Why I Oughta...

Just two little Napa Grape tomatoes, but still a harvest in my opinion. The rest of the tomato plants are bit further behind, but soon they'll overwhelm us.  But, this year, we have a plan:   canning sauce and whole peeled .  Depending how well we do, perhaps we'll have enough sauce to last the year.  We don't eat all that much pasta, but I do plan on making A LOT of pizza pies next spring.

We really are in the summer slump.  It appears that just about NOBODY is paying attention to the Illinois governor's race with both Pat Quinn and Bill Brady barely registering any query volume on Google.com from Illinois searchers.  One thing is certain, Brady has closed the gap with Quinn that existed over the pat year.  As a challenger facing a sitting governor, I'd give him a slight edge based on that fact alone.  Quinn took a hard nosedive over the past two weeks, so he may be able to rebound.  Past month's results are linked below.  I'll keep tracking the race up until November. May Update (Quinn with slight lead) April Update (Dead heat)

I resumed this blog on January 1, 2010 and I subsequently turned on a new set of analytics tools.  I just went and peeked at them and was surprised that South Dakota was the lone holdout. What does a guy have to do?  Maybe a post about Dinosaur Park ?

Happy Birthday to my lovely bride, today!  Here's to MANY more happy years.   Hope today is a great day. Love....Teej and the Wheeze And...strangely enough, Happy Birthday to my Mother.  Born on the same day, some years apart.   The photo above is from this weekend's festivities at Ravinia.  Cheap Trick/Squeeze were a lot of fun as we toasted the two birthday ladies.

Via my brother-in-law Peter , comes this pretty rad advertisement for Schlitz Beer. More here .

Friday morning, I was out running errands - returning pavers to Menards, getting gas, and getting Nat's car washed.  On the way home from Menards, I spotted this DIY wash place right on North Avenue. View Larger Map Normally, we go to the Delta Sonic a bit closer to home, but I was feeling cute and decided to check this place out.  Turns out, for $5.00, you get a 5 minute vacuum and a 10 minute wash including wax and special wheel cleaner.  Pretty good.  The Delta Sonic mid-grade wash is $10 and it doesn't include wax nor anything inside, so I figured I was ahead of the game.  The only issue is that this place doesn't have blowers to dry.  You have to bring your own towels.  Now I know.  Next time, I'll bring all my supplies (Armor-All, TireShine, etc) as well as towels to get a good spot-free finish. I left the wash and hit North Avenue heading home feeling awfully prideful of the clean job I did, but also the deal I discovered. Then...out of nowhere, this hap

Here's a shot of one of the rows of tomato plants I planted in the past few weeks.  I got a really late start on the garden (due to construction) this year, so I'm doing a lot of experimentation. We have some fruit growing on one of the varieties of tomato plants.  These are " Napa Grape ". And...we have bell peppers growing, too! Now that we're back from vacation, I can focus a bit on watering/weeding the garden and getting everything going again.  Thanks to my sister, Vic, these babies survived the drought.

Ransom Note Via ManMadeDIY .

Yes...those are Mermen Christmas ornaments of various occupations.  Sailors, surfers, football players, female impersonators and it appears wrasslers (or someone else who wears a unitard). These are apparently the calling card of the shop they're in:   Tuck's Christmas Shop .

Recently, Chicago Magazine came out with their list of the " 25 Best Pizzas in Chicago " which included a few places I had never heard of - and I eat a lot of pizzas.  Both Nat and I went through the list and thought it might be fun to try to get to each of these places and give them a try.  Maybe NOT eat the pizzas specified, but check out the pizza (of some sort) none the less.  We've given ourselves 18 months to hit 23 places.  23?  Yeah....I'm scrubbing Lou's  and Gino's off the list - just because we have them so often.  (I probably should do the same with Aurelio's - the pizza I grew up on - but I won't because I haven't had it for months...and it is delicious!) Here's the list ( cribbed directly from Grub Street's post on the topic ).  Most of these will give us a good reason to secure a baby sitter and make our way into the city.   By next summer, I'll (hopefully) have my oven done (on the right) and be making world-class pi