Sweet Home ... Irvine!

Yes, I know it is supposed to be Sweet Home Chicago, but it was nice getting back from Chicago to my own sweet home Irvine!


It was sad leaving the way cool rental car, though. I have not mentioned it previously here, but the car had a push-button ignition system. It was cool, but I don't get the benefit of it. There was no key, just a key fob. You inserted the fob into a spot on the dash. Then pressed the ignition button next to it to start - or turn off - the car. Felt kind of futuristic!

The more I used it, though, the more I wondered what the value of this system was. I am already putting the fob into the dash - similar to how I would put a key in the ignition. But instead of just turning the key, I now had to press another button. Didn't really make sense to me, but I am sure there is a reason. At least a reason beyond (a) because we can or (b) because it's cool and kinda futuristic. Maybe it is a more efficient system. Maybe if it is not a rental car you would not have to insert the fob into the dash, like it had bluetooth and you could just have the fob in your pocket. Now that'd be cool!

Well, goodbye way cool futuristic Volvo wagon and hello Irvine - and my own bed!! But before we could get to any of that we had to brave the air transportation industry! Some of the scenes from the trip are already posted below. Here are a couple I snapped as we were coming in to SLC.

And with that, thus endeth our illustrious, economy-boosting trip to Chicago and South Bend to visit the fam! And now, I am going to relish the comfort of my own bed!

Little Boxes...

I can't help but think of the opening song for the Showtime series 'Weeds' looking out over the Chicago urban sprawl. OK, back to my singing ... "Little boxes, on a hillside..."

Mommy? Is that you?

Probably not since its her day off!

Taxi Time!

Yea!

Homeward Bound

Ready for take off and doing so in style - first class style!

Musical Monday!

Travel day back to the Windy City and that can only mean one thing - more shopping! Quick trip into the city takes us to the Oprah store, as well as back to the Magnificent Mile and then out to the 'burbs and Woodfield Mall.

To get there, though, we head back on the Chicago Skyway. I am not sure why this toll road sticks out in my mind from my childhood. Maybe because it had a giant (to me at the time) bridge that seemed like it was on top of the world. You couldn't see anything below - especially when you were hunkered down in the backseat and could barely see out as it was! maybe because it was a route we rarely took. Dad was a bit of a cheapskate and didn't like toll roads too much - "Why pay to drive on a road when there are perfectly good free ones!" Maybe because when I got older I understood just how damn expensive the Skyway was!! I used to be amazed that the 2 mile stretch of pavement would set you back $2 to drive. Now, that same asphalt costs like $4.50 or something. I think I blacked out when I saw the price! Today, though, you really have to figure the cost in gas savings and you probably still come out ahead. Scary thought!

Once we got into the city it was straight to Oprah's. She'll be so happy to see us! Oh, wait, I mean we're heading to her studio to see if there is a gift shop! Guess we won't be dropping in on the girl to see how things are going. Britt wants to get a souvenir for her mom. I like the show - at least the ones where she is focused on self improvement rather than the celebrity stuff. So I figured there'd be some pretty cool stuff in the store - even for guys. Nope. Cool stuff, yes, but way so much a chick store! One of the store clerks came up and commended me on at least wandering the floor and looking at things. She said most guys just walk in and sit down - or turn around and go outside to wait for their wife/girlfriend/relative to be done! Hey, what can I say.


Well, if the Oprah store didn't threaten my masculinity, then the evening's event might. I went to a cabaret performance saluting the women of MGM musicals at the Drury Lane theater at Watertower in downtown Chicago. OK, so before you start questioning my metro-sexuality, I went to see a high school friend perform in the show. Cheryl has been a singer for a number of years but this was her first time at this level. Now mind you in high school she was just a cute, quiet shy girl with some other nice attributes ;) (oh, yea, she'll smack me for that one!). We had German together for 3 years and she was always so nice and down to earth - and introverted. She was - and still is - just about the sweetest person I have ever met in my entire life.

