Here come the Hawks…

I have to give it John John McDonough and Rocky Wertz. The Hawks are fun again!

Old man Wetrz, nearly killed the team by driving away even the most loyal fan. The younger Wertz is doing a wonderful job to reverse that. Imagine: people actually watch hockey when you can actually see the games on TV, something Bill never seemed to understand.

The team is competitive, young and a heck of a lot of fun to watch. With a little more consistency, they may actually be a competitor in the playoffs. Only time will tell.

How to see a Tony Award-winning musical for (almost) free

Being that last weekend was the last weekend that Avenue Q would be in Chicago, I decided to head down on the Blue Line Friday and try my luck at getting into the show, going stag since Meg had no interest in it.

Prior to my trip, I had arranged to meet up with someone selling a ticket for that night at the theater. Yet when I got down there, I couldn’t find him anywhere.

So I stood in line at the box office in hope that I would be able to snag one of the unclaimed tickets (the show was sold out).

Suddenly, an enraged woman came over to the group of us waiting over at the window asking if anyone would want her pair of tickets. She was upset that the theater would not let her bring in her doggie-bag from Maggiano’s so she wasn’t in any mood to see the show. She passed the tickets on to an eldery couple. These ladies looked over the tickets to see where they were and decided they wanted to pay more money to sit on the lower-level. They then passed the tickets on to a younger couple who were trying to exchange their tickets. This couple had tickets to the Saturday show and wanted to see if they could get in to the Friday show instead (which the box office allowed them to do).

All the time during these transactions, me and and another guy standing in the other line were staring in amazement on commenting on how someone could pass up these tickets, regardless of where they were.

Once the couple now holding the tickets realized that they could exchange the tickets, they then started looking for others to pass them on to. I seized on the opportunity and grabbed the tickets. I found out that the other guy I had been chatting with was also going solo so I gave him the other one. The tickets were in the center in the balcony about half-way up. Not the best seats, but not bad either.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show (more to come) and spent a grand total of $12.50 the entire night!

• Parking at CTA Lot: $2.00
• Train ride down and back: $3.50
• Snacks and beverages: $7.00

Worst. Neil. Ever.

So rather that watch the Cubs handily trounce the Brewers last night, Meg flips on the Idol (followed by Dancing) on the DVR. The guest was none other than the incomparable Neil Diamond. If you don’t have a spot in your heart for Sweet Caroline there’s something wrong with you.

Anyway, as is custom with these appearances, the Idols do their own take on songs of the guest. Needless to say, these were some of the worst covers I’ve ever heard. The worst being, the little puppy-dog-boy-who-all-the-tweens-have-to-scream-at-the-top-of-their-lungs-over. By the time the show was over, I needed two Advil.

I thank the Lord for the night time so I can forget yesterday (with apologies to Mr. Diamond).

Growing pains

I decided to move my photography site onto it’s own domain to hopefully bolster interest in my work. As part of that process, I’ve moved my blog back onto my former home page.

In the process of doing so, I decided to see if I could recover my posts from when I was using Blogger as my blogging software of choice; after all, Wordpress has a built-in importer!

Needless to say it wasn’t that simple. Every time I tried to import my Blogger posts, it would always say that there were 0/0 posts available. I went through many, many web sites and finally found the answer to my problem. Moving the posting location from my own domain to Blogger.com allowed Wordpress to successfully recognize and successfully import ALL of my previous posts. Not fun, but at least that part is finally complete.

Movin’ on Up

Meg has been in the process of interviewing with a number of firms in advance of our move and yesterday, something finally paid off. Meg has accepted a position at a bank in Arlington Heights. She will be working for the temp agency from where she received the offer for the first three months and then would be brought on by the bank after that. She spent most of the day worrying in anticipation over the position and finally received word late yesterday afternoon. She starts 2 weeks from Monday and couldn’t be happier with her decision.

Congratulations babe!

Congrats to my lovely wife

Meg completed her first 5K run this morning with a time of 39 minutes. Her first event? The 3rd annual Race to Wrigley!

Would you expect anything less from my Cubbie Girl?

The time has come

The time has come for Meg and I to bid our humble abode in Naperville adieu. After almost three years at our current residence, it’s time to move on and find a place closer to where I work. The commute I have to make daily has taken it’s toll on me and my vehicle and with gas already approaching $3.50 a gallon, the price of the commute is getting quite ridiculous.

As of last week, we’ve started looking to move to the northwestern suburbs and have actually found a couple of places that we really like. However, we’re still waiting on the results of a second interview at a bank in Arlington Heights that Meg interviewed at on Saturday. Once we know what’s happening there, it should help us focus our housing search even more.

More details to come…

Update: We moved over Memorial Day weekend to our new abode in Schaumburg and couldn’t be happier! The commute is great and we’re both close to our jobs. Who could ask for more?

Trying some new blogging software

I’m looking for an easier way to create and edit blog posts without the necessity of being connected to a live net connection. As such, I’ve started reviewing Ecto and MarsEdit. It would have been nice if either of these apps had been included in this year’s MacHeist but this also presents the opportunity to review each app thoroughly before committing to either one.

The list is in

Being an avid Cubs fan I was surprised to see some obvious names omitted from the Marshall report this afternoon. While he briefly mentioned, Slammin’ “Corky” Sosa was no where to be found. While One Year Wonder Glenallen Hill and Todd Hundley top the lists of former Cubs. Even Neifi “Egg with Legs” Perez wasn’t included.

Strange indeed.

On an unrelated note, I’m approaching the Fukudome with reservation. Many first year big names have problems producing until half the season is over. Will Fukudome follow in these footsteps? Only time will tell.

Effortless conversion

So as part of the site redesign, I found a plug-in that is supposed to convert the blog to something that can be read on an iPhone or an iPod touch, without having to make the iPhone theme the permanent one.

So I installed and activated the plug-in. The only problem is, I don’t have either an iPhone or touch on which to test it. However, I do have an Apple store close to where I work. So yesterday I headed down there for something else and remembered the plug-in. I loaded up the blog site in Safari and it worked perfectly! It even adapted automatically to the rotation of the screen.

I love when things just work and work as you would expect them too. Apple is one of the companies whose products just ‘work’ and now I can say that I consider Wordpress in that same category.

The iPhone plug-in is called iWPhone and can be found here.