"Long Thanksgiving weekend,"

We just got done putting up our Christmas tree. I was contemplating putting up our Christmas tree this year, but I was fortunate enough to have Kris help me put the ornaments on. As I sit at the kitchen table listening to the Bears vs Minnesota game, and blog about my weekend. I look up and see the Christmas tree all decorated, and I think to myself," I'm glad i decided to put up the Christmas tree."

As you know Thursday, was Thanksgiving, not only did we spend the holiday with family, but it was followed by 3 day weekend.

Friday.... Friday morning I did the laundry, then we went to Panera on Skokie Blvd for lunch, followed by going to Best Buy, which wasn't to crowded, we were able to find a gift for his mom. After going to best buy, I looked in pier one imports, but didn't find anything

We went to jewel, then we came home and watched some of the Blackhawks game, before we got a call from Marilynn, to take Sammie to the vet. After the vet we went to Barnes&Noble. Finally we had dinner by his mom's house.

Saturday'......... Saturday morning I got my hair done, we went to Chipotle for lunch, briefly walked around Old Orchard. Came home and watched the Hawks lose to LA Kings.

Kris, Marilynn, and myself went to Fridays for dinner. After dinner we went clothes shopping for Kris.

Sunday...... The crappy weather wasn't going to keep us home, plus Kris and I are practicing for when we go to Door County!!!!!!!! next week. Anyway we went to California Pizza Kitchen for lunch, then we parked by Barnes and Noble, and I went to Victoria Secret, before going to Barnes&Noble It's nice we get a table in the cafe, have my Starbucks (of course), and I usually read, and Kris is on the computer.

After Barnes, we came home put up our Christmas tree, and relaxed before we have to go back to work.

Looking forward... We have a 3 day work week, followed by Blackhawks game Wednesday night, and leaving for Door County on Thursday. yea!!!!!!

Have a good week.

Thanksgiving

Another holiday that has come and gone....... Traditonally every year, we get together with my aunt and uncle, my grandfather, and some family on my uncles side of the family. This year we had the pleasure of my mother-in-law spending Thanksgiving with us. This year we went to a Restaurant in Lockport. "The Public Landings Restaurant," we enjoyed a nice traditional Thanksgiving meal. It was nice to spend Thanksgiving with the family.

In the evening Kris and I drove downtown. We drove and walked along Michigan ave, State St.
It was nice to walk downtown. We even found a "Starbucks," (that was open).

We had a nice Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving

Whether we can believe it or not, Thanksgiving is already here and yet another year is almost over. Wow.

Cindy and I have had so much to be thankful for this year. It is truly a blessing to be surrounded everyday by so many great friends and family that share our lives with us, and for all the opprotunties for success and happiness that life has given us this year.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday everyone, and don't overdue it at dinner. :)

weekend highlights 11/23

My goal this weekend was to get christmas shopping done, and i accomplished that goal.

On Saturday Kris and I went to Woodfield where I got 75% of my christmas shopping done. yeah!! In the evening I watched the Hawks game, but wasn't feeling well.

Sunday, morning I woke up feeling little better, however I didn't get moving until 4:00. About 4:00 I decided I was hungry, so Kris and I went to Noodles & Co, then walked around Old Orchard for awhile, before going to Barnes and Noble.

It was a productive weekend.

dell mini update

I'm going to make this short and sweet. I've had my Dell Mini for three weeks now and loving it.

cindy

Returning to the Ice

During the pre-game at the United Center for the Hawks and Sharks this past Sunday, they ran an NHL ad on the scoreboard from their "Is this the year?" campaign.  I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it went like this:

Hockey never left Chicago...

But Hockey in Chicago has returned.

The ad is related to the recent resurrgence of popularity that the Chicago Blackhawks have had in the last 18 months with a focus on their new, young talent.  In fact, this ESPN post quotes an NHL report that the Blackhawks led the league in average home attendance after the first month of the season, something unheard of just three years ago.

