a day in the life

Here come the Hawks…

// December 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

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

// June 11th, 2008 // No Comments » // Entertainment

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.

// May 1st, 2008 // No Comments » // Music, TV

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

// April 18th, 2008 // No Comments » // Blogging, Photography

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

// April 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

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!