Crosswalks to Nowhere

This past weekend my daughter Becca turned 18. "Impossible," I say-- it was just a few weeks ago that I brought her home in a carrier that I could hold in one hand.

On Sunday, that same kid ate her fill of bacon-wrapped filet mignon, garlic sirloin, and and a bunch of delicious stuff from the salad bar at Texas de Brazil in Schaumburg. Lisa and I each enjoyed a lovely caipirinha with our meal.

We also ran into an old friend: Nick, the former owner of CNA Snack Shop in Arlington Heights is one of the managers at Texas de Brazil. We didn't recognize him with his perfectly-pressed suit: we we used to seeing him behind the grill.

A great way to wrap up a two-birthday week!

Today is my birthday. I won't go into numbers.

Lisa made this wonderful Tres Leches cake for me, and she and the kids got me some great presents, of which you'll see more here in the very near future.

We also tried the new Asian place in town, Red Lantern which was very good. You'll be hearing more about that place soon, too.

That's it for now. Time to enjoy and reflect.

Valentine's Day dinner was my doing this year. I made Chicken Parmesan (a modified version of the too-complicated Cook's Illustrated version) and this awesome dessert: Flourless Chocolate Cake. I got this recipe from Les Nomades, a wonderful restaurant in Chicago that we reviewed on an episode of our Cheap Date podcast.

What you see above are some of the raw ingredients for the cake. Five full-sized Lindt 70% Cocoa bars made the foundation for this dessert. Read on for the recipe and more photos.

Continue reading "Valentine's Cake" »

Here are some photos taken around town this evening.

Clark ponders a February afternoon.

I took the photo above sometime in 1983-- probably in the Spring. This is a view looking north on Halsted around Jackson Blvd.

A couple interesting points about this shot: the Greek Islands restaurant had just moved to their new location at Halsted and Adams, and they were in the process of painting a new mural on their building and water tower. There was previously a mural for a Danny Boy / Texaco station (see here for an interesting article about Dan Terzakis, the Danny Boy mogul) on the wall, so the interim message turned out kind of funny.

That mural and water tower weren't touched again until the past couple of years, when they sandblasted the Greek Islands mural. The water tower still has the 1983 paint job.

Here's a view of (almost) the same spot in January 2010:

It's interesting to see the changes that took place in 25-plus years: the streetlamps are upgraded; there are trees on the sidewalks; the transient hotels (the "New Jackson" is on the right) are gone, as is the Currency Exchange. Roditys Restaurant, on the left side of the street, is still there and doing grand business.

Some technical notes: the original photo was shot with a Pentax K1000 on Tri-X film. I was a student at UIC at the time, and I developed and printed this photo myself. I scanned the print for this blog entry. The 2010 shot was taken with my Canon PowerShot A720IS digital camera.

Here's another photo from my archives.

This is an abandoned Shell gas station that was somewhere near the Wisconsin Dells. I wish I had put more of the building in the photo, but as I recall it had almost entirely collapsed.

I took this photo one morning in August, 1983 with a Pentax K1000 and Kodacolor VR (probably 200 ASA) film. This was scanned from the original print.

On a related note, I sent over 2000 images (color photo negatives and slides, as well as some black and white negatives) to be scanned at ScanCafe.com. Some of these go back as far as 1976. Within the next couple of months you can expect to see those, including a cleaned-up version of this shot.

31 years ago a snowstorm began in Chicago. It ended three days later, and by that time 21 inches of snow had fallen. And this was on top of the 7 to 10 inches that were already on the ground from a storm on New Year's Eve.

I was in high school at the time, and that's my red 1974 VW Super Beetle under the white blanket. While VWs weren't the best cold-weather cars (mostly due to their lack of heat), I will say that I was able to crawl through the streets while friends of mine in their rear-wheel drive cars cut donuts in the snow.

These photos were shot between January 12-14 1979 and give an idea of just how much we had to deal with.

This is one of my favorites: my sister Marybeth looking eye-level at our dog, Nicky. Nicky was "playing in the yard."

So far, Chicago's had a cold winter with a fair amount of snow, but I hope these photos will help the complainers keep perspective.

I was watching an old episode of Northern Exposure and discovered this scene of Shelly talking with her as-yet unborn daughter.

Fans of The Big Bang Theory on CBS will recognize the little girl as Kaley Cuoco, "Penny" on the show.

Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

I don't make New Year's Resolutions.

I realize that many people use the end of the year as their reflect-and-recharge period, where they review the previous year and determine what changes they want to make in the following year. That's good, and I wish those people all the power in the world to make it happen.

That said, I think there are many more people who dive headlong into the excesses of the holiday season-- some starting as far back as Halloween-- and pull all the stops and overindulge for the next several weeks, using the excuse that their New Year's Resolution will be to go to the gym every night, get on Weight Watchers, and only eat Lean Cuisines.

And in many cases, that's exactly what these people do, and the stores and health clubs love it. Walk into any store the day after Christmas and you'll see aisles of SlimFast shakes, Alli (if they even sell that stuff any more), and tons of As-Seen-On-TV exercise devices. I have to adjust my workout schedule this time of year because my gym is always packed right after January 1.

Then, predictably, we start to approach Spring Break time and the healthy displays at the stores go away and the crowds at the health club start to dissipate. And I'm able to get a bike in cycling class 5 minutes before it starts rather than having to get there an hour early. After April 1, we're guaranteed to be back to business-as-usual.

The turning of the calendar page is as good a time as any to make a change, but I believe that if a change needs to be made in my life I should make it as soon as possible once it's identified. Life certainly doesn't care what page is showing on your calendar, so why use that to determine when you want to improve something in your life? When I think back on all the major changes I've made in my life over the years, none of them were based on the calendar (and by extension, none of them were New Year's Resolutions): changing jobs, changing relationships, changing my approach to what and how I eat and drink, how often I exercise: every single one of these significant lifestyle changes came about when I decided it was time to do it.

Lisa and I recently completed an exercise where we cleared out every storage space in the house and got rid of a whole bunch of unused things. This wasn't a "2010" thing-- it was a "we've got the time to do it now, so let's do it" thing.

So as we approach 2010, I recommend you resolve just one thing: to recognize a need for change in your life and to do it without waiting for the calendar to turn over.

Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve, and here's to kicking off 2010 as a great year!