Why I Oughta...

Right at the turn of 2017, I posted a photo of a couple of salvaged windows we're going to use in our new old house and mentioned that we also bought a transom window that came from the same place. Here, above, is a look at the transom window right next to one of the square windows that are destined for our library room.  The transom is 74" wide by 18" tall (that's the glass part) and the frame adds a few inches each way.  We really love it and it was in our budget to buy this one.  There was another one that just was priced a bit too high, but was pretty awesome. We're going to use this transom in the 'interior' side of the vestibule that we're building right by our front door and I'm hoping we can work to incorporate the design in other places - maybe another transom?  We can't get too nuts, though...right?

Well, well, well.  Now...*this* is a film worth talking about as part of the Art @ York Series at the York Theatre in the Elmhurst City Centre.  'The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years' is the choice from Classic Cinemas for the February 2017 Art @ York Feature.  You can see more here on their site , but it is being shown on Wednesday February 8th at 1 pm and 7 pm. And it was done by Ron Howard?  Yep ! The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years is based on the first part of The Beatles' career (1962-1966) - the period in which they toured and captured the world's acclaim. Ron Howard's film will explore how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came together to become this phenomenon, "The Beatles." It will delve into their inner workings - how they made decisions, created music and built their collective career together - all the while, highlighting The Beatles' extraordinary musical gifts and their r

All the way back in November, I shared a photo that showed off square tiles, set in a pattern that was from the queue of a ride that I thought might serve as good inspiration for the tile in our vestibule .  Just a week or so ago, I came across another tile pattern that stopped me in my tracks.  That's it above.   This is the ordering section of the new PizzaRizzo restaurant and as you can see above, is a mix of a main pattern and a few borders.  This uses both hexagons and squares.  Check out the close-up below to see how the hex's and the squares work together.   I'm out of the tile-selecting business (that's Nat's territory), but knowing she's a reader, here's hoping that this will influence her a bit in one of these directions.  She's already ruled out my first choice:  which was to put our last name in tile.  Then I wanted the house number.   Kinda like this .  Or even this with it smaller in one corner of the vestibule .   But I th

This was a real Festivus miracle!  I met up with all of these Frankfort Tigers for Festivus late last year and had loads of fun hearing their stories and laughing it up.  Wonderful crew and so lucky to see them all.  I didn't stay for the feats of strength, but I'd guess I could take at least one of these guys and pin them.  At least one.

There's been some progress on our new old house over at Hilltop including the installation of the sewer line and the water main.  The photo above shows the trench with the water main laying in the bottom of it and most of the photo is unremarkable, but at the top, there's something that happens that I was surprised by:  they bore *under* this massive tree on the property and ran the water line right UNDER the tree. Here's a close-up: We really wanted to save this tree and this seemed like the best way to both preserve the tree and to solve the location of the water main.  Pretty neat to see them go right under the root system. My Dad has said that building a custom home is a full-on problem-solving project as there are dozens of little decisions that need to be made everyday like this one.

One of the things that I failed to do as we crossed into the new year was to look back at the #everyday pledge of posting something here on my diary online.  For the past few years (starting in 2010), as one of my New Year's Resolutions, I worked to write something (as Neil Steinberg calls it) #everygoddamnday and flex my writing muscles while documenting the people, places and things in my orbit. I've hit 365 posts a few years:  2010, 2011 and 2015.  I was just short in 2012 and in 2014, I wrote a ton of posts elsewhere, but not here on the main blog. But last year?  I had 366 posts.  Yep.  Most posts ever.  And that's because it was a leap year.  I also wrote 80 posts on our family blog and countless links over at my link blog . But, one of my other resolutions sat there on the shelf:   my mobile app idea has kind of been on the backburner, but I'm doubling down on making it real this year again. So far, in 2017, I'm off to a good start and that's

Saw these at the taproom of the Solemn Oath Brewery out in Naperville on a recent visit.  Added to the Coaster Collection here on the blog.  By my reckoning, this marks the 14th coaster in the collection that you can see here . This isn't the first time I've written about the fine folks at Solemn Oath Brewery.   You can see all the posts here on the SOB tag page .

The Babe found and traded for this 8 year old pin from Disneyland that marks the 'opening day' of Toy Story Midway Mania from 2008.  Traded for it. That means that *someone* bought this pin eight years ago.  Held on to it for eight years.  Brought it all the way to Disney World and then decided that one of the ratty pins on the typical pin board was 'better' than this one and decided to trade for it. I can't find a lot about this pin online, but there is this eBay listing  and PinPics has a listing showing the pin, too. The Babe snatched it and this one will go on her pin board right next to her Minnie as Mary Poppins and this Christmas pin from 2009 from the Polynesian that she traded for on a previous trip.

Mickey the Mouse was born on November 18th, 1928.  And we happened to be in the parks on November 18th of 2016.  As we walked in, they handed out these cute pins.  They're all over eBay for up to $7 a piece, which is nuts.  Ours will be on the girls pin boards where they'll be right in line with their other pins they've collected/traded for over the years.

Day 3 of these Very Merry Pins.   First was the Passholder one .  Then was the Lilo and Stitch one .  Today is the Frozen one.  And this is the first one that kinda makes sense with the whole snowflake thing on the front of the cover that opens.  These pins all have 2 pin backs and because of that (and the weight of them because of the hinged front that opens!), we're basically am resigned to having them *just* be on the girls pin boards.  They can't really be worn by them because they're so heavy. The year has started out *very* Disney-heavy (and Disney pins, to be specific), but that's mostly because I'm working to empty out the queue of posts and photos from our last trip.  Unfortunately for those of you who don't care one bit about Disney pins, I have bad news for you:  brace yourself for a few more days.  There's more coming!  And those of you who know us, probably are expecting a few more of these in the next few weeks.  eeek!  The collections are