I'm not getting enough sleep again. I really need to start getting more sleep. It's not healthy. I'm probably gonna get sick again. I just know it. Watched Dawn of the Dead last night. Pretty good. One of the characters reminds me of Pepe. Did a couple loads of laundry, nothing too exciting. Going to watch Land of the Dead tonight.

Long weekend is right around the corner. Also playing on grass for the first time since, well, January. That's right, I'm going to Mars this weekend with Tea & Strumpets, in what will hopefully be my last ever grass tournament. Maybe this time I'll mean it. It should be fun, I just hope my body can keep up, well, how about just last through the weekend. So that means I have to do laundry tonight, it's been a while. Last night got some good BBQ from Mindy's and a brownie sundae from Oberweis and watched A Day Without a Mexican, which was interesting, but not that good. One of the actresses, Maureen Flannigan, looks like Kristen Bell's mom or older sister, or just like an older version. Going to watch Dawn of the Dead, the 2004 remake, in preparation for Land of the Dead viewing sometime with Tracy. Otherwise, I'm really excited to be closer to the big Harold Washington Library Center. Might mean I'll actually read a new book or two. Also, Google Earth is amazing. Absolutely amazing. Seriously. Go, download it now and play with it, if you can, if you're on a decent Windows machine. So worth it. Wow.

Taste of Chicago was pretty good. Had some curry fries, some curry goat, some Indian cheese stuff with peas. Didn't eat too much, couldn't eat that much. Apparently my stomach's gotten a bit smaller, or something. I definitely feel like I still haven't caught up on sleep yet, but I'm not doing too bad in terms of hours right now, just a bad weekend and I guess I haven't recovered from it yet. Headed out to the burbs tonight to see Tracy. Found out that I work a couple blocks from Perry's Deli, which is a pretty big deal. Also, drove in to work today, it was really quick. Also dressed up a bit, cause I felt a little underdressed coming in to work yesterday, not necessarily my co-workers, but working downtown.

Been a long weekend. Worked a lot, didn't get too much sleep, but got Market Track successfully moved in to 101 N. Wacker. Missed out on some fun all around. Oh well. Heading downtown if fun. If a little strange, well, different anyway. It's nice. I've got a window now. Have to find all the new places to eat, get lunch with friends who work down here, do things after work round here. Should make for a better social life, less time on my couch in front of my TV. I'm guessing. Maybe. Again, we'll see. Supposed to head over to the Taste of Chicago tonight with Tracy. Will be my first time. Otherwise, not much planned for the week yet.

Market Track's moving today, so that's pretty much it. Beach yesterday was fun. Lots of people, didn't have to play too much, so that was good. Not sure what the weekend holds in store for me, depends on work. Could hang out in Bucktown, go out to Woodstock, hang out with my parents since it's my mom's birthday on Sunday. Just wait and see I guess.

So T-Mobile had a huge north shore outage in Chicago yesterday. I didn't have service for pretty much the entire afternoon. So that's a little scary. Makes me think I should get some pay per use plan on Cingular just in case this happens again and I need to use my phone in an emergency. Makes me happy I'm on GSM networks with SIM cards. Just that easy to switch networks. Anyway, I get home from Batman Begins and funnel cake and I do some email checking and ripping of the soundtracks to 10 Things I Hate About You and Eurotrip and my cable modem goes out. Ugh. How reliant am I on networks? Crazy. But it was fine this morning. And the cell phone works fine. Might try and head to beach tonight.

Another reason to look forward to working downtown again: Millennium Park. Oh, in case I haven't mentioned it before, my company is moving offices to downtown, 101 N. Wacker, this weekend. Which is great. While I'll miss Evanston, and the quiet, the reverse commute, I'm looking forward to more eating establishments, easier time seeing friends, and just time in the big city. And Millennium Park. Went there last night with Tracy. Really nice. I'll definitely be packing a backpack every day with a blanket to chill on and a towel in case I feel like frolicking in the fountains. Also, The Green at Grant Park is a great little restaurant and putting green that's actually pretty difficult. No clowns or windmills here, just straight up putting. Fun though. Going to see Batman Begins again tonight, this time with Tracy. Get to grab another funnel cake.

