Little Bird of Mine

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing –
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears –
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown –
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast is a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine –
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They’re thine.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.

Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.
--Emily Dickinson

Frank Lloyd Wright House

Just a hop, skip, and a jump down the street from my apartment is an original house designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This plaque stands in front of the house and says:

"Emil Bach House

Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

1915

One of the last of Wright's small urban houses, the Bach House combines elements of the Prairie Style with a compact plan well suited for an interior lot. The inward orientation of the house ensures the privacy of its residents and reflects Wright's idea of the importance of family life.

Designated a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977 by the City Council of Chicago.

Michael A. Bilandic, Mayor

Commission on Chicago Architectural and Historical Landmarks"

While the house is cool and famous and all, my favorite part of it is actually the garden out front. Every spring, this garden blooms with HUNDREDS of absolutely gorgeous tulips. It's one of my favorite sights to see in Chicago. This evening Clara and I took a walk over to the house to snap a couple of photos so you could see it too.

Suck it, Winter.

It may be a rainy, dreary kind of day out today, but look at all the GREEN!

Chuck E. Cheese for Grown Ups

Last Saturday night, Cary had her 28th birthday party at Dave and Busters in downtown Chicago. If you've never been to this wonderland of food, drink, and games, imagine a utopia of air hockey, ski ball, coin drops, basketball throw, and random other video games, mixed with yummy alcoholic beverages. Good times were had. I successfully defended my Air Hockey Champion title by going undefeated throughout the night, had a really pretty (and tasty) drink called a "Snow Cone", and helped win Ann's 3-year-old son Owen a giant stuffed elephant (yes, you win tickets that you can trade in for things, just like the REAL Chuck E. Cheese!). Happy birthday to Cary, and thanks for letting me act like a kid again for the night. :)

Random Embarrassment

I was checking my credit card account the other day and noticed this random $18 charge. The description just said "Finance charge" and I didn't know what that meant, so I hurried myself over to the bank to check it out. I sat down with one of the bankers and explained the situation while she looked up my account. She then told me that the $18 charge was just the interest on my account. Now, when I hear the word "interest" I immediately become an optimist. Instead of thinking of the "negative" interest that comes with having a balance on your credit card, I think of having a savings account and any interest I should be accruing. So upon hearing said magical word, I did an immediate mental switch to the kind of interest I would earn, causing me to blurt out, "I PAY interest?!?" The banker gave me a very amused and condescending look that you might give to a small child who has just figured out that you have to untie your shoes before putting them on. I then went on to say, "You mean I'm not EARNING interest on this account??" She stared at me a little longer and then said "On your credit card?" which caused my mental synapses to instantly correct themselves and make me realize what I was saying. The best response I had at that point was, "Oh. Right." which I mumbled before walking my humiliated self back out the door.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

It was nearly 80 degrees outside today, folks. In this neck of the woods, we call those summer conditions. The first day of summer conditions in Chicago is always kinda goofy. People walk around with this happily confused look on their face as if to say, "Wait, you mean it's actually going to stop being winter? It's been so long that I thought it was kind of a permanent gig." Some people who have plain given up on ever being warm again in their lives still don coats and jackets. Those who held out hope all this time and actually checked the forcast are all too happy to wear shorts and tank tops. You walk outside and smell the air and it smells sweet and warm. Relief washes over you as you think, "Yes! We've finally finished this interminable race with the gods of snow and ice!" You take your dog for a walk when you get home, and there is a big bright rainbow over a startlingly aqua-marine lake. The perfect end to a day of perfect weather.

Wine Night

For nearly two-and-a-half years now, a small group of friends and I have had a monthly gathering that we've affectionately termed "Wine Night." Every month someone from the group volunteers to "host" for that month, and either chooses a cool spot in the city or has the group over to her apartment for drinks and good company. While it initially started out with about six of us, Wine Night has grown to a regular group of nearly ten people which is awesome. Each of us invite other good friends to the monthly gathering when it's our turn to host, and as time has gone on, those people have started coming during other hostess's months as well. That's how we've gotten Catana, Cary, Lisa, and Mandy in on the fun. I don't think I'd really even know Catana, Lisa, or Mandy if it hadn't been for their regular Wine Night appearances. Cary was one of my own additions to the group. :)

Wine Night has taken us to fun places all over the city. We've done wine and cheese tastings, spa nights, swanky up-scale places, and smaller more intimate settings. One month, Katie and Courtney hosted a Santa Fe Wine Night at Katie's apartment after having returned from vacationing in that area. The monthly gathering occasionally morphs into a cocktail night, beer night, or even brunch (though we've only done that once), but we always eventually go back to our staple: good wine.

Whatever's going on in my life, I know I can always rely on having a good time with good friends at least once a month. We have yet to miss a month since we started. Cheers to that!

A Hand-some Image of Space

Check out this picture that NASA's Chandra Observatory captured recently. Together with the eye picture from a few years back, I think the universe is trying to build one of those tile games where you slide the pieces around. Clearly it's trying to make a human, and frankly, it's freaking me out a little bit.

Five Worst Words Ever.

1. Moist
2. Panties
3. Slacks
4. Bling
5. Ladies (unless you're at a nursing home)

Wow.

