So.....6 is More than Zero?

Well technically that's true. But it's also much less than 15 which had been my running goal for last week. Ah well. This is another week and another chance to get over 10 freakin' miles. Remember when I would run 50 miles a week. YEAH. me neither.

So today the plan is to go home and run 4 miles. It's pretty nice out right now, and if the wind stays down it won't be too bad. Plus we can really enjoy a fire and reading/old DVR if we feel like we earned it.

We had a great weekend going to see a concert on Saturday night (Did you know that Tom Morello went to Harvard and got a degree in Political Science and worked in a senators office for a few months or something after he graduated....very interesting). Tom Morello was awesome as was Steve Earle.

Yesterday we went to Indy to visit with Jason's family and have an early thanksgiving dinner. And as I'm at work, I will quickly demonstrate why Jason is the best uncle in the world.

Happy Monday all.

Cold

I'm such a weenie. Walking home last night after a long day in the office Jason and I just *happened* to walk by Sheffields...which happens to be warm and have delicious beer and we just happen to magically gravitate in there if we walk by. So we did that instead of running.

We spent the rest of the night at the Elbo Room. An old friend of mine from college recently contacted me on Facebook and he happened to be playing there last night. So Jason and I went. It was really fun to see him again as I realized the last time I had seen him was at a New Years Eve party for the millenium.

The best part of the night however came at the end of the night when my friends sister told me I should join the Windy City Rollers because I looked athletic.....we walked out and Jason was all excited and all, "OMG YOU'RE GOING TO BE ON A ROLLER DERBY TEAM". I kinda feel like if someone asks you to join Windy City Rollers...you have to give it a shot. So we'll see if I actually do that. I could hold my own on the roller rink when I was like 8 so maybe some of those skills are still looming around. So I might be checking that out. Fun to be asked anyways.

I'm really excited that today is Friday as it's been a long week. Tonight we don't have any official plans yet but there is talk of hanging out with Jake and LaurA!, and tomorrow our new couch is being delievered and we are going to see Steve Earle and Tom Morello at The Vic on Saturday night which I'm really looking forward to. On Sunday we are driving to Indianapolis to have a thanksgiving dinner with some of Jason's family which should be a good time. Next week Jason and I both took the day after thanksgiving off and so it will a nice short week although a busy one as we have a demo on Tuesday and then Wednesday I have a review here at work.

Worst Book Reviewer Ever

So I just finished the book The Mayor's Tongue by Nathaniel Rich and I gave it 5 stars because well I don't know...it was awesome. I was looking back over my reviews in Good Reads and I seem to give all books 5 stars. I told Jason I need like 5 stars with an exclamation point or something...he said well isn't that just 5 stars and then 5 stars would be 4 stars? I guess he has a point. But yeah, it was really good...just really imaginitive, really good writing, interesting story. It kind of reminded me of that movie Big Fish

We were at the Borders last night and I found a book with the words "Psycological Thriller" on the cover at which point I was like well I have to buy this as I'm a sucker for those books. I started it on the train and I almost thought about just staying on the train and going back home and reading it all day as I'm on page 12 and I'm already hooked...hopefully it stays good. The books is called In The Woods.

Tonight we are going to Elbo Room to see an old friend of mine from college that I haven't spoken to or seen in 8 years (thank you facebook!) as he's playing there so that should be a good time. We are goin to go home and run first and then head over there.

Alright, that's all from here. On to work!

Wednesday!

Yep. Wednesday. You know....THAT day. The one that is in the middle of all of the other days of the week.

Should be a good day though...we have actually gone running the last two days...only three miles each day, but 3 miles is more than 0 miles so that's good. We are already going to break the chain of running days in a row today though because we are going to go out to dinner with my cousin in Chinatown and don't want to go all the way north just to come all the way back south. So we are going to instead go hangout at a Borders or something until about 7pm (see that way if I finish the current book I'm reading I can easily pick up another...ooh I don't know...Jack Reacher book) and then head on down there. Thanksgiving is ruined for me this year since my family is going on a cruise instead of sticking with tradition and for anyone that knows me...I. do. not. like. change. SO having dinner with her tonight will be like an early thanksgiving Chinese food dinner....I guess. But will be fun to see her and I'm looking forward to seeing her for sure.

Tomorrow we will go run again and then on Friday and Saturday. If we do that it will be a total of 15 miles for the week...which again...more than zero.

That's just about all from this end....well not really, but work is not underway!