Our Part

As mentioned in previous posts here at our blog, Cindy and I have been doing are part as well.  We've already been to 3 home games this season, and have tickets for 2 more (so far).  That's more games that we've seen at the UC since, well, since it replaced the Chicago Stadium.

But what does that mean to me?  Well, it's starting to hit closer to home for me, personally, and that itch to get back on the ice myself is getting harder to ignore.  Talking to the ad quote from above, I pretty much left hockey, or more recently, hockey sort of left me.

In the Past

I have been fortunate to enjoy the game as both a player and coach for most of my life.  As a player, I got the opprotunity to play 4 years of Varsity hockey at the High School level, in the very competitive Chicagoland area I might add.  That was before I gave it all up to pursue a career in web and software development (my new life).  All in all, I think it turned out for the best, and I don't really regret any of it.

Most recently, I was given the priviledge to return to my former high school team as an Assistant Coach, the duties of which I fulfilled for 5 seasons.  Unfortunately, as you can tell from the lack of activity at the site behind that last link, the team is no longer in operation after losing the required number of players needed to field a team.  This is the second year without a team, and that's what I was referring to by saying that hockey left me.  In that regard, I really had no real choice in the matter.

Recently

Besides the excitement around Hawks recently, there are other factors that are contributing to the current effects of hockey withdrawl that have been growing as of late.  This past summer, I've been on the biggest health-kick in my life, which for those of you know me personally, is really my first health-kick ever. :)  That led me to dig out my old rollerblades and get that wind-in-your-face feeling back via lunch time skates with co-workers and evening treks with Cindy on the forest preserves trails near our condo.

The feeling of being back on skates led me to checkout the outdoor, inline hockey rink near my office.  Needless to say, it wasn't much longer before I ditched my co-workers (sorry guys) and went from skating on the bike trails to shooting pucks again during the lunchtime hours.  There were even pickup games with a great bunch of guys (albeit 10+ years my senior) that we had every Wednesday.  It really felt good to be competitive again.

The Now

And now, to quote my younger brother (who's sort of in the same boat as me), it's time to !$@% or get off the pot.  This is a family blog by the way (that is if bunnies count).  Nevermind.

What I mean is, its time to get back out there and return to the ice and play some hockey.  I was already planning to checkout one of the outdoor rinks in Sister Bay, WI during our next trip to Door County in two weeks.  With the additional hype around the Hawks and the much anticipated Winter Classic at Wrigley Field come Jan. 1st, I think it's only fitting that I want to target as much time skating outdoors as I possibly can this winter.

But why wait?  I've already started hitting up the AHAI site for local rinks looking to rent ice, and could be out there shooting around within the next week or so.  After that, there are also a few teams that some of my former teammates from high school play on in local adult leagues that are always short bodies, so that will likely be the next step.  In fact, I wanted to be already be playing by now, and would have been if not for an out-of-the-blue bout of back spasms that I was battling for the last two weeks.  Those are gone now, and knock on wood that they were just a one time occurrance.

Stay Tuned

By Christmas, there could be photos and video (yes, video) of my floating around the site here of me back on the ice and racking up points on the scoresheet, so you don't want to miss it. Cindy, the converted hockey fanactic that she now is, did an amazing job of videotaping all of the hockey games of the high school team when I was coaching, so I'm sure she just couldn't resist getting me on video.  Besides, it's been **gulp** 10 years since she saw me play my last game in my senior year in high school, so such a comeback would be nice to have as a keepsake (and possibly for insurance purposes).  Just kidding, I'll be fine.

And forget I mentioned the 10 year part, would you?  Thanks.

Busy Weeks Ahead

It's that time of year again, where everything seems to be happening all back-to-back with little signs of slowing down.

