Why I Oughta...

Over the weekend, I posted a vintage photo of my family 1 at Walt Disney World back in the early 1980's and talked about how I wasn't sure EXACTLY where the photo was taken nor was I sure why my sister and I were wearing these white tags on our clothes.  Here, again, is the photo in question below showing three of us wearing Mickey Ears and my mom looking very chic in the Florida heat. See those tags on me and my Sister next to me that seem to be pinned or tied to our shirts?  Earlier this week, I posted about the details and solved *that* part of the mystery:  those are "Lost Parent" Tags with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on them .    But, I still didn't know the location.  Of course, we're in a hat shop.  And, the cast member is wearing some sort of lederhosen-like outfit.  But, was it in Epcot @ the Germany pavillion?  Was it at The Chapeau in Magic Kingdom?  I wasn't sure.   But, I knew that someone WOULD know the location....

 A few days ago, I posted a retro photo from a family trip to the Vacation Kingdom back in the early 1980's and wondered both where (inside the park(s)) it was taken and also, what these little tags on our clothes were for during our visit to the parks.   I was maybe four or five years old.  And that would make my middle sisters age 6 and age 12 or so.    It didn't take long to turn up this listing on eBay that shows a "Lost Parent" paper tag that they say is from Disneyland. Source via Ebay listing.  This is NOT my listing, not my tag.  Original here . Now, if I zoom waaaaaaaay in on our original photo, it sure seems to be Mickey and Minnie in this pose on the tag.  Have a look here: So, we're wearing "Lost Parent" tags.  The back of those ( via that *same* eBay listing ) looks like this: Source via this eBay listing.  Not my tag, not my photo.   Pretty interesting to think how much they de-prioritized the telephone nu...

My sister Vic sent me this photo of us at Walt Disney World from when we were very young.  It is my Mom (very stylish, right?), my second oldest sister Sharon, my sister Vic and - of course - myself.  I'm assuming my oldest sister is the one taking the photo, right?  We're all wearing Mickey Ears and my mom is holding a fourth pair in the photo.  But, where are we?  It seems like we are (obviously) in a hat shop, but looking at the cast member's uniform, I wonder if there's a way to figure out the location.  Is this inside The Chapeau in the Magic Kingdom - the big hat shop?  Or, are those lederhosen that the Cast Member is wearing?  Could this be inside the Germany Pavillion at Epcot?   I can't confirm this, but my parents tell me that they went to Walt Disney World during the opening year of Magic Kingdom - so sometime between October 1971 and September of 1972.  And, if that is, indeed, true, might my Mom have booked another trip...

That image above is from the Cook County Clerk's election results page and shows the results of the ballots cast in the Maine Township District 207 School Board race.  The top vote getter?  My big sister Linda.  She worked hard to get that top spot.  (So did my Dad!)  Now when we address her Christmas card, we'll have to change the address to The Honorable Linda Coyle, I guess? She has a tough job ahead of her, but I know she's going to do a great job for the community and help make Maine South, West and East High Schools some of the best in the State of Illinois. Congrats, big sister.  We're all very proud of you!

I've written here on the blog about our past brushes with famous people.  Like Hollywood famous people.  T here's that time when Nat and I - before we had kids - stayed in the pool house of Joel Murray . But recently, we had a totally different experience.  We we went to see the new Disney movie Beauty and the Beast at the York and we stayed all the way through the credits.  Why?  Because, we wanted to see what you see above:  the listing for the executive producer. The Babe, who is the only one of the three that can read, was waiting in her seat with us and she just about jumped out of her seat when his name showed up.  It was a fun little way to end the movie for us.  The film itself was great, but because we've know that someone we know has been involved in the project for years, it made it even more fun.  So, I'm considering this our 2nd Hollywood *kinda* connection.  Kinda...because they're related to people we're related to....

Earlier this month, we spent some time up in Coloma for our annual July visit and as we normally do, we went out to St. Joe's for some Silver Beach Pizza and what-have-yous.  On this trip, we went a few times and spent time both down below the bluff and up on top in town.   I covered one of the stops earlier this week with our visit to Silver Harbor Brewing Company . St. Joe's always has public art and this year is no different.  The theme is 'beach bugs' and there are lots of little statues/art that kids can climb on and have fun, but one of these bugs is a bit different. It is a caterpiller that was built by a team at Whirlpool named H-E-L-L-O.   You can read more about the bug here.   It was built by a cross-functional team at Whirlpool.   The team that built this thing can be found here . So...while it it *is* public art, this is interactive public art that takes your photo and then allows you to save it on your device.  There are instructi...

This weekend, we went over to Wannemaker's for their annual Christmas season Open House with all three kids and Nat's folks.  This is the second year in a row we've gone and it was a totally lovely experience.  Last year, we got their early in the day and waited for a long time to get to meet Santa and pet his reindeer. This year, we arrived pretty late.  I think it went from 10 am to 3 pm.  We arrived about 230 pm and walked right in.  They switched things up this year.  Last year, it was meet Santa...and THEN...go meet his reindeer.  This year, they put the reindeer part first.  They were allowing groups in two at a time to pet each of the reindeer.  The girls got up close and person with one of them (in the photo above). After that, you went around to the Santa line.  There, they had some cute coloring pages for the kids set up with crayons.  Really great way to keep the kids occupied and give them something fun to do while o...

This morning, I found myself sitting at my sister's desk up in her office and noticed this black and white photo of my Momma on her wedding day.  Looks like she's carrying a bouquet of long-stemmed flowers.  Don't see that happening today, right? Not sure where Vic and Equation Boy got some of the photos around their house, but they have some sweet ones of our family from back in the day - including a few of me as a little guy.  Maybe I'll share some of those here on the blog at some point...