A few weeks ago on another trip to Chicago I got to hear her sing at an open mic night at a local bar and was blown away. The moment she opened her mouth she just took your breath away with her singing. So I was excited to get to see her in her big-time Chicago debut. And I have to say she knocked it right out of the park! Her voice was huge and she just had the audience eating out of her hands. It was amazing! You could hear the comments in the audience. They were as blown away by her on this grand stage as I had been in that tiny bar a few weeks prior.

Afterwards I had a couple of drinks with Cheryl and the other performers. All of them and some of the others who came over after the show all complimented the 'rookie' on her stellar performance. I am hoping that maybe this will help boost her confidence and her profile in this not so little toddlin' town.

So quite a day to say the least. And now it was time for the worst part of any trip - and this one in particular - packing all of the stuff you brought, as well as the stuff you picked up back into your suitcases which now seem to have shrunk somewhere along the way!

Beachin' Day!

It was a beautiful day and a perfect one to head to one of my old stomping grounds - Tower Hill. Now, everyone understands that when you visit places from your childhood that they are much smaller than you remember. Well, I have found the exception to that rule, and it is know as TOWER HILL. Warren Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan, in Michigan was *the* beach for us in South Bend.

It was great to see the place again. It had not changed at all. Well, with one exception if you ask me. You know how when you visit places form your childhood, they are always smaller than you remember. Well, let me tell you there is an exception to every rule, and for this one that exception is know as TOWER HILL. Oh my God, this stupid thing was way higher than I remembered. At least that was my view half way up the stupid thing! Gee, I remember being able to dart up the hill with relative ease. Now, though it must have grown so big that I had to take frequent rest breaks to get up there!! Couldn't be that I was older or, let's just say in a 'different' shape than I was back then!

Now, in the picture above it may not look that big. Sometimes it is hard to get perspective in these types of shots. Note the narrow black spec in the middle of the pic. That is a full grown person. As you ,move up the picture, if you look close, you will see more specs that are even smaller. These are still full grown people. It is a big ol' sand dune!!

And just to prove I made it up there and to give a bit different perspective, I added the shot of the view from atop Tower Hill. The cars in the distance can give you a bit of perspective.

And, since we were up there, we got some additional shots. Thank God! It gave me a chance to catch my breath!!

Britt and Becca strike a pose!

Marci is handling the camera and having some issues with it. Actually, it helped to create a picture with everyone laughing.

The two old folks - Jeff & Marci. She is the 57 year old heart attack survivor who steadily strode up the hill with relative ease. And he is the one who thought he was not going live to see 57 because he was going to have a heart attack right there on the side of the hill!

Becca captures Britt. Not sure why Britt allowed this picture to be taken, but here it is! And, while we were having fun at the top of the hill ...

Jordan held down the beach blanket. Or maybe he was sleeping. Or maybe it had something to do with the 2 cute high school girls in bikinis.

The top of the sand dune is not the only place we went exploring. As a state park there are many places to explore. This is an inlet that heads from the lake into a stream that goes through the park. I thought this was a cool shot of the dad holding his son's hand as they walked down the creek.

Busy Saturday!

OK, So I didn't update the blog yesterday. It was a very busy day! I started off the day heading to the ND Bookstore Outlet store. WOW! Way cool!!! Got a bunch of great ND shirts, etc. for a great price. THIS was an outlet that is really for me!! Thank you to Kevin & Kathy Misiewicz for alerting me to the existence of this place. For me it was the kid in the 'discount' candy store!

After getting out of the store with still most of my money, I called the Jordan and woke him up - at 11:30 - and the girls weren't stirring yet, either! Hmmm. OK, so I went to have lunch with my grandmother and one of my uncles and his wife (yes, my aunt). It was great to see them as I have not seen them since my father's funeral 5 years ago.

After lunch called back to the house, no answer from Britt. Come to find out she was just getting into the shower at 2:00! So I headed back to the house to see if I could roust the little chickadees from their roost.