After returning from a weekend visiting friends in South Bend, Indiana (before the giant snowstorm, luckily), I stopped to take a look at all the other things we have going on in the coming weeks. The image on the left is of the Google Gadget I've been using lately to countdown to some of this madness, and is hasn't been much fuller than it is right now.

Just looking at the major items that we have going on, Thanksgiving is only 9 days away, and we're thinking, "When did that sneak up on us?" As we do every year, we're going to dinner with Cindy's family, and this year its going to be a new spot in Lockport that we haven't been to before. Plus, my mom will be joining the group for the first time, so that will be nice.

Then, it really gets crazy. We're going to the Hawks game against Anaheim at the United Center on December 3rd, which is the Wednesday night before we leave for our next Door County trip the following morning. No sooner will we be going back to Wisconsin the following weekend for my great grandmother's 90th birthday party in Lake Geneva. God bless that woman, we'd go up there more if we could.

Not listed yet, but Cindy's grandfather's birthday is a only a day or two difference from that weekend, and we usually go out to dinner with him as well. And then it's followed by the one-two punch of Christmas and New Years. Luckily, I get that week off of work, so it will be a chance to recover.

And then lastly, but definitely not least, is our trip to Maui in February. Notice that there's nothing after that, since there's nothing really left to do after coming home from one of our Maui trips. Boy, I can't wait.

Keep in mind that these are all just the major things. You can factor in other dinners out with friends, trips to the mall (and those crazy holiday shoppers) and all the other usual activities that keep our minds off of work throughout the week. Now you can really see how well that Maui trip is going to feel when these next few weeks are all said and done. :)

weekend highlights 11/16/08

Oh!!! where to begin!!!! i don't know where to begin It was a busy weekend. Why was it a busy weekend you ask. Our weekend was spent in Indiana.What's in Indiana you ask? friends of ours recently moved to Indiana.

On Saturday they took us to Famous Daves for lunch., and then took us on a tour of Notre Dames campus. Those of you who haven' t been on the campus, it is a nice campus. After wards she took us on a tour of Southbend. Of course we had to stop at starbucks.

On Saturday evening, Nabeela had us over for dinner. After dinner we went bowling. keep in mind i haven't bowled in awhile. i bowled 97 the first game, and 137 the second game I think the phrase kris used " 137 requesting a drug test,"

Sunday we had breakfast at nabeelas house. Mine y0u i usually have healthy shake, and oatmeal for breakfast, so eating a big breakfast threw me off for the day, but that's ok. After breakfast we stopped at super target, and were being driven around Granger. After the drive we went back to nabeelas apartment, and visited with her and zaina before we headed for home.

Before going home and getting ready to go to the "Blackhawks game, Kris and I walked around Old Orchard and ate lunch at Potbelly. I am happy to report Old Orchard has their christmas decorations up.

Finally we went home.... We were home long enough for me to get ready for the Blackhawks game and to feed sky and star. Around 4:30 we picked up his mom, brother, and his brothers friend and drove down to the United Center. Those of you who haven't been to the UC it is a great facility to watch a hockey game, see a concert, or even go to the circus. Those of you who are hockey fans, or were watching the game know that the Blackhawks lost to the San jose sharks 6-5, but i guess it was cool to see former Blackhawk #27 Jeremey Roenick score his first goal against the hawks.

It was 9:30 when we finally got home It was action packed weekend. Found out we got home just in time because South Bend got hit with a snow storm sunday night into monday Looking to the week ahead it is going to be a busy one. Next weekend think I'm going to start my christmas shopping. Till then

A Review of My Dell Mini

So, it's been about 5 days now with my Dell Mini Inspiron 910 netbook, and I thought it would be a good time to share some of my thoughts on it so far.

Before I get into all the techie stuff and possibly lose some of you, I will say that, overall, I'm rather pleased with it and don't have any regrets buying one for myself and one for Cindy.  It's a fun little thing to have around and be able to use whenever, wherever you'd like, even if it does take a little getting used to.

