Winner!

We bought lottery tickets in every state on our trip. We won on three tickets, including the $2 on the top ticket!

Clearance sale

I had heard that a large bookstore was closing a number of it's locations. I stopped in to look for some bargain CDs and a travel book. I did not know the reputable book store was also selling sex. And 60% off!! I guess I should have shopped sooner because the shelves were picked pretty thin.

Visibility = 0

Ok, that's an exaggeration. Visibility was more like 150 yards. You can't tell from this picture, but the snow flakes were about the size of half dollars. Every once in a while it seemed as though some urchin had thrown a snowball onto the windshield. Good thing this only lasted about an hour through the hills above Pittsburgh.

True

Road trips make for bad meals most of the time. Today was no different. I drove from Chicago to Bethesda under a little time pressure. Breakfast at the hotel was "free" and pretty good. Lunch, well, that's another story. Lunch was "hot and delicious pizza." True, if by hot and delicious you mean Luke warm and palatable. At least there was not a lot of traffic.

Rats!

Heard some disturbing news on the radio this morning: the city of Chicago is planning to cut back on efforts to control the city's rat population. The Norwegian rat, which is the variety found in the city, can produce 7 litters of 5-8 rats a year, can drop 50 feet without getting injured, can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter, can jump 3 feet in the air, its teeth grow up to 5 feet a year but are continually ground down by gnawing through things like concrete blocks and they carry a disease which can be passed from your dog to humans. By all means, let them flourish!

View from the 23rd floor

I went to court this morning to pick up an order in one of my cases. The courtroom is on the 23rd floor. On a sunny day, the view is spectacular. Today, not so spectacular. I thought I'd take a picture anyway, in case it's my last trip there.

Overheard at the bus stop

Some days commuting gets the best of me. Some days it's mildly entertaining. My morning ride frustrated me (woman refused to step into the middle of the car and forced us all to go around her - unfortunately not atypical). My afternoon commute, however, went smoother and even entertained me.

At the bus stop, three young women were examining a device they had just purchased at a tobacco store. They were trying to figure out how to use it to roll something. After a couple entertaining minutes, a middle aged man in a suit approached the group and said, I don't know what you're planning to roll with that, but this is how you do it and proceeded to give them a tutorial. The women were embarrassed, especially the one who thought she knew what she was doing, but thankful. And I was mildly amused. Not a bad bus adventure (no stark naked drunk men).

Obstructed view

Great seats for the Yankees vs Nationals spring training game, except for this woman with the big hair in front of me. Her hair was so big that she did not even know that a large dragon fly had nested in it for an inning.

Tips for traveling or commuting

I'm sitting at my airport gate after what has been an interesting 24 hours of commuting and traveling. Here are some things that have annoyed me:

1. If the el car is packed and you are waiting on the platform, if I step off the train to let people out, don't try to get on before I re-board the train.

2. If there is one escalator up and one stair case next to it at the el station, don't go against the grain up the stairs when the rush hour crowd is trying to go down.

3. When you get dressed to fly: (a) don't wear flannel pajama bottoms; and (b) don't douse yourself in cologne or perfume, but DO shower and brush your hair.

4. Black checked pants are NOT gray and cannot be worn with a navy blazer, especially when your shirt is also black.

5. Flights to Florida are filled with people over 100 or under 2 or someone traveling with them.

That's it for now. I'm ready for Florida!

Too bad the drinks are so good

This is a sign posted at a local watering hole. The drinks are good, but the pretentiousness runs a little high for my taste. Every once in a while, however, I want a well-made cocktail, whatever the price.

The Chicago River

Chicago has been pretty warm the last few days and all of our snow melted! I took a walk along the Chicago River at lunch today. It was a little breezy but warm in the sun. I remember two years ago when I first moved to the city I could see the river from my office. One day in the spring, the bridges all went up and stayed up for a while. The bells kept ringing and it was sort of annoying. Finally, I looked out the window and saw what all the commotion was about - people were sailing up the river to Lake Michigan. It was beautiful. It's still a little early for the sailboats and we are expecting some more chilly weather, but the river was pretty this afternoon.

