Nothing too exciting. Tracy's on vacation, and somehow managed to get sick, or she's fighting a sickness, which is too bad. We made spaghetti for dinner last night, which was good. Made lots too, so that should be eaten for the next week. Lent starts up tomorrow, so it might be time to start up the eating some sushi again. Apple had an announcement event today, nothing too special. At least nothing I want to buy. Really really need to do some laundry. Realized I've got a span of about 5 weeks where I'll be on a plane at least once a week, 2 weeks of vacation, Vegas, Cali, Italy, and Mexico. Ugh. Expensive. Might have to move Vegas off that list. I am excited about my new shoes though, Vivo Barefoot shoes. Like having bare feet. It's awesome. I got the Avalon in Fog. It's my new shoe company, displacing Merrell. Just wish they had some dress shoes in black.

I never thought of St. Louis as a weekend trip, but it is. Tracy and I didn't end up going till Saturday morning; we both ended up working late Friday night. Anyway, drive down is super easy. We stayed at Tracy's friend Trish's new house, and they had a puppy, Polly, who was super cute. Also there were Trish's husband Kevin and Lane, another of Tracy's friends from school. We got some board games in, some puppy playing, I'm no good at SceneIt?. Went and got some ping pong paddles, and I managed to pick up some old school sandpaper paddles, which are now my paddle of choice. Also got to see Karaoke Revolution on the PS2, which is pretty cool, along with seeing an EyeToy in action for the first time, very impressive. Sunday went to lunch at the City Coffee House & Creperie which was very good. Headed back up to Chicago and stopped off and watched Curious George in Woodridge. I was surprised. I wasn't expecting anything, a kids movie, nothing more, but it was really good. Like Really Good. Anyway, go see it. We then got dinner in Chinatown at Ken Kee. And now back to the grind.

A couple things to start out, Happy Birthday to my brother, and a happy anniversary to my parents! With that out of the way, a pre happy birthday to Whitney and thanks for the fabulous dinner last night. Good times. A guy's night dinner for five, or seven, or nine, would be a great idea as a regular occurrence. And in a surprise move, Tracy, who starts a week long vacation today, and I are headed to St. Louis to visit a couple friends of hers from college. Last minute dealie. Should be fun. Oh, and next week starts up Lent.

Had some issues updating yesterday, Firefox crashed a couple time on me, so I never got back to it. Going back, Tuesday night got some food at some BBQ place out by Tracy that wasn't that good, so I'm not even bothering to put the name down. Then we got to playing some ping pong. Fun. Although I'm not looking forward to playing tennis with her when the weather gets better; I'll be doing a whole lot of running. So we played a game, and I lost. Loving the PSP. Watched Shade on the bus to work, and finished it up at lunch. Awesome. Currently watching Equilibrium. Headed out to dinner for Whitney's birthday at Gene & Georgetti. Really need to do some laundry.

Tracy and I went to the Olive Garden. I got the fettucini alfredo. It was good. Yes. We enjoyed it. Yes, we went there of our own volition. It was actually my suggestion a while ago. There. I said it. It has been a long while since I've been though, so the waiters carrying around bottles of wine was a bit different, or at least I don't remember that at all. I do like their wine descriptions on the menu though, by taste or flavor, fruity, smooth, and so on. Otherwise, pretty much the same. Just as good. Got to see her dad's new projector in their basement. It's a DLP. My first time. Pretty nice. I couldn't see any sort of rainbow effect or anything. Definite screen door though but only like a foot from the screen. Converted a couple more moves for watching on the PSP, which I guess I have to name. Also got the clip from Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi where the Ewoks speak Tagalog. Uploaded pictures from the Great Wolf Lodge to Flickr instead of my own gallery, which is why they're all showing up on the side. Guess this means I should get around to updating my gallery now.

Weekend was pretty good. Got my PSP on Friday, spent some time, well, pretty much the whole time waiting for Tracy to get off work, setting it up, updating it, trying to get my DVDs in a format that plays on it. It's pretty cool. Also decided to put The Invisible Shield on it. Got a couple bubbles in spots, but I'm not too unhappy with the application. But it looks good. We'll see if it works. Drive up to the Dells was super easy. Takes about 3 hours each way. Great Wolf Lodge was pretty fun. People were nice enough to stay up until we got there around 2:30am, but bed soon afterwards. Bryan was the cook for the weekend, serving up breakfast and a meat filled dinner. Water park was fun as usually. Good to play some pool hoops. Liked the arcade better this time, but no DDR. Got the bonus on the light spinning ticket game, and a bunch from the hoops thing, where my high score was 46. Got to play Ticket to Ride, Celebrities, and the Top Gun drinking game. Thanks to Bryan for cooking and Carlo for organizing again, even if we were a mere 28 days early for the wave pool opening. Sunday made it back with no problems, ate some leftovers, figured out the best way to get DVDs to to PSP: OSEx to rip as a single VOB or MPEG, then ffmpegX to get it to the PSP format. Drove to work since I'm supposed to hang out with Tracy tonight, but Puck supposedly had to get jumped this morning, so we'll see if he starts up after work or not.

