Why I Oughta...

Peeking out the window of my office this week was a treat with the brilliant reds and oranges from the trees in Grant Park and Millenium Park.   It was less than a month ago that I posted this same view that heralded in the beginning of Autumn . You can see the other seasons that I've documented out this same view here from earlier this year starting with the gloomy early Spring with NFL DraftTown.

One of the inborn instincts that my kids seem to have (and I had) is the need to count and sort the candy one receives over the various Halloween activities into piles based on type and color.  Here, The Babe shows her handiwork.  All the Twizzlers in one pile.  All the lollipops in another, etc.

That's the Huawei-made Nexus 6P that showed up earlier this week.  This marks the 7th Nexus phone I've had going all the way back to the original Nexus One.  When I was at Google, I had the S, Galaxy Nexus, 4 and 5.  Since I've left, I went with last year's behemoth the Nexus 6 and now this year the 6P. Nat has been on the Nexus program since the 4, too.  But the 6 was so big, she opted to go with the Moto X Pure last year.  This year, she's back on the Nexus program with the 5X. These just arrived, so we haven't put them through their paces, but so far so good.   The camera - everyone claims - is much improved.  That's always been the sore spot for the Nexus line for me.   Also, the 6 was a bit clunky when it came to the wifi and bluetooth radios.  They were spotty and would kick off every once in a while. I ordered a case, but it hasn't shown up yet, so this thing feels so light and thin.  I know it won't last when I strap the ...

Could there be a better Block I Card Stunt than this one at Homecoming this past weekend? Home is right. ( They did a cute Red Grange one , too.)

Yesterday, I renewed my Google Drive combined storage package (gmail, docs, photos) and the auto-response email that came to my gmail was jarring.  (check out the date - October 26th 2015 - for proof that this is recent.) Look at that old logo.  It felt a bit like I found an 'undiscovered' part of the corporate brand that didn't get upgraded to the new logo.  Those pesky auto-response emails are always forgotten, right?  When I was involved with a political campaign last year, the auto-response emails that got kicked off whenever someone took an action were always the last to get attention.  (Which is funny, right?  Because in that setting...those are probably some of the *most* important touch points...) I wasn't sold on the new look Google logo, but when this arrived...and looking at the old Google logo also makes me think that the new one is a big upgrade.

As the weather turns cooler and Fall arrives, my mind begins to turn towards pizza making at home.  For the past few years, I've been steadily improving and tweaking my Detroit-style pies, but it feels like I'm near the end of the line in terms of changes and modifications.  Between the well-seasoned pan, the tweaked dough formulation, and the cheese combo's, I've begun to deliver a consistent product that is repeat-able as long as I have the time to do a cold rise overnight. So, that means I can start to turn my pizza-attention to a different kind of pie.  And I'm thinking that is going to be to try to craft a true south-side tavern-style thin crust pie.  And my favorite pizza is one of those:  Aurelio's.  If you buy into the Pizza Cognition Theory , I'm into Aurelio's because...to me, it *is* pizza.  It is what I had in Frankfort growing up.  Win a baseball game?  Let's go to Aurelio's in Downtown Frankfort.  After the awkward 7th ...

The fine folks up in Wisconsin at Menards are out with another new set of O Gauge train cars that caught my eye this week.  They're calling them 'Flatcars with Panel Trucks' and the trucks are vintage-looking wagons.  They're pretty cute. They're promo'ing three of them:  Union Pacific, Soo Line and Santa Fe.  No Chicago and North Western, though. The Lionel set that my dad had from his childhood is a Santa Fe post-war set and I have to think that these Santa Fe cars would look preeettay preeettay preeettay great with his other Santa Fe stuff.