Why I Oughta...

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 running on the UP lines in the We

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!

This week, I found time to get out and hit the sledding hill at Eldridge Park in Elmhurst with the Babe.  We bundled her up like Randy and she hit the hill with some of her cousins. I had to literally drag her away from the hill.  I think we'll be back if this snow hangs around.

We were at a stoplight behind this Volvo when I spotted the weird collection of stickers on the back window.  First, the 'Semester at Sea' sticker?  That's weird, right? But, the 'Parsons The New School for Design' one that - frankly - isn't designed all that well struck me as odd.  Maybe that's the way it is supposed to be?

Last night, we went out to the new burger joint down on York Road called HB Jones.  After waiting for 10 or so minutes to get a table, we found ourselves in the front room in front of the fireplace.  The restaurant is made up of three rooms.  The back greenhouse room - where you enter.  A middle bar area with high-top tables and a smallish front room that has windows out onto York Street. We had a great table and a nice enough guy for our waiter.  On both sides of our table were families with multiple kids, so we fit in just fine.  It *was* 5:45 on a Saturday, so it wasn't like we were competing with date night for seats. We'd heard good things about this place. As we were leaving, Nat asked me a question:  "Are we too picky?" That's how I'd sum up our experience. Now, granted...neither of us had a beef burger.  We both had turkey burgers that were topped with huge amounts of various toppings.  It almost seemed like they were trying to cover up an

See that red box down near the baseline that has the number 30 transforming into the number 29?  That's the shot clock.  And in this Duke/Florida State game today, it was the first time I have ever viewed this innovation.  Is this new?  I feel like I watch a lot of college basketball, but maybe the B1G network games are slow on the technology uptake? I really liked this box and it increased my interest in the game.  This seems like another innovation that brings us one step closer to the idea that stadiums and arenas are increasingly becoming "glorified studios" for the tv audience.  As the cash from tv becomes so big, the fans attending the game become less and less important.  Guess who didn't see the shot clock box?  That's right:  those folks who are in the stadium.

A student group called "Campus Spirit Revival" at the University of Illinois has undertaken a contest to try to find a new symbol .  Six years ago, Chief Illiniwek was retired as the symbol of the University of Illinois athletic teams, and some students believe that's long enough for the school not to have a symbol. Currently, there's voting open to students only to pick the top 5 candidates from a group of 46.  You can see the breakdown of the choices here on The Dagger or you can see the full set of options in this Facebook album. After looking at them, I tend to lean towards the military-inspired ones. I've put two of those in this post. The name "Fighting Illini" pre-dates the arrival of the Chief and was " bestowed upon the team in honor of Illinoisans who fought in World War I; the use of the name "Illini" dates to the 19th century ". Some of the submissions are good, some are funny, and some are strange.  The hand-dr