Chicago’s Local Color

The trees in Chicago still had a lot of fall color even though our visit was a little late in the season for the peak color. I told Scoob I thought another nickname for the city could be the Golden City because so many of the trees had a golden color. Though we did find a handful of red maples in Millennium Park.

The leaves on these trees in Grant Park look much more green-yellow
than they were in person, but I still like the perspective of this shot.

A tunnel of gold in Grant Park.

Looking down E. 9th Street from the Logan Monument.
I like the contrasts in this shot with the corridor between the buildings in shade and the bright gold leaves of the trees catching the sunshine.

Sunlight, shade, and fall color.

Next to the Chicago River. It was still drizzling and I like how the moisture makes the tree trunks and branches even darker against the golden leaves.

The repetitive dark, heavy lines of the stacked chairs punctuated by bright splashes of gold where the leaves had settled caught my eye. There's just something about it that signals that limbo time between the change of seasons—There's still hope for warm weather patio days because the furniture hasn't been put away for winter storage yet.

Fall berries.

Red maple trees in Millennium Park.

Sunlight through the branches in Dearborn Park.

Colorful ground cover catching the afternoon sunlight in Dearborn Park.

More Chicago Pictures

I think I mentioned it was raining the first couple days we were in Chicago and the cloud cover made for some pretty and dramatic pictures.

The Chicago Tribune Tower.

Willis Tower (Sears Tower) lost in the clouds.

Tower on the Wrigley Building.

The Chicago Riverfront at night.
Totally bummed that this shot ended up being blurry,
but it's the best one of the 8 I took.

Looking down Chicago’s Columbus Avenue in the clouds.

Millennium Park Amphitheater on a cloudy day.

And one of my favorite shots from the trip—This golden tree in Grant Park.

Home from the Windy City

Even though we had a great time in Chicago, and aside from the pile of laundry staring at me from the suitcase, it feels good to be home. Chicago has had almost double it's annual average October rainfall this year (Sog-tober as the news casters were calling it), and we got to experience some of that first-hand. But the weather cleared up on Saturday, and Sunday was simply gorgeous.

Here are a few shots of the city skyline from the Museum Campus taken within a couple hours of each other on Saturday. I was amazed at how quickly the weather changed.

Chicago skyline from the Field Museum around 11:30 am.
The top of the Willis Tower (Sears Tower) is lost in the clouds.

Chicago skyline from the steps of the Shedd Aquarium around 2:00 pm.
The clouds are beginning to lift.

Chicago Skyline from Shedd Aquarium around 3:30 pm.
Seriously, 90 minutes later the same day!

I took a ton of pictures in Chicago, and a few of them are actually good, so I'll be sharing those over the next few days. Oh, and speaking of pictures, I had an email waiting when we got home that my photos were chosen for that online travel guide. But for now, laundry is demanding my attention and me, my unibrow, and I seriously need some quality time with a mirror, a stiff drink (for anesthesia), and the tweezers.

Trip Planning

The last few days have just seemed crazy. The muscles in my upper back (and now my right shoulder, too) seem to waffle between the extremes of being in full spasm or feeling better. There are days that are nearly pain-free; then there are days that I can hardly move without tears springing to my eyes—this past Wednesday was one of the latter. Friday was my last physical therapy appointment from the month of prescribed sessions and we've scheduled out another 3 weeks of appointments.

So I've been having PT days twice a week, which means I'm going in late to work twice a week, so I've been falling behind on my schedule there, but there are other contributing factors to that, too. Our website developers think they have identified what is causing our database to lose the connection to the server several times a day and have set up a dedicated server just for our work in the database—things are still slow, but at least we're not crashing every hour. I've been working on Brazil content for the past week or so and even though Portuguese sounds similar to Spanish, the spelling is not even close and Portuguese uses a whole different set of diacritical marks. So that's been something of a challenge.

And I've been pulled off my web work to do blueline proofs on several books waiting at the printer. We're partner publishers on this particular set of books, meaning we do not contract the authors or do the developmental editing, or even the copyediting or regular proofing. Once the book files are sent to the printer, the printer creates the printing templates and sends those (bluelines) back to us for one last check and approval.

