i once hit a bird with a snowball, felt terrible all day

Last week, Brooke and I celebrated our two year anniversary by eating a meal at Tru. The dinner itself was an experience. The staff moved about the dining room like a dance. The plates were picked up at the same time. Silverware was gone together. Two people poured water simultaneously. We order off a fixed menu, were greeted as Mr. and Mrs., and nobody asked if I was 19.

This led us to being very hesitant to ask what squab was. Hmmmm. Squab. We racked our brains and the best we could come up with was some sort of bird. A duck? A crow? Platypus? Wrong. SO wrong. The next day I Google searched squab and here is what we learned:

Squab:

A young (about 4 weeks old) domesticated pigeon that has never flown and is therefore extremely tender. (link)

Holy crap we ate a baby pigeon. Not ONLY a baby pigeon but one that never had a chance to feel the breeze under it's wings. You can imagine how bad my wife, a vegetarian until recently, felt! Baby pigeon. Dead. In our bellies.

sundog

i walked the dog at noon today

For the past week I have been between jobs; meaning, I've gotten a taste of summer vacation again. I go to bed late (10:30, wild), wake up late (8am, crazy) and watch morning TV with Brooke (this should read "I watch Oprah"). It worked out well then that my family could come into town this past weekend. We watched the Cubbies win, ate some sushi at Coast, grilled steaks, golfed and went on an architecture tour. A tour is an enjoyable way to spend a summer afternoon and me, coming from Hudsonville, am still in awe of the skyscrapers. I grew up climbing (and falling) out of big trees. Those were tall but can't compare to the forest I live in now.

To top it all off, my neighbors picked up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Sunday. I've had my nose in the book since and am almost finished and by almost finished I mean I have over 200 pages left.

Holy crap this is a long book.

in the golf course club house

Blond Teen Clerk Girl: "OK, that'll be $$$ for two...oh wait, unless hey how old are you?"

Me. The married 25 year old: "Excuse me?"

"Are you 19?"

"What?? 19?"

"Yeah, if you're 19 then you get a discount"

"Oh come on. Ok. 19. Sure."

"Nooooo, I bet you're not 19...are you 20? You must be 20? Yeah, 20."

"Sure. 20. Do I get a discount at 20?"

"No, only 19. Teens only."

"Ok, I'm 19"

"Nooooo, you must be 20. You look 20, not 19."

gotham city

Brooke and I, as we were minding our business after Michael's birthday dinner, ran into BATMAN!!! For real. Well, not Batman per se but his BATMOBILE!!! And the Gotham Police Department. Then, the director saw me and said "Son, Batman could not make it today and we need you to stand in for him, drive his BATMOBILE!!! and wear his belt of gadgets." I get this all the time from superhero movie directors and it is getting so old. I've really got to lose these rippling muscles.

decembawists

Several years ago Brooke, Tracy and I were riding in a car and I popped in a cd by a newer band called the Decemberists. I likely picked this up via a Pitchfork recommendation and enjoyed what I heard. Story-teller lyrics with a unique old world sound. The girls, however, found a "flaw" that kept them from liking it immediately: the lead singer Colin Meloy has a real tough time saying his "r's". Distracting to some and endearing to others. I always thought that if other bands with far less talent could hit it big then a little thing like the letter r shouldn't be a road block.

Last night Brooke and I met Michael, Caitlin and Alex at Millennium Park for a free show featuring (take a guess....come on, one guess)... the Decemberists! playing with the Grant Park Orchestra. Brooke and I arrived a full 40 minutes early only to find every teen and hipster within 30 miles had shown up way before us. We crawled our way to the very back and with not a patch of empty grass to be found plopped our blanket down on the cement. The music started and since we were halfway to Indiana we had no chance of actually seeing the Decemberists but the music was wonderful and even a little bit of rain couldn't cast a gloomy cloud over the pleasant sounds of a symphony mixing with indie folk.