Yup. Another birthday. Coolest presents so far? A nice wooden cutting board from Tracy, and Las Vegas seasons 1 and 2 on DVD from Al and Nicole. Awesome. Amazon wishlists rock! Anyway, thanks to those who sent along birthday wishes. Annapolis last night was surprisingly good. I was expecting something pretty bad, but it was directed by Justin Lin, same guy that did Better Luck Tomorrow. Also took me a while to figure out that the senior from Better Luck Tomorrow was one of the plebes from Annapolis. Afterwards went to Darwin's for dinner. Menu's mostly the same. Still have Turbo Dog on tap. But if I can help it I'm not going back. It's definitely not the same. It's lost its charm, its quirkiness. No longer seems very special. Oh well. Long live gentrification. On a side note, I believe I saw Megan Byrnes on the bus this morning. Isn't that crazy? I went to St. Mary and Marian with her, haven't seen her for like 10 years, and then I see her on the bus? I wasn't completely sure it was her, so I didn't say hello, but I did google her and found out she works down the street, actually at my old old work building. I'll have to say hi the next time I run into her. Small world. Seriously small world.

Mind's working. At least I'm thinking about my multitude of projects, making baby steps at least in my head about the things that need to be done. But definitely hard to juggle too many things at one. Really need to start Getting Things Done. Went out to Tracy's last night, had a craving for a burger, ended up getting a patty melt at Davidson's. You know what's good? Bass Ale. Then a bit of TV watching, of course. Caught an episode of Good Eats about using canned tomatoes to make tomato sauce, but Alton Brown also talked a bunch about knife care. Odd. Watched an episode of Ham on the Street, which was great when he added some savory ingredients to some sweet cream ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. Think caramelized onions, Camembert, roasted garlic. And what's the cost of making ice cream with liquid nitrogen? Too expensive?

So the lasagna I made for dinner last night is pretty good, it's just that it took a wee bit longer than I thought it would take in the oven. I should be eating that for the next week or two. Tracy and I watched Gilmore Girls, and bits and pieces of other things, like Big Night and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. We also had a little Muscat with dessert, and wow, that stuff is strong. Headed out to hang out with Tracy tonight. Going to see Annapolis on Thursday, and headed up to the Dells on Friday for the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge. Should be fun. Somewhere in there I should be getting a PSP which should keep me occupied for a while.

I guess today's some sort of holiday. Whatever. Made/making Tracy dinner last night. All she's got to do is pop it in the oven. Hopefully it'll turn out well, as it's my first time making it. Anyway, watched Without a Paddle, which I thought was surprisingly good. Have I mentioned that I've started recording other tv shows not in HD on the DVR? Like Boondocks, Morel Orel, Dinner for Five and John Doe which is surprisingly on the Sci-Fi Channel. I'm also hoping to catch an episode of the X-Files, I think it was called Kill Switch, which was really good and written by William Gibson.

Not a bad weekend. Watched Arrested Development with friends Friday night. Sad to see that show go. Funny on so many different levels. Made some chocolate covered frozen bananas, stuck on chopsticks and plastic utensils because I couldn't find popsickle sticks at the grocery store. But they are super easy to make and taste really good. Saturday Tracy and I headed out to Woodstock to drop off some paperwork and see my parents. We went to dinner at Deeter's, and I tried to do some more tech support for the computer and their new TV and HDTV set. Sunday Tracy dragged me out to the Chicago Food Corp Asian Food Market, and I wasn't all that excited about it. Now that I've gone, I love the place. I think it's mostly a Korean grocery store, so Tracy picked up some stuff for Duk Bok Ki and we got some Kim Chi and Bulgogi to cook at home. And, the best part, they had Soju for sale. So we ate well Sunday night, watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith before Grey's Anatomy.

TV networks are odd beasts. I found out yesterday that Love Monkey is going on hiatus. Why? I don't necessarily remember reading any bad reviews of the show, except that it's like Ed too much, but like that's a bad thing. It was a midseason replacement, jumped to the top or near the top of my list of shows to watch, and now it's gone. And I remember hearing a rumor of Alias getting pushed back even further. And tonight, probably most likely the last episodes of Arrested Development to air on FOX. Going to get some Cream Soda, maybe some Hot Ham Water, and definitely some frozen chocolate covered bananas to celebrate. Maybe some pancakes too, or some muffins. Might be headed out to Woodstock this weekend. Otherwise, not much else going on.

Ice skating was fun last night. Tracy and I ended up going through the snow. I'm not very good. Or I keep getting bad skates. I'm leaning toward not being good. Too bad though, cause I like the idea. Lots of snow on the ice though. Always fun to see a few skaters who can actually do things, like spins and stuff. Very graceful. I think it's completely different from watching it on TV, as in the upcoming Olympics. We had dinner at Park Grill right next door, which was pretty good. And then catching up on some shows, and it was weird to see the same concept (small quirkes about significant others) play on 2 different shows (Courting Alex and Scrubs). Anyways, congrats to my brother who passed his boards.