First Impressions

The first thing you notice is really how small this thing is.  Everything from the keyboard to the track pad and even the mini power button makes my hands seem that much bigger.  While the laptop, er... netbook, features a Qwerty-style keyboard with the letter keys being full sized, much of everything else is either relocated or slimmed down to fit the smaller form factor.  The screen, however, seems very bright and large (relative to the keyboard anyway) and that gives it a good balance.

I'm just starting to get used to typing with the Mini, this being the second full blog post I'm writing soley with this machine.  It probably wouldn't be taking me so long to adjust if I didn't have to switch machines all the time.  I probably spend about 14 hours a day at a keyboard of some sort, which includes home, work, my other Dell laptop and even my cellphone keyboard. Sounds depressing, I know.  Anyway, I have somewhat of a modified typing style already with just the letter keys on the Mini, so all that's left to get the hang of is the different location for the puncation keys and such.

What I'm Using It For

So one good question is, why do you need one?  Well, I can't say that you really need one, but my intended uses stem around being ultra portable and Johnny-on-the-spot whenever I want to share something online.  Blogging anytime, anywhere has really been my new motto/goal, but I also like having all my photos with me at all times (via a portable hard drive) to bring up, flip through, or show off whenever necessary.  I haven't decided to use it as an email client yet, but the option is there should I choose to.

Also, since I have also made a point to do more with my photography and work on shortening the gap between taking photos and uploading them (which historically has been embarrassing), having my Sprint Mobile Broadband modem and my Mini, with it's built in SD card reader, is the perfect size to throw in my camera bag and upload photos from anywhere.  It's going to be pretty handy come February when we go back to Maui, that's for sure.

Back to the Numbers

Okay, so the real deal (or not) with the Mini is about the specs for all you fellow geeks out there (or geeks by association).  The Dell Mini tops out at only 1GB of RAM, which is sort of okay considering it comes with Windows XP and not Vista.  But it turns out that the 1GB limit is an artifical one imposed by Microsoft to allow Dell and other PC makers to keep costs down by selling XP and not requiring them to install Vista on these guys.  I, like many other Dell Mini owners, went out and bought our own 2GB RAM chips and are much happier.

The next thing to consider is the hard drive, which isn't really a hard drive.  Anyway, I maxed both of ours out at 16GB, which seems like Dell's limit just to keep the price competitive.  As mentioned above about the RAM, there are others out there dishing out more $$$ to buy larger 32GB and even 64GB drives to squeeze into their Mini's.  That might not seem like a lot, compared to the fact that my portable hard drive I mentioned earlier has 250GB of storage.

The reason is that these are SSD, or Solid State Drives.  They don't have all the moving parts like normal desktop and laptop hard drives have, yet they're not quite like giant flash drives either. They're somewhere in between, and while they can often be a smaller and cheaper alternative for these types of netbooks, you don't necessarily see the high performance that you would on the latest laptop hard drives.  But a positive trade off is that since there are no moving parts, the thing is absolutely silent.  No spinning discs or obnoxious cooling fan whizzing constantly.  Nice, peaceful silence.

More Numbers

So one of the things I found out by around day 3 was that might Mini was a little slower than it could be because the files on it were compressed and indexed, to features that Dell was nice enough to enable by default right out of the factory.  Since I'm not looking to use this for a lot of storage, using the compression to save space wasn't that big of a concern.  And since I don't intend to store files on it, why would I need to index it for faster searching?  It really just depends on how you use intend to use it.

So, that said, uncompressed and with everything else I absolutely need installed, I have about 6.43GB left out of a usable 14.3GB.  I would love to post a few screenshots of what's installed, but I haven't chosen an image editor for my Mini yet. :)

With just a few tabs open in Google Chrome (more on that in a minute) and Symantec Anti-Virus running in the background, my Mini is utilizing about 720MB of RAM, hence the need for the 2GB total.  I do have IE 7, Firefox 3, and Google Chrome installed on this machine, but from testing out each individually, I've been finding that Chrome not only takes up the least amount of screen real estate, it doesn't have as large of a memory footprint for my use of it.  Even with menus hidden and small icons in IE and FF, Chrome just feels lighter.  Oh, and I have the taskbar set to Auto-hide, which helps, too.