I just finished watching last week's "American Idol" (I'm always a few days behind) and this performance gave me goosebumps. I now have a clear favorite to win it all, Adam Lambert, which is interesting because at the beginning I didn't like him at all. He's been growing on me every week for about the past month, and this one put him over the top. (Apologies for the quality of the video--someone clearly video recorded their TV screen...)



Here's the studio-recorded version, which is the full song and has much better sound quality:

Pirates!

So I know this isn't supposed to be funny, and it's certainly very serious for the family of the captain being held hostage, but part of me feels like our world has somehow collided with that of Peter Pan.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30145156/

Not a Day Over 29!

It's a wonderful day to be 29! I took the day off work (my gift to myself), and started off with a bang by sleeping until 10:30. I only got up because I knew I had to leave at 11:30 to meet Jessie for lunch, but I made up for it later...

I took Clara outside and we were greeted with absolutely gorgeous weather. It was so nice that I didn't even have to wear a coat for the first time all year. Clara was a very happy girl.

Jessie and I went to lunch at a yummy little sushi place in Evanston called Dozika, where I got this cool Asian soda that is really supposed to be for kids (but who are we kidding?). It has a marble that is lodged in the blue part at the top, and you use that little green piece to push the marble down in order to open the soda. The marble then rolls around in the middle of the bottle, which I'm sure has thoroughly frustrated many a child who has wanted to get it out to play with it.

Next, we ventured across the street to the pet store where you can play with the puppies for sale (one of my all-time favorite activities). The blonde puppy was extremely naughty and kept trying to eat Jessie's sweater, but we had a great time seeing their sweet little faces and holding them up for pictures.

We each happened to pick the puppy that matched our outfit to pose with. Jessie ended up with the naughty sweater-eating puppy. ;)

I had the sweet little chocolate lab puppy who was in the middle of doing his best Superman impression when this photo was snapped.

I came home and proceeded to take a four hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. Tara gave me a card that says "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you've learned how to live." That card was meant to be mine. I SO know how to live.

I capped off the day by going out to dinner with friends at Cafe Iberico, a Spanish tapas place downtown. The food was great, and the company was better. Thanks so much to everyone who helped me celebrate my birthday this year, whether by going out with me, calling, sending a card, or messaging me on Facebook. I love you all and I can't wait to see what this next year has in store. Happy birthday to me! :)

Fooled!

Wow, they got me, and they got me good. I'm talking about Gmail, folks. And by the way, happy April Fools Day.

I went to check my e-mail this morning and was greeted with an offer to set up Gmail "autopilot." At first I ignored it, thinking, geez, too many technological gadgets. I can't take it anymore. Around my 57th time checking my e-mail today, however, I started wondering what this autopilot thing was really all about. This is what the log-in page for Gmail said:

"Email will never be a thing of the past, but actually reading and writing messages is about to be. Gmail Autopilot automatically manages your inbox better than you can, with zero effort from you. Learn more »

Keep in touch
Brand-new CADIE technology [which, according to the website, stands for "Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity"--sound official to me] enables Autopilot to scan every one of your incoming messages and automatically send the perfect reply.

Manage relationships
Impress everyone with your prompt and insightful responses to everything from urgent notes from your boss to cute messages from your significant other.

Match your style
Autopilot calibrates for tone, typos and preferred punctuation. It's just like you, but automated."

HUH?

So I clicked on "Learn more" and got the following FAQs:

"Does Autopilot work for Gmail chat too?
Yes. Chat was actually simpler to build, given the natural language headway made by Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA [A computer program that reads scripts, according to Wikipedia--ok, still sounds legit]. While many claim ELIZA oft times passed the Turing test, Gmail Autopilot passes with 99.9% accuracy due to the inclusion of human-like qualities such as compassion and wisdom and CADIE's related ability to calibrate to match your chat style.

What happens if a sender and recipient both have Autopilot on?
Two Gmail accounts can happily converse with each other for up to three messages each. Beyond that, our experiments have shown a significant decline in the quality ranking of Autopilot's responses and further messages may commit you to dinner parties or baby namings in which you have no interest."

Wait a minute. So my computer is just going to reply to messages people send me and I won't even know about it? What will it say? What if it says something totally inappropriate? And even more perplexing, it will CHAT for me? So if Tara happens to IM me during the day and I'm away from my desk, my email will just chat with her and all the while she'll think it's me? And what on earth am "I" saying to her?! The more I learned, the more appalled I was. Yes, technology has already taken over our lives, but come on. This is wrong on so many levels.

I was starting to get all worked up, so I called over my cube to my friend Brooke and said "Hey, have you heard of this new Gmail autopilot thing?" Negative. As she was checking out her own Gmail homepage, I decided to see what else I could find out about this turn of events, namely if other people were as astonished (and not in a positive way) as I was. I typed "Gmail autopilot" into the Google search bar and lo and behold, the following three articles were the first to pop up:

"Google's April Fool's Prank Continues with CADIE"
"Internet Hoaxes Launched for April Fool's Gags"
"Google Mail Autopilot Unveiled For All The Fools"

Oh. Damn.

I have to say, kudos to you, Google. You've done it again with your making me want to work for a company that would do something as cool as pull an April Fool's Day prank on the whole world and not have the higher ups deem it "unprofessional." I guess not everyone in the corporate world sucks after all. :)