I plucked this can of Coke Zero out of the box over the weekend and - as a good, reliable, somewhat-persuadable corporate sugar-water-drinking-bot should do - immediately took a photo of it and texted it to my 'Sis'.  This post goes out to all three of those of mine. You know who you are.  Consider this your #siblingsday post.  (Remember when *that* was a thing??)

I probably should have put 'reading' in quotation marks.  But...here's the Bird giving The King of The Ball Tossers a lesson in how cats can cross the road.  He seemed to be into it.

We couldn't have had a better time over the weekend at Ravinia for David Byrne.  We went up there with Nat's family and if every trip to Ravinia was like this one, I would LOVE going there to see shows.   We parked right near the main gate (we didn't arrive to a bit after six pm, so we weren't super early birds), the weather was just right (not too hot), there wasn't an opener (David Byrne went on really close to 7:30) and he didn't play forever (we were home by 10:30). From the looks of the place, I wasn't the only one enjoying myself.  There were more people standing up to dance at this show than most of the other ones I've been too.  I guess the CSO doesn't give you much to dance too (and the susher's wouldn't have it anyway, right?!). I took this photo above (click on it to get the full feel) and while it is doing some weird things (like cutting Ryan's head off - guy in red in foreground), it gives you a feel for the night. Lo...

I was in 2 North Riverside Plaza for a meeting this week and on the walk back to Ogilvie Station, I spotted this neat Chicago and North Western Train sign.  You may not be familiar with C&NW (or CNW ), but I have a family connection to the heritage - and now defunct - train line. My oldest sister was an in-house counsel at the railroad ahead of their acquisition by Union Pacific.  It is pretty neat that they've kept the sign up near the station as a reminder of year's past.  When we built out the Babe's Lionel train this year, one of the cars that she ran was a CNW tanker car that we picked up because of my sister's tenure with the railroad.  At one time the Chicago and North Western (two words, unlike the University!) was one of the longest rail systems in the country.  And today?  It is gone.  But not the signage.  In fact, if you look closely, you'll see CNW badges on some of the overpasses and on some of the freight cars runn...

My nephew had his lego "snowball fight" build displayed at our local library along side a dozen or so others.  Really neat to see the creative juices flowing as he built out his scene.  Two things jump out at me: 1.  The guy in the middle on the right is on his belly with - what I think is a snowball on his back.  Must have been a tough shot. 2.  That tower in the middle has a dude up on it, too.  That's the cat-bird seat.  Great vantage point.  But...you'll run out of snow really quickly, won't you? I loved Legos as a kid and it is neat to see them persist across time.  I love the fact that this isn't a 'kit', but he created it instead out of a random set of blocks - the way you are *supposed* to play with Legos!

Take a look at that backyard rink.  Pretty awesome.  Equation Boy/Man really stepped it up this year - his second as a rink owner/operator - by adding some length to the ice and building boards for behind the goal at one end.   He even (with the help of his daughter) painted on the Elmhurst Chiefs Hockey logo (see it there on the boards) and hung a cute banner (which is cut off from this picture because it has their last name on it!). I walked down there one day last week and they weren't home and the ice was so clear that I was afraid to go on it, so I didn't even do a 'boot skate'.  Last year, Nat gave me a nice pair of skates and I played down there a bunch of times with very few injuries.  Hopefully the weather stays on the cold side so I get an invite to come down and play over the weekend.  I'll be padding up a bit more than I did last year, I think.

This baby belongs to one of my nieces.  She's like 10+ years old and looks like she's homeless.  My sister tells me that they've tried to scrub it with various products and nothing takes the  - what they call - "love" - and what I call "soot" - off her face and hands.

On Saturday, we went to the Brookfield Zoo 'Holiday Magic' - along with thousands of our closest friends.  We're members, so Nat and the girls go pretty regularly and she's never seen the parking lot as full as it was two nights ago. The lights were great and the star of the show is the music-sync'd Christmas tree display around the center pond/lagoon.  They have 100ish trees lit up that rock-and-roll with the music.  And fortunately, it isn't all Manheim Steamroller. A disappointment, however, was the animals.  Most of them weren't around or they were inside and we couldn't go in to see them.  The big cats, however were on the prowl, so that was kind of neat.  Every other time we go see the lions and tigers and other cats, they just lay around on the rocks and yawn.  We saw one stalk something - which, I think, ended up just being a shadow - but it was neat to see. If you're taking your kids, make sure you bundle up and bring some light-up t...

Nothing more to say this year about our annual visit to Renegade except for:  parking sucks.  The place is way too packed, and what the Tribune said yesterday. We, did, however take our annual family photo.  The Bird made it in there! Here's our Renegade photo from Holiday 2011 . Here's our Renegade  photo from summer 2011 . Here's our Renegade photo from Holiday 2010 . Here's our Renegade photo from Holiday 2009 .

Nat picked up this 1.32 gallon mini keg at Standard Market right before Thanksgiving.  It's from Breckenridge Brewery - which is surprisingly in Denver.  I think Nat's sister and her husband are big fans of this place. The purchase wasn't really for us - but for Nat's two brothers who go all-in for various holiday/Christmas beers this time of year.  In fact, they brewed their own (once again) that should be ready at next Christmastime.  They'll be cracking open bottles of last year's brew in mid-December.

Thanks to two of my brother-in-laws, we went to this place while we were in Denver.  Those of you who are South Park fans will get a little chuckle out of this.  Those of you who don't watch the show, this will be lost on you.

The altitude didn't seem to bother the Babe.