Other Software

Even though the Mini is running XP, I was still able to download and use the Windows Live Photo Gallery, which I've gotten used to in Vista.  I like the way it arranges photos for you, lets you tag them, and gives you the option to browse by dates you took your photos.  I installed Google Picasa to compare, and while I didn't use it very long, I couldn't find a way to browse and group by date taken.  Bummer.  

Some of the new features in version 3 looked really cool, too, but even after I let it index and catalog all the photos on my portable drive, it still stole over 400MB of storage as compared to just over 45MB for Windows Live.  Score one for Microsoft over Google (how often do you get to say that?).  I also am running JDiskReport by jgoodies.com.  I've used this for years to keep track of how much space is being used by what on my different machines, and when you only have 14GB usuable on your Mini, you start to get anal about it. 

As far as AV goes, I mentioned I'm running Symantec AntiVirus, not the entire Norton Suite.  I had started with AVG since it was free, but it was just a memory hog and was monitoring too much web traffic and eating bandwidth left and right.  Since we have Comcast, we're entitled to McAfee as well, which I installed on Cindy's Mini to see how they compare.

That's really it.  Looking through my Programs menu, I just realized that Windows Movie Maker is still installed (by default), which makes me wonder how you could possibly use that on this guy.  Anyway...

A Little Community

I wouldn't been as up-to-speed on my Mini if it wasn't for a nice little site called MyDellMini.  It features a nice blog and a great forum with Mini owners from both the US and the UK (they have slightly better Mini's there) with great advice, mods, upgrades and yes, even issues, that have been an invaluable resource both this past week and even the weeks before my Mini arrived.  Be sure to check it out if you have a Mini or are considering one.  

How to Get One

There are a few different ways to go about getting a Mini; one that took 6 weeks for mine, and one that took 3 days for Cindy's.  It's a long story, so I'll save that for another post (or you can learn more at the MyDellMini forum, they love to talk about it there).  There is a buzz that Dell's going to have a $299 Mini sale on Black Friday, but while the price sounds great, I'd have to speculate that the you'd might be at risk for not getting it before the holidays.

A Disclaimer?

Some part of me thinks I should be posting a certain disclaimer with this review, but I don't necessarily like to advertise that fact, so let's go without it for now and see where it goes, shall we?  If you happen to know what I'm referring to, please fight the urge to blab it out.  Many thanks.

So that's really it.  I covered a lot of ground for only having my Mini for 5 days now, and once I get a little more time, I plan to revisit this review and add a few screenshots and links, as well as giving a few more details as I get more use and spend more time with my Mini.

Thanks for reading :)

weekend highlights 11/09

well a difference a weekend makes.... last week temps were in the middle 60's, wearing light jackets, this weekend temps are in the 30's . i had to dig out my winter coat. ( not happy about that). Another weekend has come and gone. Our weekend consisted of running our errands, being invited to sibs night, (explain more later), going to Spring Hill mall, and last but not least go to kris's mom's house and watching the Blackhawks game!

Saturday consisted of doing things around the house because kris's dell mini was scheduled to be delivered. you ask was his computer delivered, and yes it was. In the afternoon we ran our errands. nothing to exciting. Saturdays nights plans, consisted of being invited to, "sibs night", at Michelle's house, Sibs night is defined when all the siblings and others get together. last month we all went La Magedlina for mexican, etc. This time sibs night was at Michelle's house. Kris and i brought the chopped salad, and the main course consisted of Sloppy joes. Topics of discussion were nana's birthday party. On december 13th we are invited to nana's 95th b-day party in wisconsin. We were discussing if we were going to stay over night. I think we decided not to. sibs night is the one night when everyone gets together.

