Why I Oughta...

Thanks to my brother-in-law* Bill, I now have a plan for hiding our water meter, our electric ground and house some A/V equipment in the corner of our basement.  I asked him to help me conceptualize what something could look like and he whipped up this beautiful rendering. Pay no attention to the scrap paper he used - but focus on the drawing.  The bookshelves on the right have 'rails' that run from floor to ceiling that 'contain' the pipes.  Pretty clever design.

I was driving home from Kalamazoo on Friday evening when I got burned out of Howard Stern replays.  I was driving my own car, so I had my original Sirius player with me.  With Stern only doing 3 days a week, by the time Friday rolls around, I've likely heard *most* of the bits/segments, so if I'm in the car, it is either tie for sports radio or a spin around the Sirius dial. One of my stops is Channel 31 - the Coffeehouse.  I heard this song from Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and *had* to take a photo of the display so I could remember the name of the song. After my love of Christmas Village buildings , this might be my second-most-embarrassing guilty pleasure.    Here's an AMAZING live effort from Herb and the boys.

They've gone ahead and set up the Lemax Christmas Village at Menards.  Yes...I'm still starry-eyed by these things.  And...yes, I'm still embarrassed to say that I'm into them.  The Babe liked them too.  There's a set of these things that are Mickey Mouse-themed, so that got her to chime in with some "Micky!" and points and grunts.  There are a bunch of structures - from all of the various collections that I'll post in the coming days/weeks.  We spent a lot of time in front of the display over the weekend as it is really big.  With the Halloween stuff still taking up prime real estate in the store, the display is in a different spot this year. So...did I buy anything?  Nope.  Not yet at least.  My (personal) rule is that I can't/won't buy anything that isn't on sale.  We'll see if my impluse resistance will stick through December 15th - when these type of things go on sale.

My sixth sports-related OGB Post went up about 20 minutes before the first pitch of the 2011 World Series and includes a bunch of baseball search-related trends.  The most interesting?  The rally squirrel. I couldn't be less interested in the series with the Rangers and the Cards.  At least I can root for the Cards because so many Cubs fans will be bummed out if they win. ------------------------------------------------------- Here are the live links to all twelve of my posts on the Official Google Blog: At the Republican National Convention: Politics in the Cloud and on the Ground  (9/9/08)  Searching for the Next Olympic Host City  (10/1/09)   Searching for the 2010 Stanley Cup  (6/2/10)   Celebrating 10 Years in Chicago ( 12/16/10)   Auto Industry off to a Fast Start in Motown  (1/14/11) It's Googler v. Googler this weekend as the Packer and Steelers face off  (2/3/11) Searching for a Cinderella Story  (3/31/11) If the Green Jacket Fits  (4/7/11) The Taxman

First reported back in July , one of Chicago's top indie bakeries - Bleeding Heart Bakery - is opening up an outpost right in Downtown Elmhurst.  It has been more than two months of build-out but by the look of things, they're close to opening shop. The coffee machine, counters and bakery cases are all in.  And the light fixtures?  So clever.  They're big industrial wisks from a huge electric mixer.  We'll be there as soon as they open for some cupcakes. I bet the other cupcake shop in town is loving the delay.

I yanked these pumpkins out of our garden early yesterday morning.  They aren't HUGE - about the diameter of  basketball, so I would have preferred to left them to grow a bit longer.  Unfortunately, the calendar dictates that if we're going to enjoy them out on our front porch, the time had come to cut them off the vine. The neat part of these is that last year, Nat bought one of these pumpkins from Trader Joe's and right before we chucked it in our compost bin, I scooped out some of the seeds, dried them out and saved them for the spring.  Not all of the plants worked out but with this outcome, the effort was worth it. Those other Jack-be-Littles on the right side of the picture are all compost orphans:  they just popped up based on the seeds we threw in the compost bin last fall.

The Babe really loved the turf but was spooked a bit by all the people and commotion at the Illini game this past weekend. She wasn't the only one who had a great time!