6 Degrees - and I'm not talking separation

This is a picture of the instrument panel on my car last night on my way home from the gym. Yup, it says 6 degrees, fahrenheit. That's pretty cold and it's supposed to get colder. But it reminds me of a few cool things about my car (and cold weather):

1. It is six and a half years old and still on the original battery. It sat for four days through temperatures in the low teens without me driving it anywhere. And the battery still had enough juice to start. That's pretty good.

2. It was nearly out of gas, so I filled the tank. I checked my records and the last time I got gas was November 28, 2010. Amazing.

3. It only has 53,194 miles on it, despite a number of round trips between Philadelphia and Nashville, then Philadelphia and Chicago.

4. It has heated seats! And during a cold spell like we are having in Chicago now, heated seats rock.

5. At -40, the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales are equal.

6. At -40, you can pour water out of a cup and it will hit the ground already frozen. Try it sometime.

A new s'more

This is an Oreo (minus the insides) plus a roasted marshmallow and a piece of gourmet dark chocolate with sea salt. Brilliant!

Finally!

The wait is over - whipped cream with alcohol in it. This is perfect for all those silly shots for which you are not supposed to use your hands. I don't plan on trying this, but if it's any good, let me know.

To all persons with a proven interest in usage and grammar

Here are a few more of my favorites:

People / Persons:

The traditional distinction—now a pedantic one—is that people is general, persons specific. Thus, one would refer to 300 people who had assembled but to the twelve persons on the jury. Persons has been considered better for small, specific numbers. But twelve persons on the jury seems stuffy to many readers, and most native speakers of AmE would say twelve people on the jury. In contexts like that one, people has long been used and is the more natural phrasing. The NYT and AP recommend using people over persons except in quotations and in set phrases, e.g., third persons or Missing Persons Bureau.

Proved / proven:

Proved has long been the preferred past participle of prove. But proven often ill-advisedly appears In AmE, proven, like stricken, properly exists only as an adjective . One accepted use of proven as a past participle is the legal phrase, “innocent until proven guilty.”

My kind of store

'nough said.

Snowed in

This car is not getting out any time soon. We are expecting some sun and temps in the low thirties, which will be just enough to melt the snow into an icy cocoon. Lovely. And his neighbors apparently had no qualms about shoveling snow from around their cars to on top of his or hers. I'd be pissed if it were my car, but then again, I shoveled for four hours the day after the storm. Hungover. You snooze you lose.

Look closely

At first glance, I thought this dude was wearing sandals - like those crazy hippies at my college who wore Birkenstocks and wool socks through subzero snow-filled winters in upstate NY. Nope! These are boots that look like the sandals. Pretty neat.

More snow

This is another shot of snow under the el. This will be here until May.

Bean!

This is a picture of the bean in millennium park just after sunset. I am facing east and the sun is setting at my back. It was below zero plus wind chill and I was the only person out there. I've been to the bean about ten times and I've never had it all to myself. It was eerie and fantastic. I'm not sure how it got warm enough for the snow to start to melt and slide off. Beautiful and serene.

Snowpocalypse!

So Chicago got hit by a big storm - third largest storm since they started tracking these things. It was awesome. We had thunder and lightning during the heaviest periods of snow. It's sort of like christmas - go to sleep and wake up to see what the snoclause left you. This picture was taken 24 hours after the big storm. As you can see, there's not much of the two feet left in the loop, which brings me to a few observations about my adopted city.

1. They know how to do snow removal. At least on the main streets. My side street has not been plowed yet but let's be honest, in Philly it would not get plowed until garbage day, which means there is a good chance I'd get plowed two or three times before the street did. Point Chicago.

2. During a snowstorm in Chicago, people are much nicer than otherwise. A stranger helped me shovel my driveway. I was pushing a friend's car and standing next to another friend. I looked again as the car started to move and there were strangers on either side of me. Point Chicago.