On sunday i was woken early by the smoke alarm going off in our building, but nothing to worry about. 11:00 i started getting ready. It was a casual sunday. Kris and I went to panera for lunch, then drove out to the Spring Hill Mall in west dundee, for my bi-yearly wedding band inspection. Everything was fine with my wedding band. Sunday night is hockey night. Finally we went to kris's mom house to have dinner and watch the chicago blackhawks vs calgery flames. Right now blackhawks are beating the calgery flame 3-0 with 2:07 left in the second period. hopefully the hawks can hold there lead.

those of you know me know i like to look at photos, whether they be old or new. well they were doing some cleaning at my mother-in- laws house and came across a box of photos, so i also spend sunday evening going through old photos. of kris, his brothers, and the entire family.

It was fun. I forgot to mention i saw my first snowflake of the season today. The snowflake was small but it was there. Next weekend Kris and I are going to Southbend Indiana to Visit Nabeela and her family. I can't wait.

It's been a uneventful weekend.

door county trip in december

The last entry of my journal was written while we were in Door County in september for our anniversary, it said " we look forward to coming back next year," well next year is here. we had such a good time, we decided to plan a second trip to door county earlier than we expected. We will be taking our ssecond trip to door county in beginning of december, and staying at the Scandinavian lodge in Sister bay.
"Sister bay" has been saying "valkomman," to visitors sinse the days when the steamships used to bring them into it's large naturally deep harbor. The waterfront still is the focal point if activity for this year round vacation village with it's popular restaurants, shops, and boating activites.
taking a trip to door county in the begging of december, you expect the temps to be cold, it to snow, or there to be snow on the ground. Even though i hate this time of year, it's nice to get away, and i hope t0 have a good time. Like kris said, "it beats working."

The Trilogy is Complete

I'm a geek, there's no other way to describe it. I mean really, who else would take photos of their computers just like normal people would do with their children. You can tell Cindy's eyes are already rolling in the back of her head by now, for sure.

In any case, we are now officially a 3 Dell household with the arrival of my long awaited Dell Mini 910 (the black one). By long awaited I mean it took six weeks from the time I customized it online until it finally arrived today. Cindy's, on the other hand, was ordered from the Dell Outlet Site and was here in only three days! It turns out that because of all the delays that people had to endure for their custom Dell Mini's, that after the first few weeks they would just cancel the order. Well, those cancelled orders end up on the Outlet site and sell as refurbished, even through some of them actually left the factory in the first place (and arrive in just 3 days).

So, Cindy's had hers since Wednesday and she really likes it (ask her, she'll tell you). I'm still setting mine up the way I like it, but in the few hours that I've used it, it hasn't been that bad. The keyboard is a little snug to say the least, but I've started to adapt to it rather quickly and don't see it being a major issue. Going back to XP after about 2 years with Vista, though, was a little disappointing.

My Dell XPS (the red one there) is still my main machine for everything from web development, photo editing, video processing, and just about everything else. My Mini is going to be my blog anywhere, anytime machine thanks, in part, to my Sprint mobile broadband card, which has recently been upgraded from the size of a Snickers bar down to a smaller thumb drive. Considering I've been spending my lunchtime hours blogging at Starbucks over the past few weeks, I'm sure this little guy is going to turn a few heads.


So yeah, not only have I tried to justify having 3 laptops in the house, and also took pictures of all three of them together, but I've now also written up a decent-sized blog post about it, too. Come on, say it with me now ... GEEK!

Cindy's New Dell Mini

I thought I'd take a moment to introduce the newest little addition to our family (and I mean little). As a surprise gift for signing up on Facebook and making her first post here on the blog this past Sunday, I went ahead and bought here her own Dell Mini netbook. This little guy takes up significantly less space on our kitchen table and is a lot nicer to look at than the old Gateway laptop she was using up until now.

