Again, it's been a while. So what's new? Let's see, since my last update I've been craving blueberry pancakes, specifically the ones from Golden Olympic in Evanston, specifically the bad diner ones, with the blueberry topping like from pies, not fresh blueberries. I've been to 3 diners without success. I keep going to ones that use fresh blueberries. The McRIb is back, and I've already had 3 in the last three weeks. Finagled a weather shield for the Peapod III/Xtracycle for Lucy. No qualms about riding about in this windy cool fall weather in the mornings. Also not worried about getting caught in the rain. It is held together with duct tape, so maybe I should come up with something a little bit more robust. Ran my first 5K for the year, and probably for a couple of years, at the Trick or Treat Trot. Tracy set the family up with costumes, as a royal family, with Lucy as a little wizard. Ended up winning 2nd place in the adult costume competition. Also showed up late to the start, so just joined in, not getting an official time. But made it the whole way. Also went to the Trick or Treat on Southport, meeting up with Mike and Amy and Caden. Crazy stupid busy there. Finally got a iHome iW1 Air Play speaker for the kitchen, so really do have whole home audio now. Started keeping a food log through eatwit, which is really just a tool for tweeting meals. Just have to remember to log it. Otherwise, Lucy had her 18 month checkup. All good, except she could do with a few more words. Plowed through the Thrawn Trilogy and back to something new, Neal Stephenson's Reamde. I just started but I'm thinking I'm really going to enjoy this one.

So if I write the very next day, what's there? Not much. Tracy's day off, so I took the Brown Line in, which is good because of construction on Lake Shore causing delays taking the 135 in to work. Started using my Jabra CLIPPER Bluetooth Stereo Headset to listen to This American Life. Kind of nice having that on the way to and from public transportation. Big weather shift today, supposedly snowed out at O'Hare. Thinking of trying out the window insulation heat shrink stuff. The iMac sits right next to a window, through which I can feel a breeze, so maybe it'd be a good idea.

I was waiting to see which one of us, Tracy or me, would drop and break their iPhone 4S first. Turns out to be Tracy. She dropped hers on the street yesterday, cracked the back glass panel. iPhone still works, so until it stops, probably won't get it replaced. Good thing I got AppleCare+ for them. Haven't been exercising, fell off the wagon after being sore for a week from the 5K I ran. Also been eating more, so I need to cut back on that as well. Got boxes piling up in the office that I need to break down. Lots of old toner to send back and get recycled. Snowed briefly yesterday. Supposed to get up to the 60's this weekend. Ah, Chicago weather. Finally got a new lens for the GF1, a Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f1.8. It's really quiet focusing. Looking forward to taking it out this weekend and seeing how it captures Lucy. Not sure what the plans are for the weekend, but probably hitting indoor Green City Market, and hopefully early enough since we're Market Members at The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum so Lucy can check some stuff out there. Also need to hit up Gymboree through our Groupon for open gym.

iTunes update and iTunes Match released. Of course i plugged. Seems nice. Would be nice if it worked for entire iTunes library data, like movies, tv shows, audio books, and so on. But no dice. Maybe someday. Saturday morning biked down to Naha for some chef garage sale, but was pretty much picked over when we got there about 1 1/2 hours after they opened. That sucked. Then biked back up to Green City Market, and Lucy got to wander around the museum a little bit. Ran into Tom and Christine and family. Small world. After nap time hit up a playground since the weather was pretty nice then headed out to BW3 for dinner. We were hoping Lucy would like the wings, but she went after the ketchup eating utensils, in other words, the fries. Sunday made waffles, then headed back out to Niles to get a new car seat. Ended up with a Britax Marathon 70. Had two other families walk out with one before us, both of which had done their research. Works pretty well. Probably jumping the gun on the forward facing seat, but it's nice to be able to see her, and she seems to enjoy it. So that should last for a while. Headed out to the Argaos to extend her nap time in the car as well. Good to see them. Hard to believe that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. And then it's Christmas. Crazy.

One of those days that just whizzed by. Didn't seem like I was super busy at work, but must have been doing something productive. Usually the only way that days don't drag, when I get sucked into something. Trying out Evernote for note syncing, instead of, well, text files on Dropbox. The whole Memex thing as a personal information repository hasn't really worked out, so maybe this will? Not going to pay for premium yet, wait and see if I continue to use it or not. I have decided to stop paying for a Remember the Milk Pro account. Reminders on iPhone/iPad/iCal I think will work fine for me. I think the main reason I had for getting it was email notifications, the need for which went away with iOS 5. Not sure what other online services I can also stop paying for. Random note, we've got new neighbors who bought the 2nd floor unit in the building. And they have a dog. Which barks a lot. First dog in the building that we can hear. A lot. It's annoying. They moved in last weekend, and we heard the dog on Saturday, and then again tonight. Strange, and annoying. And they're 2 floors away.

