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!