3. People put chairs out to save their cleanly shoveled spots. Draw. They do that shit in Philly, too.

4. People in Chicago wear hats and functional winter clothing. Nobody in the northeast sacrifices fashion for function. Point NYC for that, they're wealthy, beautiful and well-dressed.

5. A man walked into the state office building the day before the storm wearing a full snowmobile suit and carrying a nice leather briefcase. Ridiculous. Whoever you are, you looked stupid.

6. I don't care who you are, if it's not cold enough for you to put on a hat, then you can't wear an animal carcass for a coat. Shame on you, even I you were also wearing a hat.

If you don't know the difference between affect and effect, learn it

I think it's more common to get this one wrong than to get it right, even though it's simple.   

Impact / affect:

 

Impact has traditionally been only a noun.  In recent years, however, it has undergone a semantic shift that has allowed it to act as a verb.  So uses such as the following have become widespread (and also widely condemned by stylists):  "The researchers concluded that this low level of intensity may have impacted [read affected] the results." (citation and other examples omitted)

 

This use of impact would be perfectly acceptable if impact were performing any function not as ably performed by affect or influence.  If affect as a verb is not sufficiently straightforward in context, then the careful writer might use "have an impact on," which, though longer, is probably better than the jarring impact of impacted.  Reserve impact for noun uses and impacted for wisdom teeth.

 

Interestingly, impact as a verb might have arisen partly in response to widespread diffidence about the spelling of affect.

More on usage

I have seen this misused recently so I looked it up to confirm I understood the difference:

Assure – ensure – insure:

A person assures (makes promises to, convinces) other people. Assure takes a personal object. E.g., Our hosts assured us that we would have comfortable rooms.

A person ensures (makes certain) that things occur or that events take place. E.g., Our hosts ensured that we had comfortable rooms.

Insure should be restricted to financial contexts involving indemnification; it should refer to what insurance companies do. E.g., to insure against loss.

From Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage, Oxford University Press (2d ed. 2003).

Be it Resolved - revisited

That post was largely a "bucket list," so I figured an update was in order. Here's how I'm doing so far:

10 - finish the Thomas Jefferson book. Check. And, for the record, people just don't write like that anymore.
8 - finish the Eastern Religions book. In progress. I finished the 4th chapter (Confucianism) and have only one more to go.
4 - eat healthier and take my lunch more often. In progress. I took my lunch to work 4 of 5 days this week (and decided to treat myself on the 5th, which I guess undermines my goal). I also have enjoyed cooking with TVP and quinoa. Unfortunately, a co-worker told me that quinoa is largely grown in Bolivia and the local Bolivians are suffering because the quinoa is being exported and not available for their consumption. Ugh. It's healthy and I like it. Figures. Back to the drawing board on that one.
1 - be kinder to Chicago. Check. I think I'm doing well on this one.

So, there is the update. I'll keep working on it.

Questions, comments, current events

When I was in high school, I took six years of Latin. Ok, I didn't repeat two grades, I actually started Latin in seventh grade. My school offered language classes in Latin, French and Spanish. I had to put them in the order of my preference. I put a 1 next to French, a 2 next to Spanish and left the space in front of Latin blank. Of course, I was put in Latin. When I got to high school, I stayed in Latin rather than switching to one of the other languages offered. Although I regret that choice now, I do have some funny memories of my high school Latin class.

One of those memories is that my teacher, the football coach, started every class by saying, "questions, comments, current events?" We also had EYH Fridays, those were some fun classes. Here, then, are my current questions, comments and current events.

Questions (rhetorical or otherwise):
1. Should a merino wool sweater begin to pill after wearing it only 4 times to work?
2. Does a review of a non-fiction book (a biography no less) require a spoiler alert warning?

