Nothing much going on in my part of the world, sad to say.  I have way too many work projects (which is why I’m on my blog writing…) and too many things to do for school, and probably too many commitments elsewhere in my life.  I heard someone say once that if you want something to get done, ask a busy person.  I’m not sure I agree with that sentiment right now.  All I really want to do is go to bed and sleep.  Not that I’m complaining or anything, I’m just saying.

So I’m off to install Office 2007 on a machine in the Admissions office.  You may be wondering (as I do sometimes) why a programmer is going to install software when it usually falls within the realm of the tech support guys.  And if you did ask that question I would probably say – “That’s an excellent question…” to which I don’t have a really good reply.  Except that something is broke on this machine and it is my belief that it has to do with the fact that this one machine is the lone Office 2003 machine and therefore needs to join all the big guys in the office and have Office 2007 and if I leave it up to the tech support guys they would get around to it…someday…and well, I don’t have “someday” to wait since the loss of this functionality is a loss on productivity and where would we be if we weren’t productive?  Okay, enough ranting and I’ll go get to work….being productive.  :- )

I just wanted to give a shout out to one of my few (very few) readers.  I’m 2 days late but since your birthday is a week-long festival, I feel that I am well within the acceptable time frame.  Have a great week!

A few years ago my employer (not the one I have now, but a different one) offered a spending plan – you know, one of those pre-tax savings account from which you are reimbursed for medical expenses.  So I tried it.  Did not come in anyway close to using all the money – so I purchased 2 pairs of glasses just to use it.  So the following year I “saved” less – and then had big medical expenses.  So then the third year I “saved” more and had no expenses again so during the 4th year I gave up.  Advance several years.  Every time I think about the “savings” plan I have to weigh the history of my medical bills.  This year I lost big time – knee surgery, physical therapy and now back/neck pain and therapy.  So the big question is: right now is “open enrollment” – should I “save” or should I not?  (Can’t you just hear The Clash going in the background –> should I save or should I not…..if I do there won’t be trouble, if I don’t there will be double…so common and let me know….should I save or should I not)  (It doesn’t really rhyme…but this is why I write code and not songs.)

I ran across a blog post yesterday about this website that will create an avatar for you – a face that you design.  Here’s mine:

What do you think?  An improvement upon the original? 

Oh, and here’s the site:  Face Your Manga

The weekend was a bum one for me.  I basically just bummed around the house all day Saturday and Sunday.  I did some good too – the days were not total losses, but not as productive as they should have been.  I wonder why it is that when I have time to catch up on sleep and relaxation over the weekend that Monday’s seem to drag.  And I mean draaaaaaaag.  Since Monday is a long day for me, I decided at about 5 that I was going to go home, eat dinner, do about 2 hours of studying and then watch a new TV show.  I’ve seen a few episodes (3 via the web and 1 via my friend’s huge-mega-flat-screen-downtown-Chicago-fancy TV) of this new show on TNT called Raising the Bar.  It has that Saved by the Bell guy on it and it is interesting to see him all grown up and in a drama.

Anyhoo, I cracked the whip yesterday and got accomplished what I needed to, left work at 7, got home, ate dinner, did some studying, and then….

And then I realized that I don’t have cable.

I’ve had a day.  It is one of those days when you wake up and know that work is not a good idea.  I needed to get up at 6:15 this morning so that I could grab some tea and a bagel and get on the 7:30(~ish) train.  I always leave myself some breathing room time-wise because, well, things can happen.  For whatever reason, my body woke up at 5:15 and for some reason unknown, I thought it was 6:15.  I jumped into the shower, almost in a tizzy, wanting to make sure, really, really sure that I made that 7:30~ish train.  Then I looked at my watch.  It was 5:20.  So I went back to bed.

Got up at the real time and got ready and was out the door by 6:50.  Was at the station by 7:10.  Purchased my tea and bagel and thought “wow, I have some time to sit and eat my bagel”.  So I sat.  At 7:20, I thought “well, perhaps I should start to make my way up to the train.”  So I went.  As soon as I stepped foot on the train the doors closed.  It was that close.  The train is a 7:25 train, not a 7:30~ish train. 

So my 2 near misses this morning got me to thinking.  Is it worth it to live in the city?  This is what I came up with.

Top 5 Reasons to Live in the City

1. It is romantic.  Enough said.
2. I could walk everywhere, thereby almost guaranteeing some form of exercise at least twice a day.
3. I could take the train and do a lot of reading and/or knitting.
4. I could be a part of the Lake Forest College “buddy” system and hang out on the train with the cool people.
5. I could sell my car and be free of that financial burden.  The other reason to sell the car is that I don’t want to pay for parking or drive around the entire city looking for a parking spot that just happens to be 5 miles from where I live.  So I’d rather not have the car if I lived in the city.

