Jumpin' At The Woodside

Howdy from the windy city! Sorry for the blurry photo. It's from Lago's camera phone taken across the street from our hotel on the rooftop bar of the Rock Bottom brewery. We're getting ready to go to dinner at the Webber Grill and have sangria and some fine grilled meats. We had lunch at the Bubba Gump at the Navy Pier. The food at Bubba Gump's is surprisingly good, and with the weather today it was nice to eat outside. We may hit Buddy Guy's place after dinner - lookout Chicago! Last night we saw Dave Matthews Band - great show! Two of the members of Parliament Funkadelic, who opened the show, jammed with them for the last 4-5 songs. Looking forward to seeing them again next Friday in Charlottesville, Va. Thurs. night we saw Tim Reynolds, who sometimes plays with Dave Matthews, in a solo acoustic set. He was good, but the local Chicago band who opened for him, Dearborn, totally rocked. Hope an agent signs them soon so I can buy/download their CD. Check 'em out ...

Yesterday the plumbers were here to replace our cast iron waste pipe with PVC and put in a cleanout. What no one expected to find was a septic tank since we were told we were on city sewage. So now we’re the proud owners of a septic tank, which as you can tell from the photos was full. The plumbers called a pumping service who pumped it out. They said we’re good for another seven years. Gross-Out Alert : The guy in the photo on the right was eating sunflower seeds while standing over the open tank - ooga-booga! Mmm, yummy. Hurray, we have a cleanout! After the tank was pumped out and the lid replaced, Lago and I went furniture shopping while the plumbers replaced the waste pipe. The trip turned out a little longer than expected because the furniture store did not have the sectional sofa we wanted on the showroom floor. It was at another store in the north end of town. We were glad we made the trip, because the sofa turned out to be exactly what we wanted and we also decided to go with ...

Photo for the New Lounge .

Although I realize we’re in the south, I didn’t know we were far enough south to see these little green critters running about. I’m used to seeing them when we visit Florida, but I was quite surprised to be greeted at the back door by this little fella. I was heading back inside from cutting the grass today and there he was on the bricks right alongside the back door. He moved over to the window ledge by the time I took the photo with my camera phone, which is why the quality is not so good. I watched him for awhile and he seemed like he was used to seeing people. He acted differently than the lizards I see in Florida. His movements were slower and not as jittery as the Sunshine State lizards. As I watched him, he caught a bug and ate it. It was then I told him he could hang around and eat all the bugs he likes, just as long as he stays outside. Of course that’s more for the lizard’s sake since the cats and dog would have a fine time making a chew toy out of him. Tonight at 8pm is our ...

I bought the first season of The X-Files on DVD back in May or June of this year. I’ve been missing The X-Files since it went off the air a few years ago. Now you can’t even find the repeats on cable. FX channel used to air the X-Files episodes all the time, like catching Seinfeld or Friends that seem to always be on TBS. I think TNT or another network air it at 5pm and 2am, how am I supposed to watch that? The X-Files has been out on DVD for some time, but at $80 for an entire season, that’s a bit much. Finally, this year The X-Files season episodes have been packaged at half that price. I recently picked up the second season as well, but still working my way through the first season. The summer is a good time of year to catch up on an old favorite since most of TV is repeats. It’s great to have the X-Files back by just popping in a DVD. One of the things I liked most about The X-Files is that each episode was like a short scifi-thriller-mystery movie. OK, so I liked Gillian Anderson ...

Rainy day view from the office. It’s raining here, supposed to rain all day. At least it’s a break from the sauna-like conditions we’ve had for the past few weeks. Football season is under way with pre-season games and I’m really looking forward to watching the games this year on our new 60” big-screen TV. It’s HD and I hooked up the DVD player with an HDMI cable and the movies look just like they do in the theater. I also hooked up the HD DVR cable box with an HDMI cable and football and baseball games look amazing in HD. The HDMI cable sends a pure digital signal to the TV. We’re still looking to get some furniture for our “theater room.” It’s kind of funny, we’re watching this huge TV sitting on lawn chairs. We got rid of our old sofa before we moved and haven’t shopped for new furniture yet. We’d like to get some sort of sectional sofa for the theater room and we still need to get furniture for our other living/sitting room. That’s where we have Lago’s piano. We’re really looking f...

Apparently, the answer to that question is “Yes.” The events that occurred this past Friday afternoon (July 28) were difficult and unexpected. This is what happened... I was in the office until around noon then I came home to be here when the cable guy arrived. Once here, I showed the cable guy around. He was going to install cable, Internet and digital phone service. He climbed up the pole and when he came down and started working around the house I kept hearing phrases like "This isn't good" and "It's worse than I thought." Apparently our house needs to be rewired for cable. Even though there are alleged cable outlets all over the house, we only had one viable connection downstairs in our living room. We have one of our extra bedrooms upstairs set up for the office. Our phone lines were pretty much non-existent even though like the cable, there were outlets all over the house. The cable guy was able to put an extra outlet in the living room for the modem....