Running!

That's right this whole deal here started as a running blog and there hasn't been much of that lately...and by not much I mean not existent.

Yesterday Jason and I got off the train to the first snow of the season....there was a very light dusting of white stuff on the el platform, although not nearly enough to stick or be anything interesting.

We got home and jumped into running clothes and were out the door instantly. We went three miles and holy hell are we out of shape......or it was just cold and *really* windy. In the end we didn't do too bad, taking about 28 minutes for 3 miles. On the way home we had planned to stop by the Fitness Formula Clubs gym near Halstead and Belmont. I found out online that that location is about 3 blocks from my apartment, the union station location about 2 blocks from my work and the one in Old Town (according to their website) has racquetball courts which I have been dying to get back into for years but haven't found a place that has courts. Does anyone belong to any of the gyms in this chain?

However by the time we got to that area I was freezing and starving and so we decided to just head home instead. Nice to get back out there again. We are planning on another 3 miles tonight as well...I love starting running plans when it's 25 degrees out...ah well. It should be back to the 40s tomorrow. After getting home we started a fire, read a little bit and then watched a few shows on DVR. Ending the evening with the Daily Show which was great.

And thus it's Tuesday.

A Weekend of Nothing...

Well....maybe not exactly nothing, but not far off. 

After a month of inlaws visiting, and other busy weekends, Jason and I did a whole lot of nothing. We were really busy Saturday morning with errands, getting firewood delivered, Jason got new glasses, upgrading our home office with a large monitor and an external hard drive which is nice as now I can just use the power of my little work laptop to do photoshop stuff but not have to buy a new desktop. 

Then around 3pm we started a fire, and started watching movies. Yes. We did watch Ironman again. I'm sorry I love it. Then we watched High Fidelity. In John Cusack's apartment in the movie there is a poster for a show that had been at Schubas. I looked at Jason and said, Hey....you know we live right by that place. I looked online and the music looked good so we decided to douse out the fire and head over for some live music. It was a great venue and a good show. A kid named Tom Schraeder played who I think is from Chicago originally and seemed to be happy and excited to be back in the city.

After the show we went just went back home....and then Sunday at 9am we started a fire....and it didn't go out until about 9pm later that day. So a day of movies, Bears football (if you want to call what they were playing football) and catching up on some DVR we had recorded was what our Sunday amounted to. I moved all my pictures onto our new hard drive as well which since there was 50GB worth of stuff.....took awhile. I have some ideas/plans to keep things organized and somehow get more of my pictures printed/ones I develop need to be kept separated. So yeah.

Anyways. Jason and I just had a great time relaxing and being lazy bums after not being that way for so many weeks.....a weekend of laziness also ups the desire to run....so we are going to try and get back doing that...I keep saying that don't I?....well good plan to start when it's 30 degrees out :)

Chicago : Grand & State Subway Station

Last night after attending a benefit for something (we don't know exactly what it was but Jason's friend was involved and asked if we wanted to go....35 bucks each and unlimited beer and food..although I do think it had something to do with teaching 4th-8th graders) at the Rock Bottom brewery at Grand and State.

When we left, we went into the subway station that is a stones throw away from the entrance to the brewery. We went into the tunnel where we were almost the only people there. The other people down there with us were two guys, one playing a guitar and the other singing. They were playing "Under the Boardwalk". 

I am currently reading Nathaniel Rich's book, The Mayor's Tongue which might be a little weird, but the writing is so fantastic that I don't care...and I think it's weird in a good way. I am in awe in how good writers can put words together and create sentences that almost have a rhythm and sound like they are singing to you. I wanted Jason to hear what I was reading and enjoying so much and so I started reading out loud from the book.....while we were next to the two dudes singing "Under the Boardwalk". It was awesome. 

Jason looked at me and said, "Only in the city." A great end to a fun evening with new friends.

Nice Monday Evening

Last night Jason had an evening out with his work people and so I had a pretty enjoyable evening home alone. I got moving on learning photoshop from the Scott Kelby book...the 7 steps in photoshop or something. It's awesome, because it's more this is how you do shit...and less here is what it all means. So that's good. You can download the example photos from his website and just follow along. It seems pretty good so far. 

After doing some of the examples in the book I took my own photo and worked on it. You can see it here if you want. I compared the before working on it and after working on it and there are some big differences. 