So, here are the Top 5 Reasons Why NOT to Live in the City

1. I could keep my car and go anywhere I wanted to whenever I wanted to, including driving up to Door County for a mini-vacation.
2. I could have my friends that live up here (Lake County) come for a visit, since they rarely wander outside of county boundaries.
3. I could actually go places and not have to schedule around the trains.  Case in point: last night I didn’t get home until 11 PM because I had to wait for the train. 
4. I would not have to walk everywhere, thus almost guaranteeing that I would not need a knee replacement sooner rather than later.
5. At some point the romance will wear off.  It always does.

So where does this leave me?  Since it seems to be a wash, I’ll stay where I am for now and enjoy the 2-3 day jaunts into the city whenever my friends go out of town and let me stay in their condo.

But you know what I kept thinking about last night as I was trying to fall asleep, and I could hear the cars honk, and the trains roll by, and the various city noises?  I kept wanting to sing this:

What a beautiful noise
Comin up from the street
Got a beautiful sound
Its got a beautiful beat

Its a beautiful noise
Goin on everywhere
Like the clickety-clack
Of a train on a track
Its got a rhythm to spare

Its a beautiful noise
And its sound that I love
And its fit me as well
As a hand in a glove
Yes it does, yes it does

What a beautiful noise
Comin up from the park
Its the song of the kids
And it plays until dark

Its the song of the cars
On their furious flights
But theres even romance
In the way that they dance
To beat of the lights 

If you want to hear the song, click here. It is one of my all-time favorite Neil Diamond songs. (Yes, I admit it – I am a Neil Diamond fan.  A way HUGE fan - I own 31 LP’s and several CD’s of his and if you even decide to tease me about it, then we won’t be friends anymore.  I will love ND more than you.   )  This link will take you to a page where you can read the full lyrics and then if you click on the “play” button, it will create for you an on-demand radio station (don’t worry, you don’t need to sign up or give our your email address or anything except just listen).

So my adventures being a city-dweller for 4 days has begun.  I mentioned yesterday that I have a friend who lives in Chicago, right on the north branch of the Chicago River.  In fact, this is the view from my her balcony.

The big lighted building you see is the Merchandise Mart.  The really, really tall building behind it is the new Trump Tower.  And of course, below is the Chicago River and all its bridges.

This is what I found waiting for me when I arrived:

(sorry for the flash burst, I didn’t realize it was going to do that….)

K is a most gracious hostess.  Their flat is awesome, to say the least.  They have a tub that is full body, 7-foot grown man long.  Imagine swimming in that thing every night.

Here’s another view:

This time I’m looking south.  The very tall building in the upper right of the photo is the Sears Tower.  Yup, you can see it all from her balcony.

I picked up some cheap Chinese food on my walk from the train station (which is a mere 4 blocks away) and sat on the balcony and just…was.  I can’t explain.  I…just….was.

I did some much needed reading and then took advantage of the very large flat-panel TV in their bedroom and watched an episode of Raising the Bar (a legal thriller) and then went to bed.

I got up early this morning in anticipation of making sure I could walk to the train in plenty of time to visit the ATM and purchase a 10-ride ticket.  Then I got on the train.

Have you ever had a moment when you knew, just knew, that you were in the wrong place, at the wrong time?  Your heart starts to race and your blood-pressure goes up and then panic begins to set in.  The last time I had this “panic attack” was when I was in college and I inadvertently got on the wrong plane.  Now before you think “boy, was that a blond move..”, let me remind you that once upon a time, once you were beyond security, tickets were not checked/scanned.  Security was not what it is now.  And, just to further explain the mistake, I was at an airport that had 1 (yes ONE) terminal and I didn’t hear the announcement that MY plane was late.  So when they called to board the plane that was THERE, I simply got on.  Got settled.  Was relaxed.  The door closed.  And then they announced that they were going to Boston (or some equally far place where I didn’t know anyone) instead of Phoenix (where my family was waiting).  P-A-N-I-C-K    A-T-T-A-C-K!  Can I just say?

So imagine my surprise this morning when I got on the train and got settled.  Was relaxed (and awake, but just bearly).  And the doors started to close…and that same feeling started to overcome me…..but I did good this time.  I was on the right train.  : -) 

(kept you ’til the very end didn’t I?)

