Why I Oughta...

It was just a bit more than a year ago that we put up the pavilion in our backyard and I've enjoyed a lot of summer days and nights back there ever since.  It is made up of (entirely) of treated lumber, so I wanted to wait a while to let some of the green leech out of the boards before applying a color.  I picked a toner versus a pure semi-transparent stain and I'm happy with how it turned out.  The grain came through and although it now means there's *another* color in our backyard, it turned out great. 

A bunch of my pumpkins are way ahead of schedule (due to the hot August maybe?) and they'll likely be rotten long before Halloween comes, but there's a whole separate set of pumpkins that are currently springing up from the vines.  These ones are still small - like 12" softballs and are bright green.  I planted 3 different kind of seeds:  Big Max (competition size), the Trader Joe's Flat-style grey pumpkin , and some other variety (That I can't quite remember!) that is smallish - like a volleyball.  Here's hoping these are some Big Max ones!

This place came in at #12 on the list - which is surprising once you find this place.  It is way out on Lake Street under the El tracks and kind of isolated.  At least for this suburban guy, it felt isolated.  The place from the front couldn't be cuter, though.  In the front part of the store, they have a deli/bakery in each of the front windows.  I don't think they're actually open to the public (I don't think you can come in off the street and buy meats to take home), but it seemed like they're using it to 'serve' the restaurant.  When we were walking out, a waitress was picking up a salami plate from the deli counter and was set to deliver it to a table. This is one of those places that you must have to *know* is here to get there, I suppose. But since it was on the list, we had to try it.  For those keeping track at home, here's the full list of pizza places we're trying .    This was NOT the best Neapolitan pizza we've had.  I'm c

The beans have come in.  In a big way.  I likely left these on the vines far too long as they've gotten HUGE, but they were so well camouflaged that I missed a bunch of the beans that were still on the vine - until this morning.  There must be 100 of them on the counter this morning.  And they're like 6+ inches long.  This year I trellised them ( post here ) and I'm quite pleased with the results.  Having the beans come in after Labor Day seems late to me, but perhaps I put them in a bit too late. 

Three years ago, Nat and I were married in front of all of our friends and family.  We're extraordinarly blessed and lucky that most of them are still in our lives today.  Here's to 60 more years together, Nat! I still think about our wedding a lot - and with Nat being a wedding pro (literally), I think the event was a great representation of ourselves and spoke about who we were and who we wanted to be as a couple.  We kept the wedding website (NatalieandJake2008.com) out of search and I think I remember having the guys from 1871 (Thanks Phil and Rick!) meddle with the robots.txt file so that may be why the WayBackMachine doesn't have a copy of the site.  But....we do have some relics from the wedding still around.  Specifically....I have dug up digital copies of the invites just this morning - Thanks to Flickr (where they have the bulk of my digital life from 2002-2006 locked up!  The rehearsal dinner - which was my domain in terms of planning (mostly) was a politically

We dressed the 'ole girl up in her holiday best for this weekend's Labor Day festivities.  She looked great.  Understated, but great.  I guess there's nothing like a party to get me to hustle in the yard and landscape beds.

Mark it down:  September 3rd.   That's the first day we spotted Christmas 'stuff' in a store this year.  We were in our Costco yesterday and came across this: And aisle after aisle of Christmas-related products.  Lights.  Gift tags.  Wrapping paper.  And...the toys.  My god.  The toys.  I've said for a few years that Thanksgiving needs to get better PR folks - because we go from Summer --> Halloween --> right into Christmas without much thought for Thanksgiving.  Now maybe Halloween is in trouble, too?!?!

My team announced some big news this week:  we're partnering with Fox News for a GOP Presidential debate on September 22nd. 

Tomorrow is game day in Illini land.  And the first chance in multiple years to start off 1-0.  Thanks to someone in the athletic department finally wising up, the Illini are opening up at home against a patsy.  Instead of getting beat down my Mizzou in St. Louis year after year.  Not only that, but they've somehow managed to schedule EIGHT home games .  Oh...and see the starting time up above?  It isn't 11 am.  Finally....someone (either at UI or up in Park Ridge at the BiG offices) wised up and moved some of these games back.  They're bad for the team, bad for fans, and mostly...bad for students.  Who wants to get up at 8 am for a tailgate after you've been pounding Captain and Cokes at Kam's until 1 am? There's a lot of question marks but optimism is all around this program.  Wins against weak opponents like Arkansas State, South Dakota State and Western Michigan in the first 3 of 4 weeks sets the team up well for conference play - where they've drawn

I plucked these two little pretties off of the vine this morning and they're perfectly soft and yellow.  They've started to come in a bit earlier than last year .   These Green Zebras are the only non-Roma variety in the entire garden, so they'll be worth savoring.  The rest of the bunch is mostly intended to end up in a canning jar in preparation for the forth-coming backyard pizza oven in 2012 .