sick because the newbie couldn't take a sick day.

The "b" key on our laptop's keyboard is broken. I am thinking about taking it apart to see if I can fix it, but I am worried I might cause more damage than good.

Me enjoying a cup of coffee before our Intelligentsia Coffee factory tour last weekend. I think they probably have the best coffee in the United States. It is what Charlie Trotter serves in his restaurant!


We took home a pound of coffee from this freshly roasted batch. As Shawn would say: "Deeeeeeelicous!"

There is a neat piece of free software called POI Loader you can download from Garmin for use with most of their recent-model GPS units.

POI stands for Point Of Interest. My GPS came with about 6 million POI's all over the United States. A POI can be a restaurant, airport, a historical monument, gas station, ATM, post office, shopping center, movie theater, hospital, etc. In early 2000 when Sheri had her gall bladder attack at 2:00 AM in a town we were unfamiliar with I just went to the hospital POI tab on my GPS, searched for the nearest hospital, and it got us there.

The POI Loader software lets you create your own POIs and then transfer them to your GPS unit. You could load new restaurants, mailboxes, all of your friend's houses, etc.

It would be a pretty neat tool if it stopped right there, but it does two other even neater things.

First it can load POIs with speed information attached to it, and if you go over the speed specified by that POI it will start beeping at you. You can program in speed traps, school zones, tight curves, etc. If you stay at or below what you have programmed in it does nothing. This is a feature that gets a lot of use in the UK. The have a huge network of unmanned speed cameras all around the country. A small industry has popped up that keeps track of these speed cameras and daily posts fresh POI files on the Internet. People load them into their GPS units before a drive and get a warning before they approach a speed camera. How far away from the POI it sounds an alarm is dependant on your speed. I think it said it calculates the distance to sound the alarm so you have 36 seconds before you get there. If you are going 30 mph it will warn you when you are 1,584 feet from it. If you are going 70 mph it will warn you at 3,696 feet which is almost 3/4 of a mile.

The second neat thing it can do with POI's is a proximity alert. This gives you a little warning before you get to a point regardless of how fast you are going. The impetus for this was the stop light cameras that take your picture when you run a red light. You can also use this feature for other cool stuff. Maybe for all of the rest stops along a tollway so you do not miss one. Maybe all of the Starbucks to give you a heads-up in case you need a little caffeine. Maybe extra large alignment-destroying potholes. The possibilities are endless.

I just loaded a few test ones for around the neighborhood and went for a quick drive. They work as advertised. Very cool.

The record format is longitude, latitude, description@speed

So a speed trap record on I-88 might look something like this:

-88.17385,41.80625,Speed Trap@63

I would not get a warning unless I was going 64 mph or faster.

The proximity POI has two things different about it. The first is there is no speed indication associated with it so a record would look like this:

-87.64190,41.67796,Halsted & 119th

The second thing different is not in the record format, but in the name of the file you create. If the upload program sees the word "redlight" anywhere in the name of the file it will treat all POIs in that file as proximity POIs. That's it. Piece of cake.

By the way both of my examples really are either a speed trap or a red light camera. Feel free to use them.

The type of file these records need to be in is CSV which stands for comma separated values. It is just a text file with the extension changed from .txt to .csv.

You put all of the CSV POI files in one directory and point the POI Loader to that directory. Any CSV file it sees in that directory will get loaded. It will overwrite any previous POIs you had loaded on your GPS.

One of the things we do on a regular basis is try to remember where the closest mailbox is while we are out running errands to mail back a DVD from our on-line queue. I think a long term project I might do is shoot the GPS points for all of the mailboxes I come across in our city and then load them to our GPS. Yeah, I know my idea of fun is a little bit different.

We learned on our coffee factory tour that roasting destroys acids in the coffee. A lightly roasted coffee has the most acid while French roast has almost no acids left.

As I mentioned the other night we received the GPS we ordered. It is the Garmin StreetPilot i2 and so far I think I love it. It is going to replace the GPS unit we have that cost more than five times what this one costs.

The form factor is really amazing. It is entirely self-contained in a package about the size of a tennis ball. It is only $240 so obviously there are some things missing that the $2,000 - $3,000 factory installed units have.

1. The screen is small at only 1.7" wide by 1.3" high. If you have ever driven with an automotive GPS you know that once you are going you rely mostly on the audible instructions. You glance at the screen once in a while for clarification on a turn, distance until next turn, and name of the street you need to turn on. The screen size is totally adequate for all of this.

