WoooHOOO Happy 4th of July (umm two weeks before someone's B-day!)
Good morning … this is us and sorta Missy. She’s patrolling down below and we’re petting her as she passes by.
Umm … any question about where the animals are?? They were gone the better part of yesterday and they THOUGHT they were going to head out early this morning. They like to see the different venders setting up.
Getting a Taste of Chicago by Sandy Thorn Clark, Chicago Sun-Times.
THE FAVORITES
The Top 10 classic Chicago foods tourists want to sample are:
1. Deep dish pizza
2. Chicago hot dog
3. Garrett popcorn
4. Italian beef sandwich
5. Maxwell Street Polish sausage sandwich
6. Steak
7. Eli's cheesecake
8. Frango mints
9. Fannie May candies
10. Billy Goat's Cheezborger
TASTES OF CHICAGO
DEEP-DISH PIZZA
Tourists and locals stand in line day and night at Pizzeria Uno, the landmark at Ohio Street and Wabash Avenue since 1943, for a slice of Numero Uno deep dish pizza, a much-imitated, never-duplicated oozing combo of cheese, sausage, pepperoni, fresh mushrooms, onions and green peppers. Chain-wide, Uno restaurants use 10 million pounds of mozzarella, 1.3 million pounds of sausage and 600,000 pounds of pepperoni annually.
CHICAGO HOT DOG
The authentic Chicago-style dog is all about a plump hot dog nestled in a poppy seed bun with mustard, pickle relish, hot peppers, chopped onions and, of course, celery salt. When tourists request ketchup at Hot Diggity Dogs, corner of Ohio and Fairbanks, co-owner Joe Marsico retorts, "OK, but then it's not a Chicago dog!" Though fluorescent-green pickle relish most commonly is used atop the dogs, Marsico passes; "It's too sweet, too green."
STEAK
In the city once known for its stockyards, steak still reigns -- and there are plenty of steakhouses to fit everyone's appetite and addiction. Morton's the Steakhouse has withstood the test of time at its flagship, 1050 N. State. When asked, "Where's the beef?" concierges also direct guests to Harry Caray's, Smith & Wollensky, Chicago Chop House, Capital Grille, Gene & Georgetti, Gibsons Steakhouse, Keefer's and Ruth's Chris Steak House.
ELI'S CHEESECAKE
Sure, diehards can eye cheesecakes being baked at 1 p.m. weekdays at Eli's Cheesecake World, 6701 W. Forest Preserve Dr. -- where 17,000-plus cheesecakes are made daily -- but who would pass up a free slice of Eli's Original Plain Cheesecake at the Taste of Chicago at 1 p.m. Saturday near Buckingham Fountain? Eli's, which sent 32 bakers to D.C. to a bake a 2,000-pound cheesecake for President Clinton's second inauguration, uses 5 million pounds of cream cheese annually.
GARRETT POPCORN
Long, long lines don't discourage Garrett Popcorn fanatics at 670 N. Michigan, although some nearby hotels confess they occasionally send employees to stand in line for preferred hotel guests. The popcorn of choice is the Chicago Mix -- a delectable sweet-salty combination of CaramelCrisp and CheeseCorn -- made popular by inclusion on Oprah's "Favorite Things" list. A word to the wise: Be sure to have some wet wipes for cleanups.
ITALIAN BEEF SANDWICH
Visitors like Bill Ward of Charleston, S.C., dig into an Italian beef sandwich on the patio at Portillo's, Ontario and Clark streets, and their opinion of Chicago's edibles skyrockets. Concierges recommend the French bread-encased sliced beef sandwich, complete with an au jus gravy and sweet peppers, at Portillo's or Al's Italian Beef. Al's was one of 10 Chicago vendors to serve their specialties to thousands of guests at Hillary Clinton's 50th birthday party.
YAH, YAH, YAH …
We’d like to think the animals are staying here for more reasons than it’s a cheap stay for being able to “DO” Chicago! The Taste of Chicago goes on for 10 days and attracts about 3.5 million people. I can’t even imagine the total of animals that visit. For now though everyone’s still in bed at 7 am … most likely holding on to a few tummy aches! They were in too late for me to get the details. I KNOW they stayed for fireworks though … word is Mayor Daley has them going on for several days … He’s such a good partier Mayor. YAYYYYYY!!!!
Other news??
Not much … just more smiley’s from our Super friend. Hehehe he was greeted warmly as he walked through the door with a big bag of rib tips, corn, corn muffins, steak fries, Texas toast, and potato salad. We feast even in the suburbs, though I think he got the special dishes before leaving Chicago. V. said something yesterday about seeing our friend THREE days in a row!! I hadn’t even realized … it’s just been heaven in our small corner of the world. Ahhh yah … you know the rest … talk, play, play, play.
There was one interesting conversation though on hypnotism and lasers for smokers and over-eaters. Here’s the deal. We connected yesterday to a Doctor who does small group hypnotism’s in Oak Park where we used to live. Small groups are about 40 people. After reading a bunch of stuff and talking to him about lasers, we decided that wasn’t the route to go. The final though on laser’s was his question if we really wanted to have a laser pointed into our ear or brain when there have been no tests done by the FDA to verify what the results. It didn’t help the situation either that the cost was $300 and was only supposed to work the first 10 days. Hypnotism on the other hand is supposed to last a lifetime, though can be brushed up and it only cost $100. We talked to the Doctor and he allowed us to ask all our questions for about 15-20 minutes. I thought that was really a nice thing to do and I hadn’t expected it. We’re signed up now for the July 25th session and the August 22nd session … respectively for smoking, then diet. Our friend is not too sure how all that is going to go. He doesn’t necessarily believe it will work. But, the deal is that if I go through smoking and it works in July, then he will seriously consider doing the diet one with us in August. If the first didn’t work, we’d both cancel the second. YAYYYYYY!!!! I told him that if I didn’t smoke the first month, by the August session, I would pay him the $200 back from the money I’d saved from not smoking. Can’t go wrong with that deal.
