Why I Oughta...

  Yesterday these weren't here, but this morning in spots all over the mulch/bed it seems that the hostas are popping up.  Overnight.  Most of these we did NOT plant, but were left behind by the mean lady who lived in our house before we bought it.  After we had a contract but before we closed on the house, she went out and dug up almost all over the plants in the front.  Unfortunately for her, she didn't get them all.  Too bad, eh?  

More bad news for Downtown Elmhurst:  Fontano's - the home of 8 beloved Italian sandwich combinations has closed.  I drove by this morning and saw this big sad 'For Lease' sign in the window. Confirmed, too by the Elmhurst Patch .   Bummer for the sandwich scene in town.  However, I'm hopeful that we'll see something besides a salon move in.  A guy can hope, right?

At least that's what I *think* happened.  Unless we have a ghost who comes in and drops my culture jars on their edges just for fun. Earlier this week, I grabbed my sourdough culture jars out of the fridge and I tried to wake them up.  I wanted to bake some bread for Easter this weekend, and figured it was going to take a few cycles of feeding them to fully get them activated because it'd been about 2 months since I touched them.  The good news?  They woke right up.  A few feedings in, I had a fully alive culture and a bubbling jar. The bad news?  I forgot to open the jars and dump out a bunch of the culture one evening.  We went to bed and woke up to the strong stink of yeast in our kitchen.  And one of my jars was surprisingly low in terms of contents.   When I picked it up, it dripped.  Turns out, the bottom busted out.  I can only guess that this was a weak spot in the jar and the pressure was too great.  In the photo above, I laid the glass glass chip that busted ou

It has only taken a little over two years, but I think we've found it:  the place to get our pizza pies in Elmhurst.  For the most part, our go-to takeout place has been Mama Maria's - on Valette Street, just off of York on the south side of town.  It is a good, solid pizza place with a great staff.  The pies they churn out are very consistent, but not spectacular.  Unfortunately for them, I think I've picked up my last pizza pie from their store for a while. (Equation Boy/Man turned me on to Mama Maria's.  His old go-to place is called Billy's Pizza Dugout in Villa Park, but there's been an ownership change and he didn't like the changes the new guy made.) All of that is behind us now, because went to County Inn Pizza last night and they've converted me. I consider myself pretty well-versed in all things pizza, but embarrassingly the lead for this place came from my lovely wife Natalie.  Seems, one of our neighbors picks up their pizza from here re

Right on the heels of the tax day trends piece yesterday , Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune ran a short piece in the Talk Section in the front of the Tribune that shows in a visual way the difference a year makes in the sports world here in Chicago.  A year ago, the Hawks were on their way to the Stanley Cup and the Bulls were an afterthought.  Oh, how the tide has turned.  Here's how the story looked in print this morning:

In addition to writing the blog post on the Official Google Blog, I also pitched a local story about tax trends here in Chicago.  The Tribune ran the story late last week ahead of the weekend which talked about how Chicagoans are moving online faster than the rest of the country and being solid Midwesterners, we're much more DIY'ers than the rest of the country.  The top brands don't rank as high locally as they do nationally.  I'm calling that a win for the Midwest. 

It isn't about sports, but still is focused on trends.  Specifically something that millions of Americans are doing today:  filing their taxes.  The Taxman Searcheth was a team effort.  This is my 5th OGB post in just 2011.  I've only penned 4 others in my past 3+ years at the company.  That pace is likely to hold true for the remainder of the year.   As for this post, I worked with one of my teammates in NYC to get the post done.  It is effective because it is relevant and shows in very clear ways some key differences in this year (the late deadline and the fast shift to e-filing/online filing) and a few other interesting things including the fact that more US residents are searching for how to deduct their gambling losses than their charity donations.  Think about that for a second.  I guess one could chalk up the big difference to the fact that in some regards, charitable deductions are much more straight forward.  You just put the amount right in the field for charity.  Bu