Hipster Heaven



Umbella ella ella


Hipster Heaven Part II

beach bum

Did you know we have a dog? No? Well, we do. And here she is. At the beach.

where's waldo?

sadie swims!

I just spent a little over a week in Holland, Michigan at my parent's fabulous beach side retreat. I delight in the quiet, natural sounds of Michigan. We spend lazy days reading, lounging in the sun, walking the beach, cooking, and this year swimming with Sadie. She has really taken to the water but is not what you would call a natural in the water. She has reinvented the way that dogs swim, her preferred method is a cross between walking and paddling. If the water is too deep to touch the bottom she frantically swims back to shore. As her back legs walk on the bottom her front paws paddle, or maybe you want to call it splash, at the surface. Regardless, we had a great time playing with her!

chicago bike messenger

This summer I brought my old mountain bike to the city. I've done some riding putsing around in neighborhoods, picking up groceries, down the lakefront and once straight down Michigan Ave during rush hour. I absolutely hate roller coasters but riding a bike in the midst of yellow taxis and bad Chicago drivers was quite a thrill (yes mom, I wore a helmet). It's the closest I'll ever come to being a bike messenger like this guy Josh Korby...originally linked from Gapers Block, one of my favorite Chicago blogs.

Crain's Business Entrepreneurs in Action: Need For Speed

the smells of my commute

Here's my commute. In the morning I start at the green and end at the red.


Right here, it smells like chocolate. My guess? Chocolate factory.


Here? It smells like bread. Like we just drove right into an Auntie Ann's.


Here here and here? Smells real bad.

solar power roasting

I drink coffee everyday. Michael drinks buckets of coffee daily. Karl roasts coffee. Probably drinks it too. Lots of people drink coffee. There are also a lot of people are going green. Al Gore, obviously green. Leonardo DiCaprio, green. Mayor Daley, if the public wants him green he's green. My Corrola, forest green. With a missing hubcap. Now, coffee is green. Fair Trade has been hip (and ethical) for a while now but watch out Intelligentsia, Solar Power Roasting will be the new Organic. Just like I will be the next Brad Pitt. A skinny one. With a prettier wife.

new invention: a combined library and ice cream parlor. i'm going to be so rich.

There's been a bit of coverage lately regarding libraries and librarians. I for one am a big fan of libraries. Another reason why I liked The Time Travelers Wife (yep, and I read Harry Potter). If Brooke and I are in a new town and we drive by a library she usually will make mention and I will respond "Hmmm...that looks like a very nice library." Unless it's not. Then I pout.

One downside of our neighborhood is the library nearby stinks. Stinks bad. The selection is poor and I need to be visually pleased. This one looks like a bad looking library and I still find it hard to compete with Holland's Herrick Districk Library.

Next door to our library, though, is a great ice cream shop called Scooter's. Best ice cream we've found here. They even give doggy cones, which, isn't weird in the city but apparently is in Holland. Brooke gave Sadie a little ice cream and we hear "EEEEEEEWWWWW GROOOOSSSS..MMMMMOOOOOMMMMM!!" from a little blond 6 year old girl. Like she doesn't wish her dog eats ice cream and needs a blanky to fall asleep.

Anyway...here's some recent library related material for your enjoyment.

The Freakonomics blog ponders the question "if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the U.S. (much like Andrew Carnegie once did), what would happen?" Since my early days of Napster usage I've always wondered whether or not there will be backlash towards libraries and their willy nilly handing out of books and media.

The New York Times spins librarians in a hipper light...hipster to be exact. Interestingly, this was the most emailed article yesterday (down to #5 today) and is found in the style section (odd). Librarians and style used to go together like me and style in the 7th grade but I guess things have changed...unlike the tshirt I still wear from Sleeping Bear Dunes '94.

my those buildings are tall

This summer, Brooke and I are attempting to be tourists in our own city. One weekend we took a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio, which we highly recomend if you are visiting. However, a quick glance at the Wikipedia page and I see that the guide kind of sugar coated Mr. Wright's personal life. This is fine since we're taking a tour of his architecural abilities but in today's People and Us magazine world I sure would like to know that while designing his neighbor Edward Cheney's house he took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, and fell in love. Facinating. Like Brangalina of the 1900's. FranMah.