Let's see, 40 minutes on the way to work, 40 minutes downtown, 50 minutes back up, 110 minutes out to the burbs, 50 minutes back in. What's that equal up to? 4 hrs, 50 minutes. That's how much time I spent in a car yesterday. I was awake for 18 hours. Huh. That's a long time. Anyway, went bowling yesterday with Tracy. That was fun. It was Quarter-Mania at Orland Bowl. 25¢ per game. $5 cover. $2.50 shoe rental. Lots of fun. I might actually be sore because of it. Now I think is to try and find someplace to play horseshoes or pick up a horseshoe set up myself.

Whoops, no update on Friday. Pretty easy day though. Got lunch with Bryan at Buffalo Joe's, yum, went and saw Batman Begins. Got some Ho Ho's. When did they start coming 3 to a pack? Started playing a mini golf game on my cell phone. Also started listening to the radio on my cell phone too. It's awesome. Headed out to Woodstock on Saturday, stopped to pick up an iSight for a Father's Day gift, figured out that it doesn't work over DirecWay. Went out to Tracy's on Sunday, got some Dairy Queen and watched After the Sunset. Hmm, such a short update for what seemed like a pretty long weekend.

After all that time away from Las Tablas, I thought it'd be great, fabulous, and everything I'd remembered and more. But it wasn't. The plantains and cheese appetizer was great, and the carne asada was also fabulous, but Tracy and I split the Picada Columbia, and everything else was just okay. Definitely have to just stick to the meat and bananas next time. Lake View South is a pretty nice neighborhood, it seems anyway. Lots of nice single family homes down Wellington. Dropped off a loaner iBook for the Russells. Dropped by to try and pick up some software and pay Bryan, but no one was home. I'm definitely dressed better for the weather today, got a sweatshirt, socks and shoes. Much better. Also ended up driving in to work after making myself an egg sandwich and a latte for breakfast. Don't even think I turned the TV on yesterday. Impressive. Updated my cell phone firmware yesterday as well. Pretty easy, except for popup blocking and running downloaded code issues. Security and usability. Ugh. Give and take.

Took one yesterday. Another one of those one day flu types of things. That's twice now in a month or so. Hmmm, and all after I got digital cable and HDTV? Correlation? Yeah, probably. I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep the past couple of weeks, watching anything and everything. Maybe being bitten twice by some bug means I should stop with the late nights. We'll see, as always. I did manage to watch a whole lot of TV though, but since it was in the middle of the day it wasn't so bad. I did get to see Ed for the first time in a long time, and that's a great show. Also Dead Like Me, great canceled show on Showtime. Finally got to watch Great Chefs of the World, my favorite cooking show ever. Also watched a couple movies, Une femme de menage and 50 First Dates, both slightly sad romantic comedies. Also cooked up some egg sandwiches for breakfast/lunch. But all that couch time did some good, and I returned to work today. Heading over to Las Tablas for dinner tonight. Finally got a UK to US plug adapter for my cell phone charger, which is good. Moved a bigger hard drive to Argon for server usage. Updated the loaner iBook to Tiger.

Can't believe it's June 13th already. Impressive how fast time goes by. Weekend wasn't too shabby. Saw Mr. & Mrs. Smith out at the Woodridge 18, where you can get a funnel cake instead of popcorn. That's cool. Movie's really good too. Tracy and I got some ice cream from Baskin-Robbins, a 24 hour place, only place that still seemed open. The Dairy Queen across the street was closed already. Saturday cleaned up a little before heading over to Bucktown to hang with Russell for a bit. Lunch at Silver Cloud, some MLS and playing with Marla. Tracy and I went to dinner at Cornelia's Roosterant which is, in my opinion, pretty cool because they started having a piano bar. Sunday, lots of TV and lots of napping. Did some grocery shopping, I'm gonna try and cook some dinner this week. Already started the marinated salmon fillets. I'll even try and cook some rice too. Managed to go swimming this morning. Early too. Decided to go when I woke up at 5:36am, which time I seem to wake up at, except I usually just go back to bed then hit the snooze repeatedly.

I also got a new pair of shoes, Merrell Primo Breeze II. Tracy dropped by last night after dinner with some friends to say hello. That was nice. Headed out to see her tonight, catch Mr. & Mrs. Smith, probably some dinner. I'm definitely watching too much TV. Ended up sleeping on the couch last night. And to think I want to get a couple more premium channels because I want more HD. And I've got all those DVDs sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Ugh. I might have a problem. When's the intervention?