Then it was off to visit one of my early childhood friends and her mom, who is my mom's best friend for 40 years! It was great seeing Kim and meeting her son and daughter in law and their son - Holy crap, he is her grandson. She is my age. Not sure how in the world she can be a grandmother, because I sure as heck *cannot* be a grandfather!! It was also great seeing her mom, May. I had not seen her since my father's funeral as well. And I had not been in her house in who knows how long. This is relevant because in the 40 years since I first walked into her house, just about everything was the same. And when I say the same, I mean the EXACT same! Her dining room table, chairs and even the tablecloth were the exact ones I remember. The kitchen table is the exact same table I remember playing under as a young child. It was like something out of Back to the Future!! That was both way cool and bizarre at the same time.

So, after boring the kids with visiting yet more old people they do not know, it was off to a brief trip to the illustrious University Park Mall to get in some power shopping before the dinner party Marci was throwing that night. I figured the kids had put up with 2 days of old folks talking about old days and dead people, and had done so very patiently. And my rewarding them was rewarded by them not buying anything! Yea, my wallet was able to continue to recover from earlier in the day and earlier in the week!

And then it was off to the big event. Marci threw a dinner party semi in our honor. Now it was a bunch of old people none of us knew for the most part. It was also sprinkled in with a few kids as well. Her parties are always fun and she has the most amazing, eclectic group of friends. It is always fun to meet her friends. I am still trying to figure out how she found these people in the middle of the very conservative, blue collar heartland.

Britt & Becca were assigned photo duty for the evening. (OK, I was too, but I didn't seem to get the camera out frequently - or at all, depending on how you look at it!) As you can see, though, they seemed to relish the duty!

Britt & Jordan posing for a picture. Well, OK, Britt went over and sat on his lap. Jordan tolerated it and resigned himself to having his picture taken as the quickest way to get it over!

Uncle Kevin, Becca, Aunt Marci, Britt, Jeff, and Jordan pose for the first ever family shot of this make up.

And the whole party poses for one big group shot at the end of the night!

New Faces in New Places and More of the Same

We got up early today and headed to South Bend to visit with my grandmother and my aunt. It was rough getting up and getting everyone else up at 6:30 am to make the drive, but the day's schedule demanded it. Becca joined us for the trip so we had an extra kid which was great.



First on the agenda was visiting grandmother. Jordan and I have not seen her in a year and Brittany and Becca it has been forever - maybe never for Becca. For an 89 year old lady she looked amazing! Very spry and alert. She is still driving apparently! It was great to catch up with her and see that she is doing well despite losing her second husband a couple of weeks ago. The kids found it less than exciting as she and I spent most of the time talking about relatives they had never met. Add to that, the fact that they each only had a few hours of sleep and were pretty wiped out!



After visiting with grandmother, it was off to ND to see Marci and get an admissions tour for Becca and Britt. For Becca, she is interested in going to school for accounting and is wanting to see ND. Britt has no interest in ND but I told her it'd be good to just do the tour and see what they talk about in terms of what a school has to offer and what they are looking for. The tour was ok. The best thing si that it did give the a flavor of the school and at least gave them a foundation of somehting to think about and determine what is important to them as they think about colleges in the future.


After the tour we hit the bookstore! Dad's turn at shopping! Funny, though. I still came out with less stuff than the others. Oh well. Hopefully I'll get my payback once Britt goes to ND or some other top school!


After that it was off to meet up with Marci and go to dinner. But in an eerily familiar twist, we suddenly found ourselves talking to and Adams girl with a 3 year old phone that needed to upgrade into the new millennium. So, before we knoew it we were at Verizon and guiding Auntie Marci in getting her new phone. And just like her big sister, she chose the LG Envy, but went with black instead of the red that mom selected. THe good news is that there are no more Adams women to have to take care of phones for. We got them both in this one trip. And already they are just a texting like crazy!! I thnk Verizon needs to give me a pretty big discount on my bill in return for this cell phone upgrade tour we seem to be on!

Hitting a Wall*e

Today was pretty low key. After running around shopping until we were dropping yesterday, today was about kicking back and relaxing a bit more. The day consisted of just hanging out. Michele and Jessica joined us today so it was everyone except Jim who is in Canada this week on a fishing trip.

