new red shoes

At the risk of sounding too girly, I love the fact that I'm wearing cute shoes today. I think a cute shoe day is on par with a good hair day.

Design Craziness

I'm a proponent of good design--in whatever form it may take. But I ran across something a bit ridiculous today: a plastic (and, admittedly, cool-looking) clothes hanger that costs $35 for a set of two. Two! I understand that people will pay a lot for cool home furnishings, sculpture, etc. But a hanger? Do people display these? Doesn't the good design get covered up by clothing? I'd have to permanently leave one hanging on the back of the bathroom door for all guests to see to justify the price. Here it is...

Invisible

It's only 9:30 in the morning and already I've had several incidents that make me wonder if I'm invisible to others today. Someone jumped in front of me and grabbed the seat I was about to take on the train, several people have allowed doors to slam on me, and a couple of people have cut in front of me in line (to go down the stairs, get breakfast at the deli, etc.). It's too bad that people can't see me today, too--I'm having such a good hair day. :-)

"Chi-Town?"

I read an interesting discussion on a Tribune columnist's blog today...the fact that no one who actually lives in Chicago calls the city "Chi-town." I know a lot of people who say that, but none of them live here. I'm apparently not the only one who's made that observation before.

The original article that started the whole discussion was about a guy who ended up with a tattoo that said "CHI-TONW"--a misspelling of an already dumb idea for a tattoo.

ewww

I guess when you're in Walgreens 3 times in 24 hours, the odds of finding a weird product go up. (I keep having to go back because W. is sick.) So, this is really gross:

Chicken Poop chap stick. (Contains no poop.) I was tempted, but I didn't buy it.

Photos

I thought I'd share some of my favorite scenic photos that we took during the past year. I'm hoping to add some photos of people at some point.

Scenic Shots 2006

Airborne

I sat next to someone on the train who was coughing the entire way home. Eww! I'd better not get sick. I've had my fair share of illness this winter. I need to take some Airborne (it's this fairly gross tasting but surprisingly effective herb+vitamin supplement that dissolves in water like an Alka Seltzer and is supposed to jump-start the immune system). I highly recommend it. Who knows how well it works, but whenever I get exposed to sick people or start feeling sick, it at least makes me feel like I'm doing something.

free stuff is cool

We perused the Abt Electronics store last night, just looking at all the fancy plasma screen tvs, appliances, and personal electronics that we'll never be able to afford. We've been looking into getting an additional power cable for our Bose SoundDock (awesome Christmas gift!) so we can more easily move it around (the cable is threaded through the back of a bookcase), and I stopped at the service desk to see if they could order one. Well, several minutes later, the guy reappeared and plopped one down on the counter. We asked how much, and he said "free-ninety-nine." I thought he said $3.99 at first, which is crazy because Bose.com was asking $50+ shipping. But then it registered that he was giving it to us. That totally made my day! I guess the service dept. sign, "The answer to any reasonable request is YES!" was an understatement. Then we went out to dinner at Benihana, which was almost "free" since we'd just saved so much cash.

Update: yay, giant tax refund! I knew that Shady Guy would come through! He sat there for an hour running numbers different ways on some things to come up with the best scenario for us. He's one of the top-tier tax preparers at our tax place, and he's worth every penny that we pay him.

drumroll please...

We're getting our taxes prepared tonight. We've got a tax preparer that we call "shady guy" because he seems to know everything and gets us a huge refund each year. Our tax situation has changed every year for the past 5 years (working in 2 states/starting school/buying a home/ending school/stock sales/capital gains/etc.), so we don't even try to do it ourselves. We have a tradition of going out to dinner afterwards. Though we might go home and eat leftovers if we don't get a refund this time. Oh, the suspense...