The main thing I learned is that I need a new freakin' desktop as the Lightroom/Photoshop work flow is slow and choppy on our current machine....and that photoblog is kinda lame. Hmm......Apple sells nice new desktops....and since I'm learning a ton at work on how to make websites, there could be a nice side project for me to work on. So there's that....we might be making a trip to the apple store tomorrow night or this weekend. Although.....I am going to make sure things do run faster on my laptop as that's pretty beefed up. Our desktop is 4 years old and so new one would have 4 times the ram and 1.5 times the processor speed...so that should make a big difference

So that's all from here. Tonight we have dinner with a guy Jason used to work with (at Sheffields of course), tomorrow nothing, Thursday is the big demo at work and a fundraiser at Rock Bottom...and then the weekend...where I'm pretty sure we don't have anything going on for, so might be able to get a lot of good work done.....and some good movie watching, fireplace enjoying!

Going to do More of This.

Not hanging out in gross train stations, but taking and posting more pictures on my photoblog. It's kind of an ad-full blog service, but it works pretty well for pictures. I have a few on there from this month and now that our office is rolling I hope that will start rolling too.

We had a great weekend with Jason's parents in the city. They came in on Saturday afternoon and we took them through Millenium park and showed them the bean, which I think they enjoyed. From there we headed back to our apartment and just relaxed a bit before heading out for some drinks at Sheffields and then to dinner at Mia Franchesca. We topped the evening off with a fire, Ironman and some coffee.

Today we went to breakfast at Clarke's and then headed back downtown where we checked out the cultural center. On the second floor there is a beautiful dome of Tiffany stained glass (stay tuned to the photoblog for pictures!), on the top floor right now they have a great Chicago photo exhibit.

After the in-laws left Jason and I strolled through Macy's and found this awesome piece of furniture. We had found a daybed we liked at Crate and Barrel but it was *huge* and would have over taken our apartment. We found this which is a lot smaller, and pretty cool looking. Yeah that's right it's white leather...yeah Mrs. Spills her Wine Every Night ("There she goes again!") won't be allowed to sit on it :). Because we work we can't get it delivered until the 22nd as it's the next available Saturday. So we are looking forward to that being delivered in a few weeks.

We spent the rest of the day running errands and not buying an iMac and yelling at our current desktop for being super slow and stupid an annoying. But the couch took the spending for a month, but now when people come over they dont have to sit on the floor so that's good.

I have a busy week coming up with my group having a big demo on Thursday afternoon. I'm so crazy about deadlines and presentations and get nervous the night before so I'm hoping that things are in a good state by Wednesday night so that I can get a somewhat decent nights sleep that night. We are meeting a friend on Tuesday for dinner and then on Thursday that same friend is hosting a benefit or somethign....beer and appitizers at Rock Bottom....don't like that place, but they have pretty good beer and good appitizers and that's what the entry cost will get you.

Alright. So it's Sunday. A busy week coming up. And more pictures are going to be processed. So that's that.

Getting. Shit. Together.

I am in the middle of finally emptying some boxes in our second bedroom/office and I finally feel like we are getting to a place where things are calming down and we are getting our shit together. It took longer than I had expected to get used to the 9-5 work life, but I'm there now and not as exhausted as I was when I get home.

My dad gave me the photoshop suite for a graduate present from graduate school and right when I got it I had gotten some books to learn how to get the most of it, and then, we moved, I started my new job, etc etc. So I'm going to go back and get back on the taking pictures thing. That's another thing, when I got out and take pictures, I haven't been downloading them from my camera....and so they sit there, and then I hopen 8 days worth of photos and I'm like...uh...yeah there are some good ones there. So I want to get back from taking pictures I want to at least, download the photos and just get rid of the ones I know I'm not going to want. Then the task of brightening up or slighly fixing the photos won't be such a daunting task.

Jason's parents are coming to visit us this weekend so that should be fun. We are thinking that today we are going to go to the Art Institute for a few hours, and then we have dinner reservations at Mia Franchesca this evening. Then....I don't know. Something fun I'm sure.

Alright, well that's about all from here. Oh getting shit together...also means running is creeping back into my head. We have a meeting on Monday regarding Run. Track. Run., so I'm excited to see where that can go.

A New Era

Last night the senator from Illinois won the seat of the President of the United States. Four years ago when he gave his speech at the Democratic convention I, along with several others I'm sure, said, "That man is going to be president one day."

That day is today.

