Why I Oughta...

On Black Friday, I popped into the Jewel to pick up a few rations (and get 'cash back' because our bank wasn't close) for our trip to the Christmas Tree Farm (where they only take cash for the trees) and came out with a few of these Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stouts.  By total accident.  I was making small talk with the cashier and she was telling me about how there people were camping out overnight in hopes of scoring these bottles.  She pointed to them and said that they found two bottles after the crowd left.  I asked if I could buy them and she said "sure".  So...almost $20 later, I came home with proudly with two bottles.  Of stout.  Nat loves a good stout.  And so do her beer nerd brothers, so they'll enjoy them this Christmas season.  I texted a photo to Dr. Jeff - who normally hosts our craft beer dinners and has even had a stout one before - and bragged about getting two of these.  He sent me back a shot of his haul:  all six versions

I picked up this "Back the Beagle" glass at Goodwill in Elmhurst recently when I was dropping off a whole bunch of old Halloween decorations.  I figured...while I was there....why not take a quick stroll through the store to see if there were any treasures.  This one seemed like a natural addition to our vintage glass collection.  It is the exact same shape/style as the Chipettes one that I posted about last fall . The thing that jumped out at me was that we had a "Character X for President' glass in the collection with this "Pooh for President" glass from Sears . The front features Snoopy and the slogan "Back the Beagle".  The back, seen below, has a 1958 copyright, which isn't when this glass was produced.  Can't be. I went digging ebay and the web to find out more about the glass and it turns out, there was a series of four of these glasses - all around the "Vote Snoopy" campaign.  Here's a screenshot from a li

There is apparently an entire set of these small, annual passholder buttons that you can/could have scored at the 2017 Food and Wine Festival at Epcot Center this fall.  Eight of them , in fact.  Alas, we have just this one that we picked up at the Light Lab .  I'll stick it on the pin board along with some of the other "non-pin" Disney Pins like this "Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse" button we scored on a visit to the parks on Mickey's birthday last year and the  @wdwtoday Twitter button I posted about yesterday . 

We ran into the @wdwtoday folks at the half marathon expo where they were handing out these buttons - which I'm not totally sure I understand.  Didn't stop me from grabbing one, though. Is this a button that *they* wear?  Or...am I supposed to wear it in the parks to tell people that I'm tweeting things?  

Another Thanksgiving day of turkey and trotting and family....and...of course, Levon and the boys in The Last Waltz.  This marks 14th years of posting on the blog about the film on Thanksgiving.  Here's last year's post .  The first one was all the way back in 2004 but there are a few missing years in there for some reason. Turn it up! Here's my post from 2015 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2014 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2013 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2012 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2011 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2010 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2007 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2005 on The Last Waltz . Here's my post from 2004 on The Last Waltz .

Came across another one of these construction signs that includes a quote from Walt Disney on the walls of a job site inside of WDW.  I've posted two of these before including this one about deadlines and this one about curiosity .   This one was on the backside of Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom in an area that I think was where the crane was located as they installed Christmas lights. Unlike those other ones that were outside of Epcot, this one is definitely Fantasyland-themed and is appropriate for the place it is hung. This one, too, is sponsored by Stanley, which I continue to think is a nice sponsorship integration for both parties.

Last night, I watched the end of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize program where they awarded David Letterman with the honor as I was getting into bed.  Dave was always my guy in late night.  Some of my friends were Conan guys, but Dave was the only one who could keep me up.  ( Craig Fergusen came much later ...and I did love his show - whenever I could stay up *that* late!)  I caught like the last 20 minutes or so.  And in that portion, Dave's wingman Paul Shaffer came out and introduced Eddie Vedder who covered a song by Warren Zevon and said:  "Dave...let me thank you...because if it weren't for you, I probably wouldn't have known who Warren Zevon was. So, it makes it a real honor to get to sing one of his songs to you." Here's that performance. This was a 'stop me in my tracks' moment.  The song.  Thinking about when Warren wrote it.  Thinking about my own kids.  Just a powerful moment. We have Comcast, so I hit "info" on the re

Look who is coming along for the ride with the new Bells & Whistles Christmas Decor building from Lemax at Menards this year?  That's right...Santa Claus himself!  That might sway the Mayor of Mantleburg, I would think?  This one is also part of the Caddington Village collection like the past few days that included the Vintage Grind Coffee Company and The Dog House .  Mantleburg is already such a seasonal town, it would seem to be a logical fit to have a Christmas decorations-specific store in town, right?  Boost the local economy when it is thriving?  They only get visitors during the holiday season and they've resisted the whole "spookytown" transformation over the years.  This one seems like slam dunk for annexation, but maybe once the sale prices come to Menards... Or...we actually set up Mantleburg for the first time in three years.  One or the other.

