Why I Oughta...

Head over to Conde Nast Traveler and take a peek at the hotdog slideshow they have up today and peek at who took the first photo of the "Depression Dog" from Gene & Jude's. The team from CN Traveler reached out to me to ask if they could use my photo in their slideshow.    Of course...they could!  They even put in a nice link back to my site - which was awfully nice. This isn't the first time that someone has reached out.   Here's one of my tomato photos on a plant sale site  and my post about that process .

It seems that the 9th anniversary of this here blog came and went in mid-February without me giving it much thought.  In fact, it seems that I mostly forgot about the 8th anniversary, too.  I posted in 2011 to celebrate the 7th anniversary here , but have skipped the past two years. Well...because we're (now) closing in on ten years of *stuff* on the web, I thought it would be meaningful to at least take a pause and reflect on 9 years - even if it is three months late. As of this post, there are 1387 posts in the archives of JakeParrillo.com.  Across 111 months, that leaves an average of 13ish posts per month.  With the past few years providing almost a post a month, that tells me that there were some lean years (months) in there.  I'm looking at you 2008. My life has come a long way.  From a political hack to a daddyblogger (and political hack), my interests have clearly morphed to focus on gardening, pizza, family, and my community. For posterity sake, here's what

Glam! Nails - which was at 206 N. York Road, right across from City Hall - is closed and there is now a For Lease sign in the window.  This spot is right in between the Edible Arrange and the newish building that houses an eye doctor and the Koening and Strey office . Seems like a hard spot for walk-by retail as the parking situation is unknown?  City Hall has plenty of parking, but most of it is used up during the day.  Could we get a kitchen products store?  Or a store that guys like me would want to go in and spend 30 minutes?

Just to the north of our front stairs, we have a Burning Bush shrub.  I planted it there 2 summers ago late in the season after finding the little thing at Home Depot for $0.99.  It was a runt.  Two years later, it is starting to fill out and have a little bit of shape.  We didn't get a very brilliant fall last year, but that was mostly because it was so small.  With the "leap" this year in the "sleep/creep/leap cycle", we *should* have a nice shrub that will take on some color in the fall.

See those green things popping through the mulch?  Those are my favorite plants in the whole yard:  our ostrich ferns.  What started as some left-overs from when the Wicked Witch moved out of our house and took with her what she thought was ALL of the perennials, became a few hostas and two of these ferns.  They're multipliers, so we now have about eight bunches of them and I've even managed to give one away. They've quickly become my favorite plant in the garden and I can't wait for them to spread out even further.

This Saturday - May 4th - from 3 to 7 pm at Flight 112 in Elmhurst, the Elmhurst Newcomers and Neighbors Club (ENNC) is hosting their annual fundraiser .  This year, the organization that they're supporting is Special Kids Day . Tickets are $40/head and can be purchased online or at the door.    There is food, drinks, live music and  a silent auction that has at least 2 things that I've been lusting after:  a collection of Werner ladders and a bunch of free stuff from Home Run Inn including gift cards and free frozen pizza coupons. The reason I've been lusting after them is that Nat has been involved in putting this whole thing together.  "Involved" might be an understatement?  She's really dug in and helped bring this event to life and I'm really proud of her for all of her hard work.  Nat has so many talents, but it seems one of the things she really enjoys (and does well) is pulling together these type of activities.  I guess that's why she&#

Looks like the Dejavoo Boutique has closed up shop and their space is up for lease at 108 W. Second Street .  This spot is just down Second Street from Starbucks and just east of the Nail Bar.  I've always had a hard time finding parking right there on Second when we run to Starbucks, so I have no idea if that has an impact on the value of this location. With so many vacancies in the Elmhurst City Centre, it seems like there's a big opportunity to transform our downtown from a service (salons/banks) to a stronger retail-based economy. Last week, Nat had a meeting at a restaurant and I took the Bird out for a walk around the City Centre for an hour.  It was Saturday evening at 5 pm and I tried desperately to find a store that I wanted to go in.  Granted...a lot of things were closed for the night (the toy store), there isn't a place that I wanted to head into and linger.  I would have wasted time in a kitchen products store or a more manly store (like a hybrid hardware