2. The screen is black and white, not color. Color looks nice and pretty, but I think it only provides minimal, if any, extra functionality or usability over black and white.

3. It does not have a hard drive. It comes with a DVD with street level detail of the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. You have to load map data from the DVD to the GPS using your computer. I uploaded all of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Missouri and that is all it can hold. If I was going to travel to another state I would have to delete a state and then add the new state. It took about 15 minutes to load all of that data to the GPS. If you were a salesman that covered more than five states regularly that might become inconvenient. For my purposes it is a totally acceptable tradeoff between functionality and price.

4. One of the biggest reasons for the huge price differences between this unit and other more expensive units is how it handles the temporary loss of the GPS signal when going under bridges, tunnels, heavy foliage, etc. On the factory installed units there are inputs to the GPS from the cars speedometer, a compass, and/or gyroscopes. Let's say you enter a long tunnel that has a fork about half way through. The expensive unit will keep making a guess on your location based on how far you have traveled based on your speedometer. At the fork the compass and/or gyroscopes will know if you veered left or right. This process is known as dead reckoning. When you exit the tunnel it will take a few seconds to pick up the GPS signal. To the user it should all be transparent and it will appear that the GPS knew exactly where you where the entire time. Our old portable unit was obviously not tied into our car's speedometer, but it did have a couple gyroscope-like sensors inside of the unit. When it lost the signal it would know if you veered one way or the other, and it could also sense acceleration and deceleration. If it didn't sense an increase or decrease in speed it assumed you maintained the speed you were traveling when the signal was lost. Our new GPS does not have any ancillary sensors like that. When it loses signal it will keep plotting your course for 30 seconds using the speed when the signal was lost. It won't know if you have accelerated, stopped, or if you took a turn. Again, the reduced functionality is totally offset for me by the huge price difference.

The lack of a larger screen, hard drive, and ancillary sensors is also what lets the unit be stuffed into a purse or laptop bag, and then used in any car you want.

You can search from over 6 million points of interest. (restaurants, hospitals, shopping centers, etc.) or you can enter an address or intersection.

There is software that lets you load your own points of interest data. There are lots of enthusiast sites where you can download POI files others have created. (mailboxes, speed traps, etc.)

The unit itself feels solidly built. The scroll wheel has a nice smooth feel. The buttons have a nice firm click.

We have not used it for any trips yet where we did not know where we were going, but from my experience with it so far I have no problems recommending it.

For an extra $60 (300 total) you can get the StreetPilot i3 which is the same unit except with a color display.

For an extra $140 ($380 total) you can get the StreetPilot i5 which has a color screen and all of the map data already loaded. You do not have to load map data from a DVD.

Outside the Weiner Circle late Friday night.



This was our order.



People waiting in line for some tasty dogs and abuse.

Last week was our 10 year anniversary and we wanted to do something special. We decided to spend the weekend in Chicago. At 6 PM on Friday we had a cab pick us up at home and take us to the local train station. We got to Union Station around 7:30 PM and then hopped on the L to get to the northeast corner of the Loop. We walked to the hotel, checked in, and went up to our room to freshen up and relax for a little bit. We were a little tired from the day at work as well as getting downtown.

After about 30 minutes or so at 9 PM we changed clothes and went back out. We took the Brown line north to the Diversey stop and walked to the world-famous Weiner Circle. I have never been there but have wanted to for a long time.

It is a really good hot dog stand open very late at night, but what makes it famous is the way the staff is rude to you. Not rude like at Ed Debevic's, but rude like dropping the F-bomb, along with several other bombs, every other word. If you don't order fast enough they tell you to hurry the &%$# up. If you stumble on your order they tell you to get the @#$%& out of your mouth. You get the idea. They didn't give me a tough time, but gave me a dirty look and didn't talk to me other than "What do you want?" and "$10.19". The dogs and fries were fantastic though. At least equal to Gold Coast Dogs, probably a little better because they put more stuff on. The fries were fantastic too as well as a bargain.

After we ate and hung around a bit to watch others getting abused, we walked across the street to a 7-Eleven for a few things, and then back to the L stop.

Back at the hotel we got into our PJ's and watched TV in bed until around midnight.

Saturday morning we woke up at 6:30 AM and went downstairs for the buffet breakfast. It is normally $19 per person, but because we used our AAA discount we also got coupons for free breakfast. It was really good. They had an omelet station, and they brewed Starbuck's coffee. We took our time and read the newspaper for a couple hours.