That's where our editorial department comes in. It rather expensive to make corrections at this stage in the printing process, so we always try to keep changes to a minimum, focusing only on factual inaccuracies and egregious errors (like misspelling the name of an author or public figure). Unfortunately, this set of books have had numerous errors, particularly with the maps. We've had 12 sets of bluelines arrive in the past week, so everyone has had to pitch in. It's has been nice to switch up my work a bit, but it has also put me behind schedule.

So anyhow, I'm supposed to finish Brazil before we leave on a mini-vacation later this week and I haven't even finished the first chapter. What? Oh, I didn't tell you we're going on vacation? Well, yeah. We are. We've decided to go to Chicago for a long weekend and see what there is to see. We'll probably just still to the main attractions, Art Institute of Chicago, Shedd Aquarium, and the like, but we're hoping for some good weather—chilly and windy is fine, we're just hoping to miss the rain. But after looking at the extended forecast last night, that's seeming less and less likely.

So yesterday we were out and about. We grabbed lunch, went to Best Buy, and as we were finishing up the grocery shopping, Scoob reminded me that we were leaving later this week and I thought he was crazy. I was positive we were leaving next week, not this week. Turns out I was totally wrong and I've been a bit stressed since then trying to put together an itinerary for the trip.

This is the part of trip planning I do not like. Even though it's not, I always feel like it is left up to me to research flights and hotels and do the booking; read the guidebooks, do the research, figure out what attractions are open when, where they're located, and which ones are grouped together; and then to also figure out where we're eating each meal each day. Scoob's contribution to trip planning has been to look up every Chicago restaurant he's seen on the Travel Channel at the Travel Channel website and list the restaurant name, with the Travel Channel description, and a link to the restaurant website (if they have one) in a Word document.

So yeah, I was already stressed (not to mention it was Day 2) and we fought last night. I hate fighting with him. It just makes me feel like I want to puke then curl up in a corner and never speak to anyone again until I die. It is so hard for me to find the energy to do anything after we fight. Every time we go on a trip I just pray we will finally have a good time and not fight. After last night I'm not very hopeful that this trip will be any different from others—but I will try to remain positive.

In the almost 7 years that we've been together, it has become abundantly obvious that we have very different ways of approaching things and very different ideas of what is logical, not just with travel. Which isn't to say that being different is a bad thing, it just seems like we haven't been able to find the balance that makes our differences work together to strengthen the relationship instead of fighting.

In more upbeat news, the trees in our neighborhood are beginning to change color (I'm hoping we'll be able to catch some fall color in Chicago too, our hotel is near Millennium and Grant Parks). I tried to get pictures of a couple of the more brilliant trees, but the sky was pretty overcast and it was difficult to really get the colors.




And in video game news, Scoob knew I was excited about the new Uncharted 2: Among Thieves games and bought it for me. The first Uncharted game, Drake's Fortune, was one of the few Playstation games that I really, really liked (heck, I played it through at least twice). I liked the graphics, plot, dialogue, and seemless cinematic integration, and the animation of the cinematic cut outs was amazing. Uncharted 2 has been been even better than the original in those respects and the plot is a rollercoaster from the beginning. I'm only a few chapter into the play, but I'm loving it.

So I had better sign off and get going on the rest of my day if I plan to get any game time squeezed in. Scoob's off at Best Buy (again) to get a carrying case for something to take on the trip (because the Best Buy we went to yesterday didn't have it) and we need to find him a jacket for Chicago, especially since it is looking like we'll have rain. He has a heavy ski jacket, but it's too bulky and he doesn't want to take that. I also want to grab some granola bars or something to keep in my purse while we're out and about so that in-between-meals hunger doesn't make either of us have cranky pants while we're supposed to be having fun in Chicago.

Originally I had planned to do some clothes shopping for lightweight layering sweaters before the trip, but that was back when I thought I had another week. Though I did find this Universal Packing List Generator a week or so ago. You punch in the destination, dates, and anticipated temperatures of where you're heading, along with any special equipment or activites you plan to do, and the Generator kicks out a handy checklist for you. The list seemed too detailed when I tested it last week, but honestly, isn't it better to have something to remind you to pack your cell phone, charger, and blue tooth than to just remind you to take your cell phone and any accessories you think you may need?