Tuesday night, July 3, Brooke and I took the El into the loop to see the city fireworks. The masses were gathering in Grant Park so we thought it would be smart to stay north of that. We layed our blanket down near Oak Street beach and had ourselves a picnic, reveling in the fact that we were so much smarter than everyone else. The picnic was delicious and we were having a fabulous time. Maybe 400 people had gathered around our spot by 9:30 when we all heard the booming of the fireworks. Looking around and straining our necks we thought there must be a mistake. How can we hear them but not see them? What terrible fireworks! Just booming? Psssh, whatever man. I threw a better fireworks show in the cornfields of Hudsonville.

We soon realized, though, that they weren't shooting them off where we thought they were going to and we had no view whatsoever. Some really big buildings happened to be in the way.

So, we hopped on the el and went back home. Nevertheless, it was one great date.

swimming in a pool of plastic bottles

This article is kind of on the long side but it's a good read documenting the bottled water industry and how it is the "food phenomenon of our times." If you're like me and spend your lunches at Borders (or the library where you sometimes lock your keys in the car) then you can find the article in the printed form. In something called a magazine. Like webpages, only made out of trees.

And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.
--Fast Company: Message in a Bottle

i have harry potter preordered

I enjoy reading science fiction much more than I enjoy reading historical fiction. Sometimes it shows. This weekend, while Brooke and I were watching Flags of our Fathers, we had to call Michael "Let me tell you about what happened on May 6 1834" Leman to give us the background. Google and Wikipedia are no match for him. As for me? I know a lot about rocks and erasers.

Tyler Cowen of MarginalRevolution.com, more known for his economics knowledge, wrote a post yesterday with his opinion on some underrated science fiction books. Sphere by Michael Crichton was his first choice. While Crichton's recent books (State of Fear, Next) have either not been finished or chewed up by Sadie (bad dog...OK, you're still cute, here's a treat) Sphere and his other books written around this time are excellent.

If you enjoy science fiction too then pick up one of my recent favorites Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (Amazon gives a nice summary. I'm no book critic and won't even try). I also recently read the superb Time Traveler's Wife. While it may be a love story and caused a small tear to well up at the end (I don't even want to hear it Adam) the main character Henry time travels and gets in fights. This, in my opinion, can make any book great. Much like my autobiography. Lots of time travel. And fights. Even a little bit of breathing underwater.

BYO

One of our favorite things about living is Chicago is the wonderful selection of BYOB's. We love this type of dining because it saves a bundle and the wine brought always has the potential to become a topic of discussion. If you are a visitor to Chicago I highly recommend getting off the beaten path and trying some neighborhood favorites. Our favorite three, rated for food, style, and ambiance, all serve different fare but satisfy our culinary mood depending on the evening.

Coast Sushi Bar
This trendy Bucktown joint is our favorite for sushi. It's always packed, and consistently serves fresh, creative rolls. The facade of the building is indiscreet but once inside the hip, young atmosphere relaxes you into a wonderful meal shared with friends. If you think you don't like sushi give Coast a try and it will quickly change your mind.

Terragusto
You cannot find a restaurant that serves more locally grown and organic dishes. The chef works towards maintaining a restaurant that is reasonably priced, low key, and serves excellent Italian food. The menu is always changing so we never tire of the choices available. Expect an unpretentious environment where local regulars gather with family and friends on Friday and Saturday nights.

Tango Sur
This Southport favorite is so small it doesn't even have a website. You can expect a long wait for dinner on the weekends; about two hours. There is plenty to do on Southport itself and we like to make our way to Tango Sur's back room where corkscrews and wine glasses are available. A drink with friends makes the wait time pass quickly! This Argentinian steakhouse is very reasonably priced and the atmosphere and fabulous meat dishes make the restaurant a great choice. During the summer take advantage of the fabulous street front patio!