You might be thinking that I bought it just because I wanted one, but I have news for you ... mine is coming next week, this one is all hers. :)

Kidding aside, I really like the idea of both of us being involved in keeping this blog up-to-date and sharing our days and experiences together with all of our friends. I ordered my Dell Mini as motivation for me to keep blogging anywhere and anytime on my various blogs, so I hope this little guy keeps Cindy online and writing as well.

Happy blogging.

Next Door County Trip - Dec. 4th

After nearly adding another Maui trip for the first week of December, Cindy and I decided to stick with the original plan of going back to Door County for the weekend.  After our first trip in September for our anniversary, we knew we'd be going back often.

Last time we stayed in Sturgeon Bay along the water at the Westwoord Shores Waterfront Resort.  It was a lovely resort and we really enjoyed it there.  We did want to mix it up a little bit, though, for going in December.  This time, we're going to try out the Scandinavian Lodge in Sister Bay, which is further north on the penninsula.  One of the reasons I wanted to try out Sister Bay this time was because I was reading up on one of the skating rinks in the area, so I though it'd be fun to get back on the ice for a little bit while we're there.

We're anticipating there being at least some snow by the first week of December in Door County (which is actually only 4 weeks away if you can believe it).  Not entirely sure what that means in terms of being mobile and driving around as much as we did in September, but it will fun to see.  I'm a big fan of winter and snow, while Cindy prefers more of the sun and sand (which I admit, I'm quite fond of, too).  Yet, just in our initial experience with all the greenery and open areas throughout the county in the middle of September as the leaves just started to change, we have visions of a true winter wonderland for this trip.  We can't wait.

I posted photos and details from our first trip over at my photography site and am really looking forward to getting some great photos of winter to add to the list.  Also, I'm hoping for at least one starry night like we had on our last trip.  Besides a blizzard, some nice, cold, dry air in the winter can mean no clouds, and from the looks of things, I'll only be dealing with a half-moon that week. 

But winter nights plus no clouds usually equals cold (see, winter nights + no clouds = cold), so I'll need to prepare for that aspect of it, too.  I was outside last February in Chicago taking photos of the lunar eclipse with my Canon and my telephoto lens, and it was a frosty 4 degrees below zero!!!  Luckily, I was near the door of our parking garage and was able to sneak out for a few shots, battle the wind chill for a few seconds, and then jump back inside to warm up.  That doesn't work for 15-30 second exposures for shooting the stars, however.  I get cold just thinking about it.

As for plans once we're there, we haven't really made any as of yet.  We'll probably talk more about before the Thanksgiving holiday and read up on the anticipated weather as it gets closer.  Barring a full out snowstorm, all odds are good that we'll have another good time no matter what.  It could be worse, we could be working instead. :)

11/02 Weekend highlights

Another weekend, has come and gone, but it was a nice one. Beginning, with the weather, you wouldn't think it was the beginning of November. It was mostly sunny with temps in the mid to upper 60's, with a slight breeze in the air. It was a good weekend to go bicycle riding, or to take a walk along the lakefront. On Saturday, we went to Woodfield, followed by going to my mother-in-laws house to watch the hockey game. (Blackhawks, vs Columbus Bluejackets) where the blackhawks were victorious. Sunday, morning I woke up with a sore throat, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the weather. Kris and I , drove down to Belmont Harbor and, walked around the lakefront.
After walikng around the lakefront, we drove south along Lake Shore Drive and took in the scenery and buildings along the lakefront, example, Museum of Science and Industry, Soldier Field, Navy Pier, Mc Cormick Place. It was a beautiful day to be walking along the lakefront.

it was a nice weekend to get out and enjoy the weekend, whether you are running, bicycle riding, or walking along the lakefront like i did this weekend. Until I write again next weekend. Have a good week.