We walked to the L and took the Green line west to the Ashland stop, and then walked a couple blocks to the Intelligentsia coffee factory. The first Saturday of each month they give tours of the facility. I have wanted to take the tour since I discovered Intelligentsia, and it just happened to work out for us. The tour is $7 per person, but each person gets a half pound of freshly roasted coffee, which is about what their coffee costs anyway, so it's kind of like a free tour with the purchase of their coffee.

They roasted a 69 kilogram (152 pounds) burlap bag of coffee to illustrate the roasting process, and then that freshly roasted batch of coffee is what they sent us home with.

We took the L back to the Loop and went to the Marshall Field's store for a light lunch. We went to the basement deli and got a half pound of pesto chicken salad, a half pound of broccoli salad, and a couple of rolls. We split that and then just sat there for a while and watched all of the people. After a while we got an iced coffee and an oatmeal cookie.

Around 2:30 PM we walked back to the L and took the Brown line north to the Belmont stop. We had 4 PM tickets to the Blue Man Group. We had a great time and recommend it.

After the show we went to a nearby Ethiopian restaurant. We have never tried Ethiopian food and we both really enjoyed it. The most distinctive thing about the dinner is the big sour dough pancakes that come with the dinner. One large pancake is laid out on a platter and everything is ladled onto that. We ordered a dinner-for-two combo and it came with lamb, chicken, spinach, cabbage, and something similar to hummus. It also came with four of the pancakes on the side. You ripped off a piece of the pancake and used that to scoop up some food from the platter. No utensils are used. The dinner also came with a couple of appetizers: a bowl of vegetable soup, and a small bowl of cold lentils and some flour tortilla squares to scoop it up with. Sheri LOVED the lentils. Slight spicy. Dessert was a small bowl of something between yogurt and cream cheese with a raspberry sauce drizzled over it.

We enjoyed our leisurely walk back to the L and the ride back to the hotel. We watched Mad TV and Saturday Night Live in bed until we fell asleep.

Sunday morning we woke up and had breakfast at the buffet again, read the paper in the lobby for a little bit, and then took a cab to Union Station in time to get the 10:30 AM train back home.

When we got back home the GPS I ordered was waiting for me on the porch. I didn't expect it until Tuesday. I was glad to get it early, but I was also a little annoyed that it sat on porch for over 24 hours, but all's well that ends well. I LOVE it and highly recommend it. I will write more in-depth about it very soon.

Sheri came back from doing a little shopping and then we went to Meijer for a few things. We picked up some ground beef and a couple ears of corn on the cob for dinner.

I took out the glass and installed the screen on our front door, and moved the garden hose to the backyard and watered the flower beds.

We are watching Desperate Housewives now and will go to bed when it is over.

That about covers our great anniversary weekend and I will post pictures of the weekend tomorrow.

I like keeping Kashi Go Lean bars on hand at work because they are high in protein (one bar has 20% RDA), high in fiber (24% RDA), and its carbohydrates have a low glycemic index, which means your body slowly converts it to blood sugar rather than giving you a huge spike all at once.

Anyway, some of the flavors have a nougat-like center that is very very firm, to the point of hurting your teeth and tiring out your jaw. I had the idea to microwave it for a few seconds to soften it up.

I tossed it into the microwave and pressed the start button. After just two seconds the inside of the microwave was filled with bright sparks. I forgot the inside of the wrapper is metallic. I opened the microwave door and the wrapper and shrink-wrapped itself tightly to the bar. I guess the metallic part heated up quickly and caused the plastic part of the wrapper to melt and shrink. I looked really cool though.

I pried the wrapper off and put it back in the microwave by itself for an additional 10 seconds. It worked great. The inside was much easier to bite off. I think that is what I will do with them from now on.

Around 3:00 AM this morning I was half awake and heard a noise coming from Sheri's side of the bed. It took me a second for it to register, but then I determined it was Sheri grinding her teeth.

It didn't sound just like teeth clicking against each other, but a destructive high-pressure grinding that would most surely result in going to the dentist for painful crowns to replace the parts that got chipped off. Once it sunk in I quickly jumped to wake her up as quickly as possible to stop the damage. It turned it was just the sound of her trying to force the plastic cap back onto a tub of Vaseline. I got shivers for the next couple of minutes every time I heard the sound in my head and imagined it was her teeth.