We went to see Wall*e. It was a cute concept and was good for a while. It would have been a great short cartoon. As a full length, though, it was too much time for not enough story.

Afterward, Jordan got his wish and we went to Steak n Shake - a reasonably low end burger joint that he has for some reason taken a shine to. We used to go when we lived in Orlando and I think that might be his connection to the place.

The highlight of the day was updating Grammie! On Tuesday Grammie mentioned how a friend of hers told her that her phone was old. She said that it wasn't. After all, it is only THREE YEARS OLD!! And besides she doesn't need all that fan-dangled stuff! She just wants to talk on the phone. Who needs to text. If you got something to say, maker the call! After all of us finally finished laughing, which was sometime around this morning actually, apparently Grammie decided maybe she's at least 'look' at the phones to see what the deal was.

Well, the sales rep nearly fell over when he pulled her account up. "My, you've been eligible for quite some time!" Then he mentioned that she has been upgrade eligible since June of 2004!!! That was FOUR years ago!

So, it seemed that she was going to pretty much be able to get a phone - and a good one at that - for free! She knew that she wouldn't text with a keyboard built onto 9 keys. She would need a QWERTY keyboard. Just yesterday she said she didn't need to text! And now here she is flying right into the new millennium and finding the right phone to text with! Making sure her ring tones wouldn't get lost and that she could still keep her photos on the phone. Yep. Just going to use it for calls. DOn't need any of that other crap!! The fun part was watching her grand kids - from 17 down to 10 - teach her how to use her phone!

So look out world. Armageddon must be near, Hell is probably starting to ice up, and the Cubs may win the World Series this year! Wow!!

Another Day Another Round of Shopping!

Apparently there is no such thing as too much shopping for a 14 year old girl. Who knew!!

Day 2 starts out a bit slower than yesterday. The time zone is really wreaking havoc with the kids schedule as they are staying up until 3/3:30 am. The result though is wasted shopping time! That works for me. Doesn't cost me anything for the kids to sleep!

So once everyone is up and stirring we grab lunch and then off to the mall. The damn weatherman said it was supposed to rain today, but it was pretty bright and sunny all morning. So instead of going to the beach as was the plan a few days ago, we head to the mall.

Jessica has joined us for the day. So now instead of two surly teens too cool to chat, we have three. At Woodfield Mall we wander around checking out the unique stores that we certainly don't have in OC. Strange stores like Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, Champs, Macy's and a handful of others! At left are the hip, trendy, stylish threesome is waiting patiently (or impatiently!) as Grammie is in the Candle store.

Jordan is hanging out trying to look cool and forget that he is totally bored out of his skull. The poor kid is only trying to find the right Ed Hardy t-shirt to buy with his first paycheck. On top of trying to find the right design, he also has to contend with his sister and cousin taking us into all the chick stores. The good news is that he finally found one he liked.

And then to end up the day out, Joe's Crab Shack! Michele has never had crab so this is going to be interesting - especially with Matt getting a big kick telling hie mom how they are prepared!

Once done here, the kids continue their eating binge, asking me to take them to Dairy Queen. And now as I am typing this at 2:00 am, I hear Jordan fixing more food! Oh boy. I guess if they are not shopping, they are eating. They are kind of like sharks that way I guess. If they don't keep moving, they will die!

Millennium Park to the Miracle Mile

We took the train downtown today to see Millennium Park, shop the Miracle Mile, get some Garrett's popcorn and just check things out in general. Of course I was also interested in getting the Hard Rock Hotel and the Hard Rock Cafe. On my last trip here I stopped by both for the city shirts, but they were out.

First mornings are always rough. The kids and I got out of bed about 10/10:30 CST. We picked up 'grammie' and headed to the train stop to catch the Blue Line into town. We ended up eating at Chipotle for lunch which made Jordan happy! Grammie had never been to such a place and seemed to be confused by the whole 'build it as you order it' thing. Some how she managed, though. Becca had never been to one either, but she some how managed to make it through without any issues. From now on Becca has responsibility to make sure Grammie gets her food the right way!

