Crosswalks to Nowhere

Fall is on its way: the temperatures here in the Chicago suburbs have begun dipping below 70 degrees at night, and the humidity has been chased away, so it's perfect weather for a fire in the firepit.

Saturday night was a great evening: we sat outside drinking Old Style (just like college kids-- well, one of us fits the profile), grilling Hebrew Nationals, and cooking up Smores. By the time we got through all that, we were too full to make Jiffy Pop.

Next time. :-)

We stopped at the Berghoff Restaurant's Oktoberfest this evening before the Chicago Podcaster Meetup at the Apple Store.

It's great to know that even though the main restaurant is officially closed, they're keeping up with this autumn tradition. I remember going to this with my pals from the old O'Connor days.

The photo above was taken before the crowd really grew. There was a hair-metal cover band playing this evening, and it was a sight to see-- all those bedockered middle-aged guys singing "You Give Love a Bad Name."

Good times.

Emma and I were up in Deer Park this morning for the 10:00 am opening of the Apple Store.

We got there at about 9:35, and there were about 150 people in line already. By the time the doors opened, there were probably about 350 people queued up. (Emma took this photo.)

The store is a standard, smaller-format store-- about the size of the Old Orchard Apple Store.

The two notable things about this morning's event were the free t-shirts and the fact that I got to mess with an iPod Touch. The Touch is pretty cool (it's an iPhone without the phone) but it was a little slow to respond. And I couldn't get on the iTunes Store from the phone at all, probably because every WiFi device in the house was jamming the store's network.

On the way home, another interesting thing happened: we were heading south on Rand Road and passed underneath Route 53 when I saw this:

That's Sears Tower in the center of the photo, some 40 miles away. This sort of thing only happens on the clearest of clear days.

From there, it was off to Trader Joe's and then back home.

We spent Sunday on Tortuga, Liz and Bob's boat on the Fox River.

We launched at The Broken Oar, where the boat is docked, in Port Barrington (the town formerly known as Fox River Valley Gardens). We went south on the river to Fox River Grove, then back up north to lunch at Kief's Reef in McHenry.

It was a great way to spend one of the last nice, warm weekends of the year.