Why I Oughta...

Just about one year ago today (February 12th of 2016), I posted about the really neat animated headboards at the Disneyland Hotel .  I've long thought that the little details like those headboards made spending the few extra dollars to stay at one of Disney's hotels was worth it vs. staying off property. Above you'll see a different headboard.  With different animations.  This time, it is in Orlando at Port Orleans Riverside in one of Princess Tiana's rooms.  We stayed there recently and loved it.   These headboards don't play music like the ones at DLR , but they're just as delightful.  The girls loved the little Princess touches around the room and I loved the price.  So let's call it a win-win, right?

Late one, but still keeping the resolution alive.

One of my nephews gave this to me for Christmas and it has been sitting on my desk ever since.  It is a 'pen rest', but that's not the cool part.  First, he made it!  Yeah...like he made it in shop class in school.  I'm thinking it was some sort of computer-driven machining tool?  He programmed in my name and (most importantly) the Illini shield - which I'm over the moon for - and then stained it all by himself. Kinda awesome, right?  Especially because he's just a 12 year old.

Back at Christmastime, my friend Kate gave me this big red box right ahead of the holidays.  She knew of my affinity for Coke Zero and so this was a welcome gift.  Inside the box was a set of these cute glass bottles with my name on them! This is the 2nd time I've written about the #ShareaCoke campaign.   First time was back here in August of 2015 when I bemoaned the lack of an 'e' on the Jacob bottles .  Well...turns out they've solved that little problem. You can go over and create your own bottle on the 'share a Coke' site here:   https://buy.shareacoke.com/ .   And you can put an 'e' on the end of your name if you'd like, too!

Out on Ogden Road in Downers a few weeks back, I spotted this Honda Odysessy, which at first glance appears to be your standard, run-of-the-mill grocery wagon that we all drive out in the suburbs.  But, if you look closely, you'll see a "CH" oval sticker in the corner of the rear window. I saw it and then as safely as I could, whipped out my phone and tried to take this photo. Why?  Because that "CH" oval sticker is one that I saw a bunch when we were visiting my sister and Equation Boy/Man in Switzerland.  CH means Swiss, which came as a surprise to me.  But now, when I see it, I know! From Wikipedia : The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica (English: Helvetic Confederation). I gleefully emailed off this photo to Equation Boy/Man and I'm hoping that they'll come home with one of these stickers and stick it on the back of their own van when they're living back in Elmhurst this summer.   They'l

Over on Addison Street in the Elmhurst City Centre, there's this place called Undercover Upholstery.  It is located south of the new parking deck with Orange Theory Fitness in it and north of the Coldwell Banker office and Pizza Palace on the east side of the street.  I parked over there recently when I was getting my haircut at JMC Barbershop . I never thought much of the Upholstery shop and neither saw anyone ever go inside nor did it ever really seem open.  But, it must have been because it's been there for a number of years. It caught my attention this time, because of the numerous flyers on the windows of the place that you can see in the photo above.  There's seven of the same flyer hung up in the front window. And here's a closeup of that flyer.  It is pretty cute and reads:  "Save this town - snow village." "All these buildings and homes must be moved to make room for another seven story parking deck.    The Historic Society of

Back in December of last year, there was finally a flurry of activity on the structure that sits at the northwest corner of First and York (just on the north side of the tracks) in the Elmhurst City Center.  I covered it here on the blog and at that time, Alderman Dannee Polomsky of the 3rd Ward shared that there was a new business going into the spot called Beerhead Bar & Eatery.  If you head to the Beerhead site, they now even have a page up for the Elmhurst location . For the better part of the past 60 days, there has been scaffolding up on both sides of the building as they do some exterior work on the facade, but as I walked by it earlier this week on my way to the train, I noticed the scaffolding was all gone. And the building looks great!  They added some black stone to the top and down the sides and cleaned up the brick it looks like to me.  The building, which if you look back thru the archives was a hodgepodge of a bunch of different uses including Polay's in