I made a slight faux pas today. The admin stopped by to drop off my paycheck. She is normally a serious person, but I think she likes passing out paychecks because everyone is happy to see her when she has money for them. Anyway, I always take the opportunity to flash a big smile and say something appreciative.

Today I forgot it was payday and I said so. Her smile lessened a little bit and then she said "How could you forget it's payday. I run out of money."

Whoops.

I think it might work out well to leave my USB flash drive plugged into my PC at work all day. As I get thoughts that I want to quickly write something about I can do that and save it to the drive. When I get home in the evening I can just do a dump to the Internet of all my important thoughts at once.

If I had to replace both of our cars right now I am pretty sure it would be with a Toyota Corolla (41 mpg) and a Toyota Scion xB (32 mpg). The primary reason is superb gas mileage. The secondary reason is Toyota's reputation for reliability. We don't need anything bigger because it is just the two of us.

At the new job sites like blogger.com are filtered so I can't make quick posts during breaks like I used to. I miss doing that because it was a good way to get something out of my head and then refocus on whatever I was doing.

Now when I get home from work writing a post falls very low on my priority list. By the time I bring in the mail, go through the mail, change clothes, run any errands we may have, do any chores we may have, pay bills, etc., I am not in much of a mood to sit down and write.

At least a few times each day something will pop into my head and I say to myself I want to write about that, but it just have not been able to get around to it in the evenings, or I forget about what I wanted to write about.

I just got ANOTHER birthday gift in the mail today! It is a Lexar JumpDrive Sport 1 GB USB flash drive. I love the form factor of the Sport. The "cap" is made of flexible rubber and covers the whole drive. It is also what attaches to the lanyard. Every other drive has the hook attached to the drive itself. If you need to use the drive you have to take your lanyard off to plug in the drive. Having the rubber holder design lets you remove the drive and plug it in while leaving the cap on the lanyard. Thanks Mom-In-Law!



I had a JumpDrive Sport that was only 512 MB, but I lost it a few months ago. I felt naked without it, and TurboTax (or it might have been Office Depot) had a promotion of a free USB drive with the purchase of their software. The drive was only 128 MB, but it didn't cost me anything. I will give this drive to Sheri to keep in her purse.

In 2005 I was self employed and made quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS, but I didn't think to do the same for the State. I got a bill in the mail yesterday from the State for a little over $100 for a penalty for not paying taxes to them all last year. Ouch.

I was asked to sit in on the monthly board meeting at work today. That was pretty cool.

I am starting some sunflowers in little pots on the kitchen window sill right now. They are all about 4 inches tall and looking pretty good. They each have four good sized leaves right now and are almost holding themselves up. They are resting a little bit on the window, but that might be because they are all leaning that way to get more sun. If they were outdoors and the sun was overhead they would probably all be pointing straight up. Last year I planted sunflowers in the garden and the rabbits ate every last one of them as soon as they were only an inch or two high. I really want to do an Elmer Fudd on those little bastards.

I wanted to cut the grass and then go for a bike ride with Sheri after work tonight, but didn't have the energy. Maybe this weekend.

I am pretty sure I am going to buy this soon. It is the Garmin StreetPilot i2 GPS navigator. It is the size of a baseball. Will run from a cigarette lighter or two AA batteries. The amazing part is it only costs $240. All of the reviews I have read said it performs as well, and in some cases better, than the built-in units that cost $2,000 - $3,000. It comes with street level detail of the entire United States on a DVD, and you can download map updates from the Internet when they become available. We bought a Magellan 750M GPS navigator when we first moved to Chicago and we have gotten A LOT of use out of it, but it is about the size of a small laptop. Plus the maps are a little out of date and not updateable. With this baseball-sized one we can just drop it into Sheri's purse and use it in any car.


We should probably treat the other half of the garage this weekend with the water proofing. The first half did not turn out the way I expected. I wanted a shiny shellacked look. Instead it looks like plain old concrete. The bottle says it penetrates and protects the concrete down to 1/2 inch.

We are having a really nice weekend so far. Friday night after work we picked up a new favorite pizza to eat while watching a movie. The pizza has fresh spinach, portabella mushrooms, garlic, pine nuts, goat cheese and basil on top of a nice red sauce. All of that is covered with a pretty decent mozzarella. I would prefer the ingredients to be on top of the cheese, but other than that minor complaint it is really good. The girl behind the counter had more of her bosoms uncovered than covered, so that was a good thing too.