Got that definitely going on. Looking out the window at work, and it's flurries. Crazy. Looking at the radar from the Chicago Tribune and it's pretty clear. Definitely crazy. Odd gripe lately: I'm tired of the chocolate smell while walking to work from where I park west of the Loop. Before it was great, a nice little novelty, always making me crave hot chocolate, but lately, the last couple days, I'm just tired of it. Don't want to smell it anymore. Actually turns my stomach. Oh well. Went to dinner at Red Lobster last night since Tracy had a craving. Got some shrimp stuff. Always amusing how the pictures in the menu never look like the actual dish when it gets served. I wonder what restaurant out there actually serves dishes exactly as they look on the menu. Ended up watching Love Monkey last night. Good stuff. Might be going ice skating tonight at Millennium Park, but that might be weather dependent.

So last night I stumbled up to see Tony's presentation at the Apple Store on North Michigan Avenue. I was expecting a handful of people, some empty seats in the theater, cause that theater is big. I show up 15 minutes or so before it's supposed to start cause it was looking busy. I snagged a decent seat. I whip out Aluminum and start working on the Daily Dose CSS conversion, and then Jess Kindred plops down next to me. Chat with her for a bit until the Blanchet-Ruths arrive in force, and Jess gives up her seat so I'm sitting next to Tony's parents. Chat with them for a bit. Tony's having some technical difficulties, licensing issues with Photoshop, so it's running a little late. But did I mention the place was packed? People standing all around. Sitting in the aisles. Really cool. Really really impressive. I managed to sneak a pic in, but I probably should have recorded more of it because seriously, really impressive. And Tony did a great job. It's always a joy to watch him work in Photoshop, it seriously is like art. I wonder what it'd be like to just do a screen capture movie of him working on a project from start to finish, speed it up a bit, and show it. Hmmmm, another project to add to the list. Other people I know that showed up, Carlo, Sally, and Tony's girlfriend, whose name I am unsure of. Carrie maybe? Anyway, really impressive to see a former teammate, a friend, a peer, giving a presentation and actually wowing people at an Apple Store. Really cool. Besides that I went trying on jeans at the Levi Store before that, and afterwards watched some TV at home. I forgot to mention that I restandardized on Firefox again, mainly due to the Fission (https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Newest&numpg=10&id=1951) extension which makes the location bar a progress bar for loading. It's the little things.

Might as well admit to it, but my parents came out to the city this weekend to hang out, and well, clean and bring food. Yes, I'm soon be 29. Yes, my mom will still clean my place if I allow it. Same thing with the food. Hard to believe for most people, but those are two things my mom loves doing: cleaning and cooking. And she's phenomenal at both. So a big thanks to her. This also gave me an opportunity to clean out my closet a bit, which needed it. Also got another couple loads of laundry in. So that's good. Otherwise, watched a bunch of movies Saturday night and Sunday morning. Finally watched The Wizard of Oz all the way through, well, mostly all the way through, I think I slept though some of it on Friday night. The Super Bowl wasn't too entertaining, the commercials not quite the experience they've been in the past. Food and friends were good though. Special thanks to Liz and Sarah for their work on the jig-saw puzzle. I also managed to finally update my Gallery site, along with installing the second version, which I still have to update to the look and feel, which probably means I'll be updating Daily Dose to a css based layout sooner rather than later. Tonight I'm headed over the the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. to watch Tony give a little presentation.

For some reason, all the old faves and activites and stuff are coming back up, and I'm getting interested in them all over again. Cycles, gotta love 'em. Wicked was good last night, not like the book at all, but entertaining. Tracy and I really need to watch The Wizard of Oz tonight to fill in the blanks. And seeing the difference between the book and musical versions of Wicked, I'd like to do the same thing for The Wizard. Otherwise, my parents are coming out for the weekend. Got some people coming over for the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Groundhog Day. Not sure when a viewing will happen, but it will happen. And this also marks a year that Tracy and I have been dating. Well, it's been a full year since our first date. Which I think is roughly equivalent. Anyway, headed to dinner at the Atwood Cafe followed by Wicked at the Ford Center/Oriental Theater. Didn't do much of anything last night, except look for my checkbook, which I haven't found yet. Did watch E-Ring for the first time, not too much of a fan. Oh, watched That Yellow Bastard episode from Sin City. Still very visually impressive. Oh, Bjorn dropped by to pick up the Square Shooter antenna for his HDTV showing of the Super Bowl. He's got the playoff beard going on. Hadn't seen him in a while.

February was up till last year, a bad month. Bad historically, bad weatherwise, but starting last year, February hasn't been a bad month at all. I wrote about it in a musing, of the change, and well, we'll see if the trend continues. Tracy came over last night instead of me heading out there since she's had an interview this morning up in Skokie. Got some grub from Treasure Island and cooked it up: spinach and roasted red pepper chicken breasts (premade stuff makes things so easy). Finally found a frozen peach cobbler. Finally on the tail end of the cold/flu whatever I had. Only having to deal with coughing now. Caught up a bit more on TV watching, getting all excited about Grey's Anatomy. I love big surprises. And next week's a 2-parter. Started what I guess is a New Year's Resolution for myself, downloaded and categorized financial data into iBank. I probably could have tracked down a copy of Quicken to use instead, but hey, support the small developers.