Yesterday I signed up to participate in the March of Dimes Walk America event. This 10k walk is set up to raise money for the
March of Dimes. Their mission is:
To improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. We carry out this mission through research, community services, education and advocacy to save babies' lives. March of Dimes researchers, volunteers, educators, outreach workers and advocates work together to give all babies a fighting chance against the threats to their health: prematurity, birth defects, low birthweight.
Toward the end of last year I lost my nephew Samuel to complications from premature birth. I joined the March of Dimes effort in the hopes that I can do a small part to help researchers prevent complications from birth defects and premature birth. I have pledged to raise $500 dollars before the walk on April 29, 2007. If you would like to sponsor me in this walk you can make a donation at: http://www.walkamerica.org/HeathPort
Your generosity will go towards helping the March of Dimes save babies. I am dedicating my walk to Samuel.
One thing I have always thought was neat about the Chicago area are all the great bungalow style homes scattered throughout the city and some of the surrounding suburbs. I always thought that it would be cool to own of these places if I really wanted a house in the city. Granted they are smaller but they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, different color bricks, quaint little yards and typically have some neat older features inside. Since most of these homes are older and are not built anymore (as far as I know) they tend to have interesting layouts and a lot of unique features like original crown molding and other touches.
I came across this site awhile back for the
Chicago Bungalow Association. This group offers grants and other resources to all historic Chicago bungalow owners. This allows the city the ability to assist in keep a part of its history alive and help owners get these homes up to code for
efficiencies without compromising their historical aspects. They also assist in converting these homes into "green" status. This means that home meets certain criteria for being efficient and environmentally friendly. The site also offers tips and style guides for people who are rehabbing their bungalow. My guess is that you are only eligible for the grant assistance if your bungalow meets certain base line criteria.
Labels: Architecture, Chicago, History
New Shirt Thursday
Ok, so I just found out that I am going to have to take my lunch hour to go buy a new dress shirt for work. Apparently my old Columbia fleece has decided to deteriorate on me. After I got into work this morning one of my work buddies came by and happened to notice something on the back of my shirt. So, I went into the restroom to check it out and sure enough the back of one my favorite shirts had what looked like a lint like
substance all over it. It was about the same color as the inside of my fleece. Unfortunately it was stuck on pretty good and there was no way for me to clean it off, so I am going to run down to Macy's to get a new one. Fortunately, I don't have any meetings this morning so hopefully I can get through the morning without too many people noticing the huge stain. Oh well, I needed a new shirt anyway and this will give me a chance to get out in the warm air for awhile today. I just hope this one comes clean because it is one of my favorite shirts.
Bad Commute = Bad Day At Work
Warning - Lengthy Rant to Follow....
Ok, so I have determined that I can predict the sort of day I am going to have at work based
souly on how my morning commute goes with about 95% accuracy! For example, today everything was fine until I got on the Purple Line Express to head downtown to work from
Evanston. At first, the ride went fine but shortly into the trip this big dude, who apparently needs his seat and half of mine sits down next to me, squishing me up against the wall. I would have stood up but it is a relatively long ride and the train can get pretty packed the closer to the loop it gets so I decided to stick it out in my seat. In the mean time, Mr. No Personal Space, next to meet dozes off. Thankfully in the opposite direction. As the train heads south it begins to get into this pattern of