Earthquake

Most of the time I don't even give earthquakes a second thought, but I don't think I'll ever get used to them. We just had a 3.8, respectable, but not a big one. But our house is built on filled land, which shakes like Jell-O in a quake, and it was close enough to the house that we really felt it.

Tofu with Peanut Ginger Sauce

We've been trying to work more meatless meals into rotation at the Wayward house and we've had this a few times now. I keep tweaking the recipe, but I think this is pretty close to our final keeper version.

Tofu with Peanut Ginger Sauce

Cooking time: 20 minutes
Prep time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

5 Tbsps. water

4 Tbsps. smooth, natural peanut butter

1½ Tbsps. rice vinegar

2 tsps. reduced-sodium soy sauce

2 tsps. honey

2 tsps. minced ginger

2 cloves garlic, minced

14 ounces extra-firm tofu

2 tsps extra-virgin olive oil

14-oz can baby corn, drained

4 cups baby spinach

1½ cups sliced mushrooms

4 scallions, sliced

Directions

1. Prepare the sauce by whisking together the water, peanut butter, rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ginger, and garlic in a bowl the set aside.
2. Drain and rinse the tofu then pat dry. Slice the block. Slice the tofu into half-inch cubes.
3. Heat he oil in a large skillet over high heat and add the tofu in a single layer. Cook for about 5–7 minutes without stirring or until the bottom of the tofu pieces are golden brown. Turn the pieces and repeat.
4. Reduce heat to medium and add the baby corn, spinach, mushrooms, scallions, and the peanut sauce and cook while stirring until the spinach wilts.

The original recipe didn't have the baby corn, which I think adds a nice textural variation, color, and some additional fiber, and the original called for the tofu to be crumbled, which I didn't much care for; the end result didn't look at all palatable.

I also upped the rice vinegar quantity a bit to balance the sweetness of the honey and help the sauce from becoming too thick and dropped the stove temperature when adding the sauce; my first attempt scorched (and set off the smoke detector) because the pan was too hot at this step.

Rockin' the Tunes

So, while I thought I had my new computer fully set up, it turns out I had neglected one small, yet very important (at least to me) part—I never fully integrated my iTunes from the laptop to this computer. So I did that today and, really, it only took about 10 minutes to download iTunes and sync it to my iPod thereby transferring my entire library. Done! Now I wonder why in the heck I'd been putting it off. I thought it was going to be a major headache.

So now, with iTunes loaded, and a working disc drive, I'm loading more of my ancient CD collection into iTunes. I had started doing this on the laptop several years ago and my disc drive conked out way back then. It also seems I packed away my CDs at that point, so we'll need to dig around in the garage for that box. In the meantime I've been downloading new songs and redeeming Pick of the Week cards from Starbucks, so I've got a fresh batch of music to add to rotation. Yea!

Interestingly enough, I've discovered that I'm something of a metal head when it comes to music, or at least I was in high school and my early 20s. Scoob was playing around with the television remote some time last week and accidentally did something to the tuner and we now get a ton of channels that we didn't used to. Probably should have done that when the stations began switching over to HD broadcasts, but we didn't and some of our favorite channels had been disappearing. But they're all back now and then some.

For example, we now get VH1 and we watched the 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs, well we watched the last 15 of the top 100 anyhow, and nearly all of the songs were favorites of mine. With the exception of Black Sabbath, Metallica, Dio, and Iron Maiden, I had considered all those songs as just rock, not hard rock or metal. Poison, Guns n' Roses, Van Halen, Motley Crue, AC/DC, Aerosmith—those bands are all rock in my book.

The show was a little painful to watch, really. Mostly because it was hosted by Brett Michaels, and the guy has had some serious plastic surgery done. I know he had a serious car wreck and I'm sure some of the surgery was reconstructive. But. My. God. Those lips. Step away from the silicone. Please. The hair and tight, tight spandex pants in the music videos were also painful. Oh my, what were they (we) thinking?