Lucy's staying out with my parents this weekend, Tracy's birthday weekend, kind of. Headed to moto tonight, then Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 at the Muvico in Rosemont (VIP assigned seating for the win!) tomorrow followed by a late dinner at The Bristol. Tracy is also working, so I'll have some free time during the day as well. Need to install running boards on the Xtracycle, and do some much overdue maintenance. Other than that, not much else planned. Tracy had some fresh frozen corn, and turns out Lucy and I like it frozen. Go figure. Lucy had the snots a little, but looks like she's getting over it. Not really affecting her sleeping which is good. Watched Limitless last night, which I enjoyed. I'm also thoroughly enjoying Reamde. So far pretty hard to put down. Also saw that Aces High, book II in the Wild Cards series is getting rereleased in December. And saw that the Death Gate Cycle is also available from iBooks, so at some point will rebuy those.

Friday night sat down for a three and a half hour long dinner at moto. I walked over from work, Tracy took the bus down. It doesn't seem like the safest place to walk from Halsted over to the restaurant, but it's ok. Also, we were seated in the back and didn't have any cell phone reception. Strange to be unconnected for that long. But dinner was good and long. Highlights for me would be their new dish with the quail and smoked apple sorbet, the cigarwiches, and the marshmallow dessert. Also nice was that they had a half pair, which was just about right. Expensive though. And I can cross another place off my list. Saturday put the running boards on the Xtracycle, then took my Sprint out, finally hitting up More cupcakes, which I think is my new favorite. Then back up to Home Depot before picking up lunch from Potbelly. Then a nap before heading out to Muvico for Breaking Dawn Part 1. I keep forgetting how awesome Muvico is, and for the right things, totally worth the price. Then back home for a coffee before a late dinner at The Bristol. Got in a half hour before our reservation and got seated. Pretty good meal there too. More cramped though. Lazy Sunday, but did manage to get a haircut. Upped the RAM on the iMac to 16 GB. Lucy got back in the afternoon, played a little, had some dinner and bath, then bed.

Just got wiped out starting yesterday by some sort of illness. Probably the flu. Stomach flu, maybe. Probably picked it up from Lucy, who's having gastrointestinal problems. I think she picked it up from Gymboree. She's only been there twice, but seems like she's picked up some sickness each time she's been there. Anyway, haven't actually eaten anything since yesterday morning. Curled up on the couch and pretty much slept when I got home a little early from work yesterday. Hoping I can do more of the same today. And just in time for Thanksgiving! Anyway, hard to imagine taking care of Lucy if I'm sick like this. 

Got better enough by Thanksgiving. Thank You. More couch time, and work from home time. Wandered over to my parents condo with the family after Lucy's early nap, she's also feeling much better, eating more, not so much diarrhea. Thank You. Not so much a traditional thanksgiving, since my parents are headed to the Philippines for a month, and moreso a chance for a refresher for Mydel, who's subbing for my mom as Lucy's daycare for December. Thank You. So it was cornish game hens, Hong Kong Chicken and other Plum Garden goodies, fried shrimp and chicken from Chop Suey Hut. Facetime'd for the first time with Al and Nicole, but for some reason it crashes my parents internet/tv router thingie, which is strange. That device, which I think allows them to distribute DirectTV over IP, which in theory is pretty cool, but I also wasn't able to get it to work with my VPN. At least with a PPTP, I didn't try the SSL-VPN, which probably would have worked. Anyway, giving thanks for all that. At work on Black Friday, only had 6 people on the 135 headed into work today. That was nice. Stopped by Chef Petro's Restaurant and finally, finally, got the diner style blueberry pancakes I've been craving. So I'm done with that for a while, and now know where to go to get my fix.

Makes sense, being in an ad related industry, that Thanksgiving weekend wasn't really time off from work. With the extra memory, my iMac running Parallels really is like having 2 machines in the space of one. Fast User Switching under Lion is a dream, except that full screen Reeder doesn't like being active when switched away from or back to. But if I remember that, no issues at all. Kind of rainy all weekend. Got to see the boxing gym where Tracy goes, kind of cool, took Lucy. She had some fun pushing the bags around. Looked at Christmas trees on Saturday, then went back and got one on Sunday after picking up some infrastructure. It's a Balsam fir. Nice. Lots of needles already. Hoping it lasts through the season. Listened to Christmas music putting lights on it and while Tracy put decorations on it. Also trying out some solar Christmas lights from the front balcony. Lucy seems to like the tree. Today was also Lucy's first day with Mydel providing daycare. Took Lucy a little while to warm up to her (food always helps) and no tears when I left (took a half day to see how the morning went). Real test is tomorrow. Not looking forward to it.

So Lucy had a pretty good rest of the day with Mydel yesterday. Ate well, napped well. She was a little wary this morning when I dropped her off, but I didn't have time to try and get her reacquainted, so we popped on the TV and that seemed to assuage her fears. She plopped right down and started eating. Stopped paying attention to me. Hope she did ok. Been doing pretty well poopwise, which is what you came here to read. But no diarrhea, and even when we called the doctor, they said to call back after 2 weeks of it. But she ate a lot, and was quite happy last night. Seems to have picked up a new laugh. Makes me laugh. Had to redo the lights on the tree last night, figured out that a rolling pin makes light application pretty easy. Would love to do some sort of automation for the lighting, but that was all from the old condo, which means my parents were nice enough to take it home, and I disavowed it, so it's possible it all got recycled. Whoops. Didn't realize they might have come in handy for a month out of the year. Someday I'll have a whole house automation system. Someday. Speaking of which, maybe I should get a lottery ticket.