Why I Oughta...

A few weeks back, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry for a few business meetings.  We began talking about what they're working on and they took me to see the "bedroom" - that is the living quarters in the photo above - for their "Month at the Museum" project.   The deadline to apply is tomorrow , so get your application in!  There's a video portion of the application, so you'll have to be creative.   This is an important time for the museum as they're trying to make themselves relevant to both kids and young adults (their prime audience).  They've finished a capital campaign and have recently rebranded to  become more MSI and less Museum.  And...they have a U-boat!  Do you know the story of the U-505 ?  It is - as my dad would say - crazy shit.  Seriously.  These 9 young Americans were tasked with boarding a sinking German sub that had been scuttled.  The Germans opened hatches and armed scuttle charges to blow up the boat.  In the fac

In addition to our first tiny harvest and a recent cucumber pulled from the garden last week, this was my first real "harvest" of the season.  To date, none of my big tomatoes have ripened, but plenty of the grape varieties turned red.  Another cuke was big enough to pick, too. Also, some of my Bell Peppers stopped growing - so I am assuming that those GIANT ones we get at the Jewels are not exactly organically grown.  Rounding out the bounty are three Jalepeno Gigantes.  They're a little bit lighter green than I'm used to, but they pack a lot of heat.

Arriving back from Michigan after a few days yesterday, Nat put the Babe to bed while I gave the lawn a much-needed haircut.  Once the tasks were done, we settled in for a nice night under the pavilion reading/drinking/relaxing. Like everyone else in Chicagoland , we have a bit of a mosquito problem.   But...fortunately for us, I picked up the most romantic of romantic birthday presents for Nat:  the Off Clip-on.   Along with a candle and the mother-of-all cintronella candles - our fireplace - we settled in for a long night outside.  The temperature was perfect - the light is nice - and we have a nice loveseat out there to snuggle in to together. We were in bliss for 40 minutes. Then....scurrying like only they scurry, a small skunk came moseying right along our patio - no more than 5 feet from where we were sitting.  I freaked out.  I'm thinking the skunk freaked out, too!  I knocked over Nat's glass of wine on the table - breaking one of her favorite glasses.  I grabbed

Although it isn't as good as the one Rachelleb spotted on the train ...that's a pretty good femullet caught in the wild, eh? This lady was rocking to a set of street musicians outside the South Bend Chocolate Company in St. Joseph's,  Michigan back in early July.

Someone gifted the Babe this set of bath-time toys from Infantino when she was born.  They're pretty cute and have gotten a good workout these past few months.  For whatever it is worth, they (the toy experts!) say, that you're supposed to throw out bath toys periodically - to avoid mold build-up - so these are probably on their last legs.  Apparently if you don't drain them very well, they'll just trap water and get all gross on the insides.  They'll turn into about the last thing you want your baby to be playing with during their baths. Each one of the specific toys has a blowhole where you can suck in water and squirt it out.  On some they're in their mouths, but on this whale it is right where it is supposed to be - his blowhole. He looks pretty cute and normal, right? He's just fine.....until you take a close look at the tail - all by itself. Seriously?!?  How did something like this get past the quality control folks.  You have to think that the

Up in Michigan, at the local Hardings grocery store, they sell 2 kinds of sugar.  First comes the Spartan Brand of generic sugar.  And....then they sell something called  Pioneer Sugar . Turns out, it is locally grown in Michigan for over 100 years from Sugar beets. I'm certain that there are some characteristics of cane sugar that outweigh anything you can squeeze out of a beet, but eating something local - that helps the Michigan economy - is a nice counter to any shortcomings recipe-wise.   The sugar beet industry in Michigan has the loggers to thank.  According to the history books , as the logging companies began to clear pine forests, they left behind land that was unusable for farming because of the stumps.  Some crazy farmer decided to experiment with beets and the rest - as they say - is history.  As best as I can tell, growing local sugar in the upper Midwest is unique to this part of Michigan.  We might have had some sugar beets back in the day in parts of Illinois ,

A few months ago, we went to our friend Balone's birthday party out at his folks house in my hometown of Frankfort.  It was the first time we had caught up with our good friends Adam and Jill and their new baby boy - which was really nice.  It is always nice to see childhood friends, but when they come packing a new baby boy, it makes it even more special. Someone brought Balone a Coors Home Keg for his birthdayday and we celebrated appropriately - with a posed picture of us with our "babies". Here's the Babe and I, Balone and his shiny new baby, and Adam and his boy!  How adorable.

I only planted one cucumber plant earlier this summer and that may end up being a move I regret.  If not regret, it is something that I'll need to rectify next spring by planting more - and building a trellis over the winter to support them. Over the past week or two, the plant has started to really begin to produce some fruit.  They were all small and un-pickable just yet, but for the first cuke below: It is a good size - about 8 inches - and plenty girth-y.  The book my sister Vic gave me recommends one plant per person eating from the garden, so that means that we'll need 3-4 plants next year (two for us, two to give away to our families).  That's the book below which also recommends the trellising of the plants. Besides slicing them up and adorning a salad, what else is there to do with cucumbers?

Earlier this year, we were given this gorgeous Ginko Tree.  The Ginko is known as a  living fossil  and was thought to be extinct at some point.    We were going back and forth between a Ginko and a Bald Cyprus, but Nat settled on the Ginko.  This beaut is one heck of a graduation present! I dug the big hole (2X the size of the pot!) and stuck it in the ground in late June and I've been pretty diligent in keeping it watered.  We picked up a few of those new tree sprinklers (pictured above) and I set them up on a timer.  The tree came from The Growing Place in Napervill e, so it has a bit of a pedigree, unlike the rest of our trees that are from Home Depot, Menard's and Wal-Mart of all places.  And by pedigree, I mean a book of care instructions.  A book!  This book tells me that the first year, the tree will get shocked and you have to do your best to keep it alive.  They're pretty hardy - being both somewhat weather and disease resistant.  It sounds like we'll get a

Now that you've properly been introduced to our dog, it is time to tell a little story about her personality/smarts. Last week, we came home to find our air conditioner had stopped working.  (No...it wasn't the storm that flooded the Palmer Underpass, it was a different one.)  Well....actually, it was the furnace fan that failed (again) that caused the problem.  We were getting cold, conditioned air, but it wasn't going anywhere because the fan couldn't push it anywhere. Our house is set up like a traditional bungalow - 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 bedrooms downstairs.  Normally, we sleep upstairs along with the Babe and Maisy sleeps in her bed in my office (one of the bedrooms downstairs).  The A/C had failed earlier in the summer, so we had borrowed a window unit from my folks.  Fortunately, that happened to still be in our basement.  After a bit of consultation with my dad, we settled on putting the window unit in our dining room - which would (hopefully) cool the w