Got myself a new cell phone, Sony Ericsson K750i. It's pretty sweet. Can't get T-Zones to work on it yet, but I'm working on it. It looks fancy. Looking back, I apparently have a 3 year cycle to getting new cell phones, so I'm close to being on time, but maybe 5 months early. This also means I won't be carrying around a camera anymore, because the phone is the camera! 2MP, wherever I go. It's not fast, and not superb, but it works. Chilled at home last night, watched some TV. Might end up being a pretty late night at work tonight, we'll see.

Played some putt-putt, or, mini golf with Tracy last night. Place we went to, White Mountain Recreation Center, was just okay. No clown. No windmill. No flashing lights. Need to find one of those places. One of those places with go-karts too. And an arcade. With soft serve ice cream. Also got iSync properly working, I think, last night. There's some nagging issues, probably with syncing Tiger and Panther machines to the same .Mac account. I'll try and take care of that tonight. Oh, did I mention I won the lottery? Yup, a whopping $25.50. Sweet.

Laundry. Finally cleaning up the Data Center. Installing Tiger on Oxygen. Exciting stuff last night. But it was good to get some things out of the way. It's nice having a pretty fresh machine to work with. I'll try and keep all the machines, Oxygen, Aluminum, and Argon in roughly the same shape, same apps, same configs. Hopefully. But I think I'm gonna try and finally start some programming. We'll see. I've definitely said that before. And now with MacTels on the horizon, a 2 year horizon, I've got to start wondering if I'm gonna upgrade or not. I'm still using a machine that's roughly 5 years old. Should I try and upgrade it again? Should I look for a nice used G5? Should I not bother, which actually makes the most sense, since I'm barely using the processing power now. Just looking for more stuff to buy, more money to spend.

Ugh. So Apple is gonna do it, switch to Intel, more thoughts at WWDC 2005. Ugh. I don't know what the fallout's gonna be on this one, but I'll wait and see. It definitely changes my purchase schedule: I was thinking of getting a new machine sometime within the next year, but that now no longer looks to be the case. Crazy. Definitely thinking different. One good thing, I guess, or maybe not, but according to this CNET article, Mac OS X for Intel will only run on Apple machines. You will probably be able to run Windows on Apple machines though. Weird. Crazy weird. But enough about that. Recapping the weekend, which was actually pretty busy. Friday night watched Lords of Dogtown in a bad theater with a bunch of high school kids and younger. Did get some Raisinets finally. Saturday, Tracy and I went up to see the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Nice, not so much blooming, but still pretty nice. Lots of walking. Stopped by Evanston on the way down, caught Madagascar and dinner at Vive La Crepe. Noticed that the projection was off, overscanned, with about a foot overlap onto the black framing curtain all around. Annoying. Sunday we went to the Park West Antiques Fair, one of any number of street fairs I'll probably be going to this summer. So I spent a fair amount of time actually outside this weekend. Which was pretty crazy. And lots of walking. And my bum ankle's paying for it. Try and do some laundry tonight, started reading Neuromancer.

Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith was great. Fabulous. I really liked it. Tracy and I had to watch Star Wars IV A New Hope afterwards, to help fill in. But great. Trailers were good too, and why are they called trailers if they show up before the movie? Definite big budget blockbusters ready for the summer. Tracy was kind enough to bring some White Castle back to my place for a quick snack before the movie. Afterwards, we cracked open a bottle of Ice Wine, which goes pretty good with Haagen-Daz Chocolate. No exercise this morning. Hanging out at Old Orchard tonight.

Had a Strip Steak last night. With wood roasted mushrooms. Yummy. I also liked the Weber Backyard Brew. Good summer beer. Having the windows open at my place cools it down, considerably. Didn't go swimming this morning, went running instead, pool was all full when I showed up. Already starting to make some plans for the summer, maybe a short vacation, some outdoor festivals, some outdoor activities.

So, I'm liking premium channels. I watched Man on Fire last night. It was really good. It was widescreen, in HD, with Dolby Digital 5.1. Maybe I would have rented it, maybe I would have borrowed it, but it was on. And like last Sunday, catching Nid de guepes, that's a movie I would have never rented or seen. And Committed, but that was on IFC. But still, I like that I can catch something I haven't seen, or heard, or even wanted to watch. I even like the idea of scheduling around a broadcast, and not being able to pause to go to the bathroom. It's more like a movie going experience. Anyway, did some more swimming. Trying to get better at breathing to both sides. However, my right shoulder is bugging me a bit, not when swimming, but just around. Hurts to lift above my head. Oh well.