Comments:
1. One day this week my commute took a record time of 18 minutes - from locking my front door to setting my bag down on my desk in the office (after stopping to buy a huge soda). I've been tracking my commuting time lately and it seems that I usually take about 22-26 minutes to commute by bus/el (again, including the huge soda). I guess that's not too bad.
2. I recently started reading Leviathan. I read during my commute on the el, which is usually about 12-14 minutes each way. In that time, I read about 5 pages, which means I read about 10 pages a day. At this rate, I won't finish until September.
3. Don't wear a suit/sports jacket to work under your waist-length down jacket. I don't care if it IS jeans Friday, that's just unacceptable.

Current Events:
1. The weather. Not here, but back east. We have had a pretty bearable winter so far - temperatures for the most part in the mid 20s with very little snow. Back east, they have been hit by back to back to back storms that have dropped a foot or more each. I would really love just one big storm here so I could use my snowshoes. Otherwise, it's back to Boyne Mountain . . .
2. This time of year there are a few big events - the Australian Open tennis tournament and some final football game. Two years ago, we were in Ixtapa, Mexico, during these two events. That was a pretty good idea - go somewhere warm and sunny during the coldest stretch of the winter. I'm going to save my vacation days so we can do that again next year!

Chocolate pancakes

Whenever I have bananas that have ripened beyond their usefulness as a lunch snack, I like to either make banana pancakes or banana bread. The pancake recipe makes too much for two and the bread recipe requires me too many dishes that I don't want to wash, so I decided to make banana pancakes and do a little experiment. After cooking a bunch of banana pancakes, I decided to add some cocoa to the batter. Here are my first chocolate banana pancakes. They don't look like much here, but they cooked up nice and fluffy and tasted very good. Next time I try this I think I'll add a few chocolate chips, too!

Worth the wait

Yup. Definitely. I had the Hula - ham and pineapple. So good.

Finally!

I've been waiting two years for Which 'Wich to come to Chicago. One finally opened, but it's been too crowded every time I've been there. Today, at 2:30, I finally got my sandwich. I can't wait to get back to my desk. You're jealous, I know you are.

Birthday cake!

Not a bad way to end a three day weekend. I made dinner and a birthday cake for a friend. True confession, the cake was from a box, but I made the frosting from scratch. And, I used dark chocolate cocoa. It was awesome. The higher cocoa percentage in the frosting was yummy, if you like that sort of thing. Of course, it doesn't look that great, but I'll get better each time I make it.

The candles were really cool. The short ones burned the same color as the wax - so the red candle gave off a red flame, the green candle was a green flame - and the tall candles sparkled, especially when my friend tried to blow them out. Fun weekend, fun dinner, and fun Bears game. Time to get ready for work tomorrow.

Litter!

At the eastern entrance to the dunes park is this sign asking people to help keep the park clean. I'm not sure what this little child was doing wearing an aqua sock to the beach in the winter, but, like me and my Yak Trax, she left one behind.

Ice shelf and the ambitious hike

A full day on Saturday without plans. A luxury. So I decided that it would be a good opportunity to try to find a place to use the snowshoes. Sorry, not enough snow anywhere within two hours. I decided to settle for a hike in the Indiana Dunes. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm relatively fit so I wasn't too scared.

The first 2.7 miles are east on the beach of Lake Michigan. The I don't think the lake ever completely freezes, but it freezes along the shore - about 50 yards out - and forms an ice shelf. I have a picture of my grandmother, circa 1920, standing on an ice shelf in Lake Ontario, but I had never seen it in person. It's very cool. And also very dangerous. Somewhere along the way, I lost my Yak Trax - like tire chains for your shoes to help you walk on the ice. They just fell off my boots. I didn't notice it until I nearly slipped on a patch of ice.

I missed the trailhead at mile 2.7 and did an extra quarter mile or so on the beach and had to backtrack. Once I found the trailhead, I hiked up through a drift of snow and then climbed a dune (about 100 feet) in snow about 10 inches deep. Once off the beach, there was no wind and the only sound I could hear was my heart pounding my chest after the climb. I did about 2.5 miles in the deep snow, which was much harder than walking on the packed sand!