During a recent trip, we finally found time to sit down and have a beverage in the Abracadabar on Disney's Boardwalk where they have these neat, custom coasters.  It doesn't do any magic tricks or illusions like the "posters" on the wall, but it is cute to see the top hat as cocktail glass being used here, isn't it?   Full [Coaster Collection] is here .  Including this new one, I'm up to 20 total coasters in the collection and 9 (and counting) Disney-specific coasters including this one from the Boathouse , the Flying Fish restaurant , the Skipper Canteen , Raglan Road restaurant in Disney Springs,   the Disneyland Hotel and Walt Disney World resort hotels  as well as the *new* Walt Disney World resort hotel version .

The King of the Ball Tossers came home with this It's a small world pin from a trip earlier this year.  We have a few IASW-based pins, but they're mostly modeled on the little kids in the ride.   This is genuinely one that *he* picked out.  Without any of our help.  Which...I think was a surprise to everyone.   One of the projects I have on my list to kick off is pin boards hung up in the house.  Maybe in the basement?  Or in the kids' rooms?

Another in the series of Walt Disney World construction signs that feature a quote from Walt Disney himself.  This one was on the walls outside of Disney's Hollywood Studios in the area where they are building the skyway near the walkway to the Boardwalk. This is the third of these signs I've featured here.  First one here .  Second one here . This one, too, is sponsored by Stanley.  You can find out the details of the sponsorship (which I find pretty clever!) in this post .

Those were the days.  I was going through some of my personal effects and came across this piece written by Tony Scott at the Kendall County Record (I think?!) that covers some of the shenanigans we were up to back in the early aughts.  I made some of the strongest connections of my career during these JoinCross.com blogging days as Chris Rhodes.  Pretty incredible to think back at how far the Boss let us go with the blog.   Today?  They're probably right to be a bit more careful with their political image.  And who's blogging today anyway?!? Here's post from the archives here on the blog from Dan Johnson-Weinberger that talks about the same thing Tony Scott says :  those were some heady days of GOP blogging. 

As the kids say:  #nofilter.  With the time change, I am seeing dusk more often from the office these days.  This is, quite the view, right?

It isn't a Cookie Puss or Fudgie the Whale , but there's some big news:  our local Jewel is carrying Carvel Ice Cream cakes in their freezer case.  Or...at least it is news to me.  And if you're faced with this decision, you go Carvel over Oreo, don't you?  Who knew that there are three Carvel locations in Illinois ?

Back at the end of October, I posted a photo of the 'coming soon' screens that Marshall Field's Macy's had put up on their State Street windows as part of their annual reveal of the Holiday window tradition.   Soon after the calendar turned over to November, they opened up the windows for public viewing and while the ones on State Street are traditional ones, they now have set up two different ones on the Randolph Street sides. First...when I say 'traditional ones', I mean...holiday stories of some sort.  This year, it isn't so much a linear story where the you can see kids racing from one window to the next to learn the different storylines, but rather just a set of different windows, each in a feeling/spirit. But, this is the 50th anniversary of doing animated figures in these windows, which is cool and that's why they've organized these two separate windows on Randolph - to kind of celebrate their history. And, much to my delight, look

I had this experience riding the monorail from the Polynesian earlier this fall.  We had just finished breakfast and I had to split to do something without the family, so I rolled into the monorail sans stroller, sans diaper bag, sans kids, sans wife.  And had the whole thing to myself.   Weird.  But quite delightful at the same time.  

New this year at Menard's is this animated Popcorn factory from Lemax.  You can see a lot of the movement in the image above, but there's also music.  If you want to see it, check out the video below at the bottom of the post.  This one, too, is from the Caddington Village collection. When he goes with his family to the Country House for burgers, the Mayor of Mantleburg is more of a peanuts in the shell guy, not a popcorn guy.  So...unless the developer is going to grease his palm, I'm guessing this one is going to be a tough sell for Mantleburg.  What...with its garishness and bright lights, it seems like it might be out of place amongst the other existing structures?