Jason and I and a bunch of friends had tickets to the rally. We met at Hackney's* in the south loop and the proceeded to the park. Once we were in, we were greeted with a giant jumbo tron and CNN with the returns. People were *so* happy. It was a crowd of 100,000 people, there was no fighting, there was no crazy drinking, just people listening and waiting. When Barack came out and gave his speech the crowd was silent and attentive. He can capture people in a way that I have never experienced. He has gotten the excited about the country again, and I think he will continue to get people back involved in their government. I talked to my mom this morning who said, "I don't know. When he talks to me I really believe what he's saying". I told her that it's probably because he really believes in what he's saying. He seems to really want people to just come together and get some shit done.

When I was in graduate school I did some work in Washington D.C. and I would ask the staffers how their job was. Was it hard when you got some many fails and just had to live for the small wins. I wonder if this kind of thing is what makes those years of fails worth it.

Like I said. I think it's a new day. It's a day where I can be proud again to go overseas and say, "I'm an American." And hopefully now I won't get looks of, "I'm sorry." So Congrats to the Senator from Illinois and let's see where he can take this country.

The boy and I are obviously happy. I'll have more pictures up later, but I'll leave you with this of your fearless duo.

*after I left a meeting early...which...in retrospec I should have stayed for the duration of.....but if I have learned anything it's that you can't go back in time. Decisions are made. They might be the wrong ones....but you can't hold on to the guilt....well that's what I'm trying to tell myself anyways.

Baracked My Vote

This morning after a very *very* bad night of sleep I jumped out of bed at 5am and Jason and I ran down to our polling place and were about 8th in line to vote. We had a bit of a hold up because our voting sheets weren't there and so we had to fill out some other papers and so on. The woman there was awesome and patient as she didn't know exactly what to do either but she did say, "Don't worry, you won't leave here before you vote." Which was nice to hear. 

So we voted for Barack Obama. We have been fans of his for awhile now and are looking forward to seeing what happens for the rest of the day. Awesome friends of ours each got tickets to the rally and asked us to be our guest so we are meeting them in the south loop tonight and then will head over. I'm pretty excited about seeing what the scene is about. 

So I'm a democrat, most of my friends are democrats, most of my family is democratic, my in-laws are democrats and so on. Now I'm not a democrat because all my family and friends are and thus I wouldn't need to talk/think about the issues because I have. I know that I am on board with the Obama/Biden ticket for my own reasons, BUT the last few weeks I have been getting some drinks with a co-worker who is most definitely not a democrat. And I love talking to him about it. I can see where he's coming from. I don't think he can see where I am coming from due to my lack of being able to make a point (which I have to work on, might be a case for my brother-in-law who can keep emotion out of it...that's you Jamie :))....BUT it totally caused me to think about it a bit more even though I knew that I agreed with Obama on most of his issues. Which I think is good. And I think it's good and fun to talk about it. And that's the important thing right? To be able to be like, well we think different, we are voting for way different reasons....but we can respect each other and still be friends the next day....and maybe some teasing can ensue :). So thanks to him, for that...although in the end, I might have ended up more liberal ;). 

Today is going to be a really fun day I hope. 

GET OUT THERE AND VOTE IF YOU HAVEN'T! IT'S YOUR RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN. 

Remember, you GET to vote. 

AND you get a free coffee at Starbucks if you vote :). 

A Week in Time

It's been awhile since this blog has been updated. It's weird when you are in the habit of writing everyday there is always something to say. Then when you don't write for a long time it's like nothing has happened.

We had good week last week. My Dad and Stepmom helped with some more things around our apartment, including some new lighting in our dining room which is awesome.

On Thursday we went to Sheffields where they had free pumpkins for carving which was a really good time. I'm not kidding when I say that I'm pretty sure that it is the friendliest place in the world.

We are really looking forward to election day. Sheffields is having a pig roast and so we are going to go there after work and then head back downtown around 9 or so for the rally....unless the returns look bad at which point we won't brave it.

We have a busy weekend with some visiting at my aunt's house today, and then tomorrow my Dad and I are going to South Bend to visit Enee (who is my Dad's cousin) and look around (..my Dad grew up in South Bend).

My Dad and sue are leaving on Tuesday morning which is sad, as I will miss them, but it's been great having them here for the last few weeks. Also very excited that we have a second bedroom for them to stay in while they are here now instead of them having to sleep on an air mattress in a shitty shitty cold apartment. It's like we are real B+B. Jason's folks will be enjoying the second bedroom next weekend and we are looking forward to seeing them.

That's about all that's going on over in these here parts.