Guess what?  I’m going to live in Chicago for the week!  Woohoo!  I have a friend at church who lives in Chicago – right at the juncture of the Chicago River and the North Branch – which is where the Merchandise Mart is.  Her (I keep saying “her”, but it really belongs to her and her husband, I need to be fair in this…), so their flat is on the 31st floor and faces EAST.  Can you imagine?  I will have the perfect view of the city - for the next 4 days, anyway.  I’ll try to take some pictures and post them tomorrow.  I’m daydreaming….kinda hard to concentrate at work…..

One of the things I like best about this type of vacation was its spontineity. Lee Ann and I went up to Washington Island with no plans other than to 1) possibly visit some lighthouses (for me), 2) eat at KK Fisks restaurant (for Lee Ann), 3) read a LOT (both of us) and 4) have a bonfire (both of us).  (I’ve probably missed a few of the “things we gotta do” that we had agree upon, but the nature of vacation is that once you’re back your brain is so “relaxed” that you tend to forget some things - like what we had planned to do and didn’t). 

Most of those that know me fairly well (or have seen my office, or have been in my house) know that I like lighthouses.  When I first moved up to the Chicagoland area I was looking for something that I could do as a photography theme (I like photography) that would let me explore a little bit of this part of the country (I had never been in “the middle” as I like to say).  One of the things that caught my attention was the sheer number of lighthouses that are on Lake Michigan, and for that matter, all the Great Lakes.  So it was decided – I was going to drive around Lake Michigan and visit (photograph) all the lighthouses.

To date I have photographed 24 lighthouses.  This weekend I added 4 (4 of the 24).  Here are the ones that I visited and photographed.  First up are 2 lighthouses that I had to re-visit because the last time I was there my film camera started to break and I ended up with no pictures.

Next 2 were “dive by’s”.  Pilot Island (not pictured) and Plum Island.  These are 2 little, uninhabited islands that are inaccessible except by private charter, which I cannot afford.  They were taken on the ferry to and from Washington Island.

Finally, Lee Ann and I took a ferry out to Rock Island and then hiked (3 miles round trip) to the Pottawatomie Lighthouse, the first one in Wisconsin.  This trip turned out to be lucky because the gentleman who lives at the campground (that’s his job, actually, to live at the campground, so he is not some skanky old man who loiters at a public campgrounds) was at the lighthouse and opened it up and gave us a tour.

The pictures of the lighthouses can be found here.  This link will take you to another page on my website and will have a link at the top to get you back here (but only if you want to come back!). 

PS – How do you like the new face lift for my blog?

Toodles!

Vacation.  Nature. Relaxation.  Time.  Four ingredients to a perfect day.  Then add books and knitting and this makes a bomb of a vacation day.  My plan was to read 2 books – 2 relativelely short, lively books that should have not taken more than 2 days each to read.  I had even read the first book half-way through already, which should mean that it would take me one day to read the first book and leave me three days to read the second book.  Unfortunately it didn’t work that way.  Book number one is Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, the sequel to The Eyre Affair, which if you haven’t read it – it is the absolute funniest book you’ll have read in a long, long time.  Jasper Fforde has the wierdest sense of humor that a man could posess.  His books contain bookworms that can fling people into books, regenerated dodo birds, Literature Detectives and neanderthols.  Sound wierd?  They are.  But they are some kind of hilarious wierd.

While the reading was slow, I think you can imagine that I can’t read and knit at the same time.  (I’m sure that some people can, but I don’t know how they do it – it’s like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time, something else I can’t do with grace.)  So while I was knitting, I was listening to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.  I’m only 3 hours into the story, and it is starting off a little slow, but it is interesting.  In one of the chapters, the story is told by a dog.  Who wouldn’t love a story as told by a dog?  As to the knitting, the pub was a little on the dark side and so the knitting was on the slow side.  I think I only progressed about 1.5 inches, which is a repeat and a half of the pattern.  Progress is progress.

The weather on the Island was perfect, although slightly on the chilly side.  It didn’t rain on us while we were up there – perfect! – but it was a little on the windy side.  We attempted to sit on a beach on Friday and it took Lee Ann about 30 minutes to get a fire going (sorry Lee Ann, your secret is out…) and it only took me about 30 minutes longer than that to freeze.  Lee Ann was gracious, though, and was willing to pack up and leave – after eating a few hotdogs, of course – couldn’t let the fire to go to waste!

I will have some more pictures up tomorrow – mainly of the lighthouses that we visited.  I actually got 3 stamps in my passport!  Woohoo!  (For those who don’t know, there is Lighthouse Passport program sponsored by the United States Lighthouse Society.  Each passport  has 60 “boxes” in it that can get stamped.  Once you’ve completed each of the first four passports you fill, you’ll receive a patch - bronze, silver, gold and platnum.  I’m at 5.  I think this may take a while.)