We got home, poured some drinks, plated some pizza, and settled in right away to watch A History of Violence. We both really liked it.

This morning (Saturday) we woke up early and went to Burger King for breakfast. I wanted to try their new French toast breakfast sandwiches. They are good, but the extra taste from the French toast is not worth the extra calories it adds. I will stick with their biscuit sandwiches. We hung out, talked, worked a crossword together and read the paper for a while.

We came home and started working on the garage. We are going to treat the floor with a waterproofing treatment to protect it from the corrosive effects of the salt from winter driving. It is starting to pit in a couple places.

We did some pre-organizing during the week, and using the broom and leaf blower to get out all of the accumulated dust, dead bugs, etc. that accumulate behind the things you don't use for years and years. We moved everything to one side of the garage and I started using a scrub brush and degreaser on a couple areas with oil stains. I used a garden hose to rinse the soup out while Sheri used a squeegee to direct the water away from the stuff piled up on the other side of the garage.

After that I fired up the pressure washer to remove more of the grease and the shiny surface that some areas of the concrete had. The instructions on the waterproofer said to use a pressure washer to strip away existing waterproofing treatment.

We needed a break as well as a few supplies. I took off the blade from the lawn mower and put on a freshly sharpened one. I also installed a fresh sparkplug. Then we took the dull blade to the hardware store to drop off for sharpening. Only $6. I swap out a sharpened blade at least twice a season. It makes a huge difference on the health and appearance of the lawn. We can drive down the street and spot the people that cut there grass with a dull blade. The day after cutting the grass with a dull blade the ragged edges of the grass tips dry out and give the whole lawn a brownish tint. I crisply cut blade of grass does not loose as much moisture to evaporation and the tip does not dry out. We also got some acid etcher, some chemical resistant gloves, and some ant poison to sprinkle around the house.

After that we went to 7-Eleven for a Squishee, and then to the gas station for lawnmower and pressure washer gas.

When we got home I used the phosphoric acid to work on some rust stains and to rough up the surface of the concrete. The instructions said a proper acid etched surface should feel like 80 grit sandpaper. I didn't get it that rough but it did do a good job on getting down to the bare concrete. Sheri cut the grass while I started with the acid. It looks good.

After flushing the garage out again with copious amounts of water I hooked up the pressure washer again and worked the concrete over again.

I think I am happy enough with the concrete now. There are still a few stubborn rust stains but I am not going to worry about them.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we will apply the water sealer to that side of the garage and let it dry overnight. In a couple of weeks we will do the exact same thing to the other side of the garage. We don't want to do it next weekend because we are having a guest.

We put away all of our tools and stuff, took showers, and then went out for dinner. We went to the golf course restaurant I wrote about a few weeks ago. The have their all-you-can-eat fish every single day! Not just Fridays and not just during lent. I got that, but I had them substitute their sweet potato fries for the regular fries. Both were excellent. Sheri had a really good turkey club and brought half of it home. I had one fish refill, and was tempted to go for a second, but I knew if I did I would walk out of their feeling uncomfortable. There was only one waitress who was actually the bartender, and there was a pretty decent sized crowd, so after sitting at a table for a few minutes and not getting any attention we decided we would be better off sitting at the bar. The Cub's game was on a big plasma set right behind the bar so it worked out really well. I love that place.

We went to Meijer for a few things and now are home to watch a movie. The only thing is it is after 9 PM and we are both tired from a day of good work and might not be able to stay awake for a move, so I think we will probably just watch Mad TV and SNL.

While Sheri was doing some yard work she came across on almost complete skeleton of some carnivore in one of the flower beds between some plants. We are not sure be our best guess is that it is a cat. What do you think?

Cell phone rings:

Me: Hello?
Caller: confused moan
Me: Hello?
Caller: Uh, is Alfredo there?
Me: Sorry, you have the wrong number.
Caller: Who is this?
Me: Not Alfredo.
Caller: Uh…
Me: Sorry, wrong number.
Caller: Uh, OK.

It never ceases to amaze me when I receive a wrong number call and they ask who I am. Are people getting stupider? It used to be they apologized and hung up. I think the majority of wrong number calls seem to ask that.