The last mile was up two of the tallest dunes in the park. I can't wait to go back in the summer and run that trail! When I came over the top of the second dune the lake was spread out in front of me with the last orange of the sunset fading off to the west. Down to the beach for another half mile on the sand. Guess what I found? Yup! One of my Yak Trax!

Once in the car, I took 3 advil to help ward off the aches and pains that were beginning to set in. And now, about 45 minutes later, the Snow and ice on the bottom foot of my pants has thawed into a sandy chilly mess.

Overall, a pretty ambitious hike and a great time! No serious injuries to report and, hopefully, some good pictures.

Snow (part 2)

I don't know why I like this picture - maybe it's the geometry of the lines. Who know. I just liked it and thought I'd share. Unfortunately, the snow appears to be letting up.

Snow!

One thing you need to know about me, I love snow. Can't get enough of it. So, I was pretty happy to wake up to a little bit of snow this morning. I got to wear my new boots and make snowballs to throw at various inanimate objects. And this picture shows snow removal, Chicago style, as well as two funny peppermint cement trucks.

I thought that when we moved to Chicago, we'd get more snow than we had in Philly. So far, that has not been the case. So far this year, I think we have had about three storms of about three inches each. We have snowshoes in the closet just waiting for a chance to be used! Today isn't the right day, but I'm hoping for a foot of snow!! For now, I like the city draped in a fresh white fluffy blanket.

Proper use of comprise

Here is something that I learned this week. Ok, I didn't really learn it so much as refresh it. I spent Monday reading a number of articles from various journals, some more respected than others. I was really interested in one particular article, that is until about half way through the second page. In one and a half pages, the authors had misused the word comprise twice. I'm no grammar whiz, but I was also upset by a sentence that had a singular noun and a plural verb. Hmm... I had to look up comprise, just to make sure I got it right. I did. And now I'm going to share it with you.

The parts comprise the whole. Or, the parts are comprised in the whole.
The whole comprises the parts. Or, the whole is composed of the parts.

The following is never correct: the whole is comprised of the parts.

I realize that I'm opening myself up to ridicule, criticism and scrutiny. So be it. But be gentle.

Be it Resolved!

This post is a little late, but Happy New Year! Here is a list of my top 10 resolutions for 2011 - the year of the rabbit, the year of the high five, or the year that the Phillies get back to the World Series! Be it resolved that in 2011, I will endeavor to:

10. Finish reading Thomas Jefferson: The American Sphinx. I lost momentum on this book, but I've picked it back up and I'm rolling along if for no other reason than I want to finish it before having a revolutionary ales party in February.

9. Go to at least one MLB park that I have not yet visited.

8. Finish reading Eastern Religions. I also lost momentum on this book, but I'm ready to knock it out!

7. Clean and organize my closet.

6. Try to learn something new every day.

5. Finish things I start.

4. Eat better. I want to try to take my lunch more and learn to cook with healthier ingredients.

3. Continue to work on my photography. I recently bought a new wide-angle lens. I want to keep learning and experimenting with taking photographs.

2. Get a tattoo. I am close to figuring out what I want the design to be. 2011 is the year.

1. Be kinder to my adopted city of Chicago. I've taken some heat recently for my excessively pro-Philadelphia posts. In my defense, I had just spent a week back on the east coast visiting some of my favorite places in the city and I was suffering from a nostalgia hangover. But, 2011 is a new year! I am turning over a new leaf and I will try to emphasize the things I LIKE about Chicago. (For the record, I will still point out the crazy and stupid things I see on my day to day travels, but they don't tend to be specific to Chicago, but rather merely evidence of a large and diverse body of people living in close quarters exercising their capitalistic, hipster-ific and ridiculistic urges.)

I guess this is a combination of a resolution and a bucket list, but I've typed too much now to go back and change it. So, look out, 2011, we have a lot to do!