After lunch we went to Garrett's popcorn. This is a famous popcorn shop in Chicago that Britt saw on some food show and she wanted to go. Popcorn? No problem!

Millennium Park. Jordan saw it a year ago. Britt was only interested in shopping. Grammie and Becca live here and have seen it numerous times. As you can figure this was a big hit. First stop was "the Bean" as everyone calls it. Which it pretty much is just a big ol shiny bean sitting in the middle of the park. The cool thing is to go up to it and get a twisted view of the city. Last trip I got some of the city's nighttime skyline in the bean. I need to work those pictures so I can get one posted.

Buckingham Fountain for the same aforementioned reasons also seemed to be of little interest to the kids. And, funny, still no one laughed when I started to sing "Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage ..." as we stood in front of the fountain. Married with Children fans would recognized Buckingham Fountain from the show's opening montage.

From there we headed uptown to the Miracle Mile, passing the Art Institute. I'd love to go there, but cannot see the kids getting too into it and making it more of a pain in the butt than anything. I always liked the Lions standing guard outside the museum.

And of course, wherever there is a Hard Rock, I must go! This is the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown Chicago. Lobby looked sparse, not very Hard Rock like. Also memorabilia was very limited. And worst of all they STILL did not have a city t-shirt! Guess i will have to hit it AGAIN to get the stupid shirt!!

A view as we are trotting along on State Street. The Sun-Times building is the white building in the middle.

And now we can say we have been to Niketowns in California, New York, and Chicago. This was a cool display of Kobe Bryant going in for the slam for the new "Redeem Team". I wonder what they will do with this display when it is over. I wonder if I can get it home wiht me on the plane. Maybe if I bought it a ticket I could sit it next to me on the plane. Maybe I could even use it to get into the car pool lanes! Hmmm.

And the after Niketown, it all became a big ol' blur as we hit a few stores, including a giant 8-story Macy's and a Ghiradelli! Finally we ended up the night at the Weber Grill. They actually cook the food in Weber Grills that look like they are on steroids! It is a cool theme and another thing Britt saw on one of the food shows. It was cool being able to take her there.

B&B on the "L"

Becca & Britt chattin away as we ride the train to down town. Sorry this is
so blurry but trying to capture 2 teenage girls on camera when they don't
want to be is tricky!

Jordan Ecstatic

Jordan happy to be sitting on the Hertz bus.

Catching up

Jordan takes advantage of the layover to catch up on texting his buddies.

Layover in SLC

Britt takes advantage of our 3 hour layover to do some of her assigned
summer reading.

Baby Don't Ya Wanna Go...

Back to that same ol' place, sweet home Chicago!

OK, not technically my home, but I am going back AGAIN. This is the third time in the last 30 days and one of 5 trips to the Windy City between July and the end of October this year. This trip, though, should be the best one of all as my kids are coming along and we are just hanging out together for the next week visiting family. I have been looking forward to this trip for a while and it is finally here. So, as the Blues Brothers said leaving Milwaukee to head back to Chi-town,

"We have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark out and were wearing sunglasses." "Hit it!"

Paris at Dusk

Well, actually it is more like 2:00 in the morning. Just a little trick
they do for the gamblers. Make them lose track of time by creating a dusk
atmosphere and they'll keep on rollin the dice!

Finally Paris I Can Appreciate

Not being a big fan of the original, I actually found this desert version
to be ok!

Bellagio Light Show

Oh yea, killer view!

Flexibility Pays!

So the only thing they had left at the hotel was smoking rooms. "We'll if
that is all you have then." And what do I get? An upgraded suite on the top
floor of Paris hotel overlooking th Eiffel Tower, the balloon, the strip
and the Bellagio water show! Damn! Best room I think I ever had in this
town. Certainly the best view! And what's good is that it doesn't smell
like a smoking room. I think I may just move in. Come to think of it, it is
cheaper than my house!!