I think I am even more amazed when I get a wrong number and get their voicemail, and I realize I have the wrong number, so I hang up, check my number and make my call again. Then the dork who's number I mistakenly called checks his (it has always been guys that do this) caller ID and calls me back and asks who I am. That doesn't happen as often but I have experienced it a few times.

I have the guy's phone number that was looking for Alfredo. I should call him back sometime and ask for Alfredo.

Several weeks ago my sister was doing some housework when she lost her vision and got a little lightheaded. After a few minutes she was OK except for a bad headache. Because she did not lose consciousness like Sheri did several weeks earlier, and everything turned out OK for Sheri, she decided not to follow up with a doctor.

When she related her experience to a coworker the coworker convinced her to see a doctor. They performed an MRI, and the initial interpretation indicated either oxygen depravation, inflammation of the brain, or MS. Yuck.

She had her appointment with a neurologist today and it turns out she just suffers from migraines! (Isn't it weird that that is good news?)

She has had headaches since she was just a kid, and we always attributed that to sinus congestion from allergies. The doctor said those were probably all migraines.

An American has a 1 in 1,000 chance of developing MS. If you have a sibling or parent with MS the odds of you developing it increase to between 1 and 3 in a 100! So I am doubly relieved that my sister is OK and that I am not at an increased risk for MS.

This is a neat site. It is a map of the world, and you can click anywhere on it to hear a person from that area read the same sample text so you can hear just about any dialect in the world.

Clicky clicky.

I didn't think I would ever want a branded watch from a non-watch company, but I really want this Nike Mettle Anvil Super Watch in Nomax Green.

As I mentioned yesterday Sheri woke me up with a backrub and then some fresh coffee and a few slices of pizza. You can see my contented expression as I enjoy my coffee and digest my pizza.



I think Sheri took a picture on average of one every 20 seconds.



My nephew is obsessed with the Titanic, so of course he signed my card with a rendering of himself and Uncle Brad standing on the deck of the Titanic. Isn't that precious?



Lots of cool shirts.





A cool mini-kite from my nephew. I tried flying it yesterday but the wind just wasn't strong enough.



Sheri's favorite picture.





After gift-opening time we got dressed to go out for my birthday brunch. The emissions testing station is near to the restaurant we planned on going to so we stopped by there first to get it out of the way. We are required to do it every two years. There is a sign in front of the station that displays the current wait time. It said 13 minutes but there must have been at least 25 cars lined up in front of us. No way could it only be 13 minutes. We were already there so I just figured we would wait to get it over with. Started the stopwatch on my watch once we entered the facility and pulled into a line. Thirteen minutes later we were handed the certificate indicating we passed the test.

On the way to the restaurant we passed a PetSmart store and I remembered that I needed some fish food, so as long as we were in the area we stopped in. A greyhound rescue organization was there with four dogs. Beautiful. Sheri wants one. The greyhound personality almost perfectly matches our personality and temperaments. We both work much shorter hours now than when we first moved here, and I am much closer to home with only a 15 minute commute, so that issue is taken care of. Greyhounds are notorious couch potatoes and day-long sleepers too. The biggest issue for me is not having the flexibility to not come home directly after work if I want to go out for dinner or go into the city. On the other hand, when was the last time we have done that? Oh well. We'll see what happens.



We got to the restaurant, which happens to be in a mall, and they went out of business. I really wasn't surprised. It just didn't fit the kind of clientele you find at a shopping mall. The food was great, but the prices were significantly higher than the average mall rat is used to. We were there once before and I had an oyster po-boy and Sheri had their pulled pork. Both very good. I forgot what kind of soup Sheri ordered but it had small chunks of fresh raw apple stirred in just before being served. We split an order of blueberry cobbler for dessert. Excellent example of southern cooking. I was going to treat myself to the crab cakes yesterday. Oh well.

We stopped by a gaming store and I bought a fun little puzzle called River Crossing.





We were getting hungry, so what was a good substitute for some fine southern cuisine? Taco Bell of course. We hung out in the food court for a bit playing with our puzzle and people-watching.

We picked cake mix and a few household necessities on the way home. At home Sheri made my birthday cupcakes while I relaxed in the family room. She kept my drink filled and brought me some cupcakes when they were done.

We watched most of Brokeback Mountain but stopped 30 minutes from the end to watch Mad TV and then Saturday Night Live. Neither of us could figure out where all of the hype over the movie came from. It was technically a very good movie. I loved the wilderness scenes in Wyoming. The acting was very good, but the story line itself we just couldn't get into. Maybe when we watch the last 30 minutes tonight it will tie it all together. Who knows.

