Why I Oughta...

I feel a little bit like Sarah Palin when I stand on the dock at Lake Elizabeth in Wisconsin and look to the right to see the great state of Illinois.  Just a little bit. 

Those of you that follow the technology world like I do likely heard about/read about the new Pixel and Pixel XL phones that Google announced last week along with other things like Google Home and Google Wifi.  Being an Android guy and owner of every Nexus phone (and a few tablets!) that have come out, I couldn't wait to get in line to buy a phone.  But, as part of the marketing for these new phones, Google has been doing a lot of talk about the camera.  And how it is, by at least one regard, the *best* camera to ever be put in a phone.  That's nice, right?  They also talked about a feature called Smartburst.   From their post : Pixel’s camera lets you take stunning photos in low light, bright light or any light. Catch action shots as they happen with Smartburst, which takes a rapid-fire sequence of shots and automatically selects the best one. Use Lens Blur to achieve shallow depth of field and bokeh effects, making your subject pop. You can capture dramatic landscapes

On Monday, I posted about our trip to the Highwood Pumpkin Festival where we carved a few pumpkins and rode some rides .  And, I mentioned that we made a second stop on the way home.  And, this photo above is *that* second stop.  And it is kind of a 'meta' photo.  That's me, in the driver's seat of the van taking a picture of Nat taking a picture of the McAllister home from Home Alone in Winnetka . Yep...that's the driveway where the neighbor tells the McAllisters to "Bring me back something French!" and is the one that has been subject to a bunch of coverage lately as it has been put up for sale and ultimately changed hands a few years back . We were in the neighborhood, or....well...we kind of *made* it the neighborhood.  As we left Highwood, Nat navigated us down there to check it out.  We've been meaning to go up there for a while, but we haven't been close enough. The place is a stunner.  But the real star of the show is Old Man Marle

These are a few of the posters that have gone up recently around the office that are urging all of us at Edelman to make sure we get out and vote on Election Day .  They've even incentivized us by having the office 'open' at 11:30 am central that day and by bribing us with donuts.  The puns just write themselves, it seems. And Edelman isn't alone.  There's a trend happening on Election Day.   From this Digiday story : A variety of agencies, from Edelman and Day One to AKQA and Walton Isaacson, are doing everything from letting employees work remotely to delaying opening their offices until later in the day in a bid to encourage them to vote. For Edelman, flexibility just didn’t cut it. When the agency polled its employees about the biggest barriers stopping them from getting to the polls, time fared top of the list. Agency executives realized that even with flexible time off to vote, it was still difficult for staffers to juggle work, polls, childcare and

Another month, another craft beer tasting session with our good friend Dr. Jeff.   Here's the last session he hosted that focused on Sours .  And one from earlier this year where he toured us through various stouts . This time, he took us on a tour of IPAs including a stop at what he called the "OG of West Coast IPAs", this 5th Anniversary Stone Brewing IPA.   This one scored a 93 on Beer Advocate , so he isn't fooling around.   It was interesting to taste a few different versions from Stone being that we were just at the Bavarian Lodge where Stone did a takeover .  Of course, Dr. Jeff was there on opening night as a good craft beer advocate *should* be. Here's the story on the back of the big bottle: After that, he brought out a can of Heady Topper The Alchemist from Vermont.  This one has a score of 100 !  I think that's the first 100 I've ever had.  And, maybe it was the age of this can, but I liked other beers better that night.   However,

Showing TODAY (Wedesday) at the York Theater is this month's "Art @ the York" feature titled 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'.  For those of you who don't know about this film series, the basics are that you can get all art-y with this movie (that isn't shown widely) today and you can also get there for the organ player before the show.   Yep.  They bring the guy from The Tivoli in Downers Grove to play before the show in the original theatre at the York.  Pretty neat.   Despite the Rotten Tomatoes score of just 62% , the Art @ York series usually gets the movies right, so this one seems worth seeing. Check out the Art @ The York archives here on the blog  where I've been covering this series since it began all the way back in June of 2015 .  

The trees are starting to turn.  Look at the ones just southwest of the end of the Pritzker Pavillion lawn.  They're red!  Well, some of them are.  But, looking back in the archives, I found this post from Halloween of last year that shows that same stand of trees being all bright red .  So, the best is yet to come. There's also a bit of post-Chicago Marathon clean-up happening here with the tents and what-have-you in the parks and around Buckingham Fountain.  Fall splendor, not quite.  But a quick look at the transition point between summer and fall from the 64th floor of the Aon Center.