Anyway … will be looking forward to that. So, that’s about it of the new stuff. Whoops … probably should go take some medicine. Not really thrilled with that. Oh one more news item … Missy’s been fully petted and is back to being comfortably quiet. We gave her about 15 minutes this time. Figured she was discombobulated because of the fireworks last night. AND, for the record … we stayed up for about 10 minutes of them, but then contentedly fell asleep before without realizing when Chief had moved from chest to foot rest. We sure do have a happy household. *Sigh*
Oh oh I sure hop that White Bear with Purple Dress doesn’t wake up with a headache this morning. Sometimes I think she gets worried about sleeping on her hair badly. Us girls, we can be sooo silly!
Yayyy!!! It looks like Green Frog with Blue Shirt is getting up … not sure if he’s going to “jump” start hehehe breakfast or is planning to just go to the washroom. *Sigh* Whoops back to bed!
Ok ok … someone needs her medicine! BRB
Not feeling like breakfast yet, but we took care of washroom, medicine, coffee, and sterilized our hands YAYYYY!!!
I think we are going to go over to our paper sooner than later this morning. V. had already left for work by the time we’d gotten up. I’d like to be somewhere good about the time he gets back. He’s got a new schedule so will be out until noon or 1 pm or thereabouts. Hmm, maybe I better eat something just so we stay strong and not dizzy. Ok, ok going…
Mmm cereal … last of the last box though … better let our friend know he should pick up two next time. Don’t want to worry over it though.
We’ve been listening this morning to the recording. We should think of all that process for a minute. We’re still all good with the act of doing it. I’m a little concerned in that we lost another recording yesterday, though don’t know why. Might have been too much moving around on the computer? Really don’t know … At one point, I looked over and it said that we’d lost the connection. We have to think through … would it be better to have a series of short recordings, in case it went down and we chance losing a whole day. Or, if we continue as is. The latter is much easier and satisfactory, but the other would be safer. It’s not as if the process is very difficult … Actually pretty easy. Hmm, what to do, what to do? Maybe a compromise? We think every hour would be kinda irritating, but how about if we cut them off about every two to two and a half hours?? V. was asking about cost yesterday. The way it looks … I paid for 13 months of service with an annual payment with “Hipcast” and it breaks down to $4.16 a month. This is the service that I’ve been using to post both movies and audio. I’d also be able to post recordings from the telephone or email if I wanted. For this fee, we get 5 gigabytes of bandwidth usage. In the last three days, I have used 138.45 MB, which is equal to .14 Gigabytes, but there must be additional bytes used in recording the devise for playing the recordings too, because in three days of about 9 hours and 15 minutes of recording music and audio, I’ve used up 60% of 1 gigabyte. I’ll have to consider that when asking if I should stop and save the recording each smaller block of time. That means I’m getting about 15.5 hours per GB, or for 5 GB per month I can tape 77.5 hours a month without getting charged more. That comes out to an average of 2.6 hours per day usage. Of course, there will be some days we don’t talk and other days we go way over … I think the real cool part though is that even if I went over 77 hours per month, I would only be charged an additional $1 for every 15 hours recorded. Each month the counter rolls back and we’re reset to 0 GB. YAYYYY. This is how she looks so far …
I think … all in all … it’s a pretty gosh darn neat service! I enjoy very much the process of making the audio’s and video’s and the process of listening to them afterward. Maybe later on … we’ll be able to figure out why the sound of our own voices are so comforting. Ohh, one more thing … it seems like we need to consider how what kind of recording we are making as to how many MBs are being used. It appears that for audio (voice), we use .24 mbs per minute, for the music we use 1.10 mbs per minute, and for the movie we use 2.69 mb per minute. So for each mb of movie, we could have taped 2 minutes of music, or 11 minutes of voice. Eh, It’s just something that is handy to know.
Ok, ok … it’s about 8:34 now. Maybe it’s time we posted and moved on … Is there any last thing before we get started?
Oh yeah as far as watching our time. We’ve only got today now before working into the next weekend, which we had originally wanted to keep very clear. I’m not sure if that’s happening. As much as I would like to be getting ready for the next course. Reasonably speaking I don’t know if that’s happening. I should finish the next and last 6 resources before noon. At least that’s what we’ll attempt to do. THEN, finally, we’ll start writing the actual paper. We are counting on we can actually write quite a bit without too much effort. For example, over the last approximate 3 hours we’ve written 9 pages … there were some pictures, but it was also single spaced. The paper will be 25 pages – double spaced. Most of everything I’ve been reading says that the preparation should be 75% or more of the work. We’re holding ourselves to that. Because in reality … the writing isn’t something we find difficult to do. Our difficulty as you should know by now … is just getting started. SOOOOO, with that … we are going to continue for the day.
BTW our sweetie just stopped by for a moment in IM. No sweetie pie visit today, he is off to visit with his mother and her husband. I think he’s looking forward to that, so everything is good to go. We only got to play with him a few moments before we were shhhh’d … which is the universal sign for “no talking!” Not our favorite sign, but we can do that too. We’re feeling pretty strong and much more rested today than yesterday. WoooHOOOO!!! AHA! He signed back on to say good bye. We asked him if he was going to be sparkly today, and he said, “Like you, always sparkly!” What a cool person he’s turned out to be … could just smooch him forever!
Ok Ok … ready, set, jump!
posted by Ann Marie @ 7/04/2006 08:54:00 AM
Comments: 2