We are going to Ikea soon for a birthday hotdog, a cinnamon roll, coffee and a diet cola, and then get some things across the street at Meijer.

I am having a good birthday so far.

I woke up to a nice backrub. While I was taking a shower Sheri brought up a couple pieces of pizza to hold me, some fresh coffee, and all of my birthday gifts to open. I got lots of good stuff. I am going to fly a kite later today and read up on geography.

We are getting ready to go out for brunch. I want to try the crab cakes at a nearby southern restaurant we tried once before and liked.

For dinner I want cheeseburgers on the grill and Sheri is going to make cup cakes for me. If they have artichokes in the store I want a couple of those as well.

We didn't watch Brokeback Mountain last night so we may watch that, or go to the video store if I feel like something a little more action-packed. We'll see how I feel later in the day.

We also have to get the emissions on the van tested. I may do that today just to get it out of the way.

I drove 155 miles on Tuesday to train two sites and 160 miles today for three sites. I have trained a total of seven sites so far and have four more to go. It is a nice change of pace and I enjoy getting out of the office for a while, but all that driving, especially when I am not used to it, tires me out at the end of the day.

I noticed today that our fleet cars run on E85 which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. We have an E85 pump on site.

Sheri is waiting on me hand-and-foot for my birthday weekend. She is out now picking up a pizza and then we are going to watch Brokeback Mountain.

I applied the season's first lawn fertilizer this evening after work. It needs to be watered in after application, and tomorrow we have a 70% chance of rain, so it worked out perfectly.

I have a chuck roast marinating in:

beer
ketchup
soy sauce
horseradish
mustard powder
garlic powder

Before I go to work tomorrow I will put it in the crock pot on low.

It is a combination of a couple recipes I found in a crock pot cookbook my sister and brother-in-law gave me.

I have been agonizing over buying a digital SLR forever. At first I was going to buy the Canon Rebel XT. After a while I thought as long as I am making a major investment that I will most likely be using 10, and probably 20, years from now, I might as well pay the few hundred extra and get the Canon EOS 20D. Now Canon has released the EOS 30D and I think that is what I will eventually get. I say eventually because when I agonize this long over something I usually end up getting it.


Isn't it beautiful?

What a great day! It was Sheri's first day at the new job and I was slightly anxious that things were not going to work out, but they did wonderfully.

My first anxiety was that there might have been a miscommunication between her, the recruiter and the employer and that she would show up to work and they would say something like "Mr. Smith will be in conference room B for your second interview." The recruiter didn't speak English as a first language and was very difficult to understand on the phone and was a soft-talker. After her first interview they said if they liked her they would call her back for a second interview with the head boss, but when they did call it was to say come to work. Something just didn't seem right.

My second anxiety was that her group would be a repeat of the group she was in when we first moved to Chicago. She felt like an outsider and they did not go out of their way to make her feel welcome. If that was the case and she dreaded going to work every morning, and Sunday nights brought on depression, I would feel the anxiety just as much as she does, maybe more. After one day she thinks everyone in her group are all good people with similar personalities and temperaments and all about the same age. She really felt good about the whole thing.

I didn't know on her first day if she was going to have an opportunity to call me and fill me in on how the day was going, so I made a little code list she could use to call me, tell me the code, and hang up whenever she had a free minute in the restroom or breakroom. I couldn't stand not knowing if she was dying a slow death all day. This is the list:

A Doing great! People are nice. I think I will enjoy the work.
B OK. A little nervous but I am hiding it OK. Nothing bad or uncomfortable.
C As well as can be expected. It will take me a few weeks to get comfortable.
D Uncomfortable but I will live.
F This sucks. Can't wait to get home.

She called me after being there an hour and said she was at level "C". Great! I thanked God it wasn't a "D" or "F".

After about another hour or so she called back and she moved up to a "B". Awesome!

After lunch she called again and she inched up to a "B+"! I wanted to do a little jig right then and there. The rest of the day stayed at "B+".

Just that would have made it a great day, but we went out for a great celebration dinner which made it a really great day. We never got around going out for a celebration dinner for the contract job she started in November, the start of my new job in January, or her birthday, so tonight's dinner covered all of these.

We went to one of Sheri's top five favorite restaurants if not her favorite: Sullivan's Steakhouse.

