Why I Oughta...

Found this on the walls of a Cracker Barrel somewhere around Indianapolis.  Trains and railroads have always fascinated me and when you throw in a little bit of vintage-ness in the poster, you have a perfect combination for capturing my attention.

Six years ago, I wrote a post here on the blog about how (in my opinion) Bob Dylan might end up going down as one of the best songwriters for female performers .  In that post, I linked to an Adele cover of a song called " Make you feel my love ", which if you've been paying attention is a song written by Bob Dylan and released on his record 'Time out of Mind'.    There are other women covering Bob's songs that are (arguably??) better than the originals by Bob.  Take a listen to Cat Power's "I believe in You" or Sophie Zelmani's "Most of the time" .  Or Norah Jone's take on "I'll be your baby tonight" .    There's Sheryl Crow who covers "Mississippi" - and I use 'cover' loosely because her version came out BEFORE Bob's did.  In fact, he wrote it for her!  Then there's maybe the best performance at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary concert (let's leave the 'My Back Pages' m

Doesn't matter how many MagicBands that I get.  They are all the same color:  orange.  But, on each of our last few trips, we've been using these 'covers' or stickers from MyFantasyBands.com .   I've had Woody one one.  Last time, I had Chewey on mine .  This time, I'm going with a four-piece sticker of the Monorail.  The two individual pieces on each side allow for the band color to 'show through', thus (in this case) making Monorail Orange.  Which, if you read this story, it turns out there *is* indeed a Monorail Orange down in Orlando.  I've never paid that close of attention to the color of the stripe on the side when they pull up.  But maybe on this trip, I will? I'm the kind of guy who orders the same thing at restaurants a lot.  We go to Egg Harbor for breakfast almost every week.  And guess what?  I order the same thing:  Old-Fashioned Oatmeal.  With a side of bananas. So, with as I said...I stick with the orange bands.  But with t

Earlier this week, I posted a photo of the Haunted Mansion version of the 2015 Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party pin, but when I found that one in a bag, I also found these two.  On the left is what I think is the 'standard' or common Very Merry pin.  On the right is something called a "Passholder Exclusive".  Mickey, Minnie and Pluto grace the normal one.  That's the young duck boys with Santa on the right.  Huey, Dewey and Louie.  (I had to use The Google to find out how to spell those, for the record!)

Never-you-mind my back that aches most mornings or the step or two that I've lost on the tennis court or the fact that I can't eat pizza the way I used to, but this mailing reminder from Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White really hit home for me that I'm (sadly) indeed getting old. I've renewed my drivers license at least five times and not once been asked to do any sort of screening.  In fact, on a couple of occasions, they've sent me that shiny sticker that you put on the back of your license that extends it past the expiration date.  (BTW...when I was younger, that sticker was always a hassle, wasn't it?  You were in a place in your life when you were dealing with doormen and the like and they'd always look at the expiration date and say "Dude...this is expired".  To which you'd have to tell them to turn it over.  Round and round you'd go.) But to stay on the road now?  They're going to make me get my eyes checked.  Which,

This photo - which like last week's was rescued from my old, abandoned Flickr archives is from September of 2005 when I was a Village Trustee in the Village of Frankfort and I was about to dominate the annual pie eating contest.  Yep...two time winner is *this guy*.   I don't remember if I won in 2004 and 2005 or 2005 and 2006.  But, as you can see by the kid next to me, it wasn't super top-notch eating talent.  And, if there's one thing I can do well, it is eat fast.  That's nothing new.  It was just being in a position to eat banana cream pies in a competition that brought out that talent.  I remember smelling banana pudding for a long time after these things.  I also remember the winning award:  a year's worth of pies from Enrico's.  Natalie and I used to go in there once a month, pick up a pie and bring it to my folk's house.  My dad loved those banana cream pies!

Back a couple of weeks, I met my childhood friend Neil at the Chicago Athletic Association building for a few beverages and some what-have-yous.  We got the full tour of the place from the drawing room to the game room to the new rooftop place called Cindy's.  We didn't however, get into the Cherry Circle Room.  It didn't open until 5.   The Cherry Circle is a place that I've been before.  In fact, it was likely one of my few times when I was served in a bar before I was 21.  My oldest sister was married back in the 90's at the CAA and I remember spending time with her soon-to-be-husband and his wedding party in the Cherry Circle the morning of the wedding.  I really like what the new owners of the place have done with the place.  They've kept everything that was wonderful with the old CAA and breathed a lot of new life into the place.  It is funky and weird, but not so off-putting as a place like the Ace Hotel in DTLA is for me.  I'd gladly go back and

I was going through some of the pins from our trip late last year to the Disney Parks recently when I came across a batch of pins that are all from our visit to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.  This one, is marked 'Limited Edition', but I don't really know what that means.  Limited Edition in that only people who go to the parks during the party limited?  Or like a certain number of them are made limited?  Either way, this one was a must-buy for me.  It will go on one of the girls' pin boards once those are set-up.  Combining Christmas with these Haunted Mansion ghosts?  There's room for 999 more pins on that board, right???

I swear we've done nothing different between the three kids in regards to sports and balls.  But The King of the Ball Tossers is really living up to his name:  he's drawn, almost magically, to sports balls of all kind.  Here he is, strapped into his car seat with his ball and bat.  He wouldn't let me take it out of his hands!

A few weeks back, Nat and I stopped into Affordable Antiques in Naperville to just poke around.  On that day, we came home with exactly nothing.  But that's not because there wasn't some interesting things to see there.  There were.  I think that we just weren't in the mood to actually buy anything.  Between the housing situation and the numerous unknowns ahead of us, it just isn't a time in our lives to be able to bring home treasures. One of those treasures that I came across was this lovely vintage Christmas Angel tree topper.   I've posted about other Angels that we have here .    This one priced at $36 seems pretty steep to me, but she is pretty awesome.  She's in great shape, but has had her 'cone' under her tinsel skirt rebuilt, which for purists might be a problem, but is totally fine for me.  She has the usual pipe cleaner-arms, but it is her skirt that makes her shine.  She's not destined for our tree, but I'm sure she'll find a