Last numbered entry for the year. Pretty bad for a blog named Daily Dose. 77/366. I even had an extra day this year. Hope your Christmas was nice. Happy New Year too. Hard to believe we're headed to Austin on Saturday for Luke's Baptism and a week long visit. Seriously don't know where the time went. The Shedd Aquarium was fun on Thursday morning. Of course Lucy's favorite part? The playground. Not so much the jellies, or the dolphins, or the fish. 2nd favorite part? The crashing wave at the Amazing Reef exhibit. And then maybe the stingrays at the same exhibit. Everything else, not so much. Oh, and the submarine play area. So yeah, don't think we'll need a membership quite yet. Thought about trying the Museum of Science and Industry on Friday, but it snowed, so let Lucy play in the snow on the roof instead. She likes to play in the snow. Went to Revolucion on Saturday night. Hit up Waffles on Sunday morning. Not bad, but it's new, so has some issues to work through. Spent a lot of time with Lucy over the past 4 days. Got some arts and crafts for her on Saturday, so now she can cut with scissors and paint at home. As for the New Year? Going to try and do some exercising, like everyone else's resolutions. Got the P90X iPhone App while it was available for $.99. So maybe try that out. Was looking forward to some cold weather biking today, but it's actually up above 36° instead. Go figure. Oh, another resolution? Start trying to use Metric instead of Imperial measurements. I think because that's what cyclists do.

Merry Christmas! Tried to do some last minute Christmas shopping for Tracy and our $5 present policy, which proved harder than expected. Went walking on Saturday during Lucy's nap, and biked around on Sunday. Found something, which I guess is better than nothing. Saturday morning hit up Green City Market and the Nature Museum. Surprised Lucy didn't want to go to the playground there. Saturday night went down to Macy's on State Street, to kind of look at the windows, and see what else was up. Busy busy busy. Didn't realize you could just get off at Lake and get there without going outside. Ate at the Frontera Fresco, which was smart enough to be open for dinner. Got some goodies at Magnolia Bakery for dessert. Watched Snow White and the Huntsman after Lucy went to bed. Sunday had breakfast at IHOP then stayed inside after nap time, picked up burgers from Butcher & The Burger. Mine was great, Tracy's and Lucy's had a little too much pepper on theirs. Pretty quiet day at work. Only 5 people in the office. Not a whole lot of people about, and probably headed home soon. Going to church tonight with my parents, who watched Lucy today, and Christmas Eve dinner with them. Headed out to the in-laws for Christmas day, spending the night, taking the train in since I have to work. Thursday going to the Shedd Aquarium in the morning with Lucy and Tracy (working that night). Hopefully Lucy still likes fish. She's recently gone back to Thomas for entertainment. Also, the world didn't end last Friday. So we've got that going for us.

Weened myself off Flipboard as well. Moved a bunch of feeds back into kindling on Fever, so I'm back to doing that. But better than checking a bunch of sites all the time. Haven't touched Twitter or App.net or even Facebook directly in a while. Funny, but not going through any withdrawal symptoms. It's nice. Just a few more steps and I'll be sober. Just rebuilt my work desktop, again. Outlook 2007 emails just wouldn't get indexed anymore. Happened sometime after I uninstalled Outlook 2010, so that had something to do with it. Tried all sorts of stuff, and with my filing scheme (Inbox and Archive), I need search. So, back to scratch. Also decided to start using SkyDrive instead of Dropbox for work related file syncing. Will wait and see how it holds up. Dropbox has been pretty bulletproof, so curious to see. Went to the Market Track holiday party at Rittergut last night. Fun. Didn't realize how much older I am than some people, and how much in common I have with others, in particular an appreciation for cocktails. Very cool. Disappointed with the blizzard last night. I totally could have biked to/from work/party. Oh well. Watched 2012 over the course of the week, you know, in preparation for the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar today. So in case the world ends today, thanks for reading. And if I don't post again before Tuesday, Merry Christmas to all.

Note: don't open a set of bookmarks in Tabs on Safari while typing up a long post, as it will wipe your tab off the face of the planet. Yuck. Anyway, sick again. Flu this time I think. Congestion started last night. Body aches started today. Yay. And to think I just got over something. But at least Lucy's finally healthy, at least it seems she is, finally. Appetite is back for her. Which is nice to see. Probably won't last very long, but still, nice to see. Forgot it was my turn to pick her up yesterday, since I forgot Tracy was working that night, instead of having Wednesday off. Tracy just went and picked her up, while I made my way home. Didn't check my phone until I showed up school wondering where Lucy was. I feel horrible about it, even if Lucy probably didn't even know. But never going to let that happen again. Weather's been a little crazy. Supposed to hit 50 tomorrow. Not sure what I'm supposed to be doing for commuting wear, but I'm getting confused. Haven't quite figured out temperature->outfit coordination.

Really close to being completely happy with my Pacer. Just need a better custom mount for the dual headlights on the Nitto Mark's Rack M1 and to try and clean up the Revolights mounting. Otherwise, I'm good. It's more commuterized, and I wonder how much I'll take off or if I'll just leave the fenders and rack on for long rides when the weather gets better. Lucy stayed home last Friday on a sick day, so I had one too. She was a little out of it at school on Thursday, we think because of lack of sleep. She ended up coming in to sleep with us on Saturday night, and sleeping in until 10:30. Pretty good now, just a residual cough. Sleep schedule's a little off. Friday was in bed by 8pm. Sunday, probably because she missed her nap due to Caden’s birthday party, she wanted to go to bed at 6pm, but managed to drag that out to 7:40ish. Got a Christmas tree on Saturday. Kinda small. Thirsty too. Went grocery shopping the other day for the first time in a long time at Jewel. Just trying out any sorts of foods to see if Lucy would like it. Small individual servings too.

Au Cheval was good. Not great. Rather go to Gilt Bar. Or Publican. I still really like the Publican. After dinner, picked up some beer at Haymarket, and came back to our place, where we played SketchParty TV. It's really cool. It's just pictionary, but using the iPad+Apple TV+AirPlay. Very cool. Then we played a round of celebrity. Wonder if there's an app for that one too. I like the idea of technology enabling social interactions. Also would have been great since all 6 of us had iPhones, although Tracy and I were the only ones with the lowly 4S's. Also flipped through movies, looking for something in the background, and eventually settled on Can't Hardly Wait. So that brought me back. Good to see the Cases and Riveras. The Cases slept over, and we went to Nookies Tree for breakfast/brunch. Then I barely made it to the train station for the 12:30pm out to Woodstock. But then played with my daughter for the afternoon. Played in the yard, running around, and her new toys (play pizza and hamburgers and hotdogs). Took her to get some Hong Kong Chicken at Plum Garden, and lo and behold, Lucy likes it too. Looked around at some old toys since my Dad was cleaning out the toy room in the basement. Lots of stuff there. Came back in on Sunday after brunch at Burnt Toast. Lucy like the corn dogs. Mom took a little spill dropping us off at home. Hope the swelling's gone down. Finally got some personal tasks done, like reimporting of Foursquare to Storytlr again, albeit without the location information. But at least it works. Then got old diary entries imported to Day One. Super easy once I found out they have a cli available. So been reading some historical stuff, which is fun.