We started off with their signature lettuce wedges with blue cheese chunks and tomatoes. (I actually think these are the real reason she loves Sullivan's. These are her favorite.) We also had a nice loaf of hot bread and iced tea.

She couldn't manage a whole steak so we split a 16 ounce New York strip. We also split an order of creamed spinach and an order of au gratin potatoes. We decided to stay for dessert and coffee and we split an amazing crème brulee. Everything was fantastic and was the perfect end to a good day.

Our Sunday

I cooked us a nice hearty breakfast of eggs and rashers and coffee. We sat at the kitchen table and read the Sunday paper while we ate.

We hung out in the family room watching TV for a bit and then we both went upstairs to the office for a couple hours. Sheri hung out with me while I finished our taxes. All I have to do is submit them on-line, but I want to do one more review before I pull the trigger.

After that we got on our street clothes and ran the following errands:

1. Filled up Sheri's tank with gas so she will be all set for her first week of commuting again.

2. Went to Trader Joe's to stock up on snacks for work. Sheri got a handful of Luna bars. I got a handful of Kashi bars, two bags of their roasted peanuts and a bag of sunflower seeds.

3. Stopped at Walgreen's to try a new Hershey's Extra Dark chocolate bar. Walgreen's had it advertised in today's paper for $1.50 which is 50¢ off. I didn't have high expectations but it was really good. It has a 60% cacao content. Very smooth texture. Complex flavor. I think it compares very favorably to my other two favorite chocolate bars from Lindt and Scharffen Berger. I just now remembered something as a wrote that last sentence: Hershey's bought Scharffen Berger about a year ago. I'll bet they used a little of what they learned from that purchase to come out with this new product line. Give it a try when you want to treat yourself to a little something.


4. Home Depot for the season's first bag of lawn fertilizer. We also wanted to check out house plants and I wanted to pick up a box of galvanized decking nails in case I ever need to make any repairs to our fence.

5. Meijer for some things for this week's dinners. We got a chuck roast on special for $2 per pound for the crock pot on Wednesday, and lettuce and a tomato for BLTs on Tuesday night. We were looking for the new Coke BlaK and didn't see it, but there were a couple guys with Coke uniforms on so I asked them what they knew about it. They told us Target had it for sale.

6. We stopped at Starbucks for Sheri.

7. Went to Target to get the Coke BlaK.

We are hanging out now watching Simpson's and Desperate Housewives. I just opened up a Coke BlaK and I love it! To tell you the truth I actually don't taste coffee too much. It actually has more of a rich caramel taste. Maybe like the way the caramelized sugar tastes on crème brulee. I can actually see enjoying one as a dessert rather than knocking one back to quench my thirst.

We picked up a four-pack of the new Coca-Cola BlaK today at Target and it is icing down now.

It is Coke with a little coffee taste added. Also it has half the sugar and twice the caffeine as a regular Coke.

I read a review of it and they said the coffee taste is very very weak, so I am not expecting much, but I love trying new stuff.

Target has the four-pack of 8 ounce bottles for $5. I'll let you know what I think of it.

I thought our taxes paid for city paramedic service, but we just got a bill in the mail for $300 for last month's call. I will call Monday to see if our insurance covers it.

It has been forever since I have had popovers, and I have been having a craving for them lately, so I just put a batch in the oven. Sheri says I have never made them for her before, but it seems like I would have at least once or twice. Maybe when she takes a bite of one it will refresh her memory. She claims the only time she ever had a popover was in the fifth grade at a friend's house. She says she vividly remembers thinking it was the best thing she ever ate so maybe she is right and I never made them for her. The will be ready in about 30 minutes.

One of our fence posts on our six foot privacy fence broke in the strong winds we have been having the last few days. Last night I pounded a stake into the ground at an angle away from the fence and then nailed a 2 x 4 to the fence and the stake to brace the fence until it gets fixed so the fence sections don't break and cost us more money.

I will be conducting five training sessions over two days next week for the users of my application. I will be going to their sites so I will be doing a lot of driving. It will be a nice change from the normal pace. I did two training sessions last week but I took a programmer with me just in case something happened that I didn't know how to recover from. It was a good thing because he had to Remote Desktop back into the application server to reset a couple things.

Next week I will conduct four more training sessions and then all of the users will be trained for the phase one of the rollout. We will run parallel with the current process for at least a couple weeks to work out any problems that arise. Once we are comfortable everything is working correctly I will cut off the current process and have everyone use my app.