Miles finished his history fair project over the weekend and brought it to school this morning. Really nice job, miles! Outstanding use of primary sources!

We took a moment out of watching the very cool new show Cosmos by Neil deGrasse Tyson for a selfie

I was in Seattle for work and came across the original Starbucks store. I’m not certain if they’ve renovated it since it opened in 1971, but it looks like it was a pretty nice place from day 1 (wish more were like this)

Miles and I took a research trip to the Northeastern Illinois University library on Friday. The library holds the Chicago City Council proceedings from the earliest days of the incorporation of the city onward. This is quite remarkable because these records pre-date the fire of 1871! It was a most…

Given how regularly we have gone to Flying Saucer over the years, it hasn’t made an appearance on the blog. This was the first place we came to when we move back to Chicago and it was where we met Frankie’s relative by marriage. They seem to have eased up…

This week I finally moved into the Hancock Tower, a big open office space, really modern with great views of the lake from my desk on the 22nd floor. No more office for me, but a far nicer office environment, with a supermarket on the 44th floor, restaurants in the…

Liam accepted his offer at University of Illinois just now! We are super excited for him. He’s very happy to have the decision made and credits the engineering program that he went to last week with making it seem more real and like a place he wanted to go to.…

On Saturday I went looking for a very important document — the official surveyor’s report of our back yard from when we bought the house. We have some ideas / dreams about work we’d like to have done on the back yard this spring, and I thought it would be…

On Saturday we got another 6 inches or so of snow, and we also went out to see a play on a similar theme. “Rose and the Rime” is a play that tells a fairy tale about a town in Michigan called Radio Falls where it has been winter for…

We started getting some pretty heavy snow last night, with a promise by the weather folks that the “lake effect” snow, or as I understand it precipitation that is caused by the evaporation / condensation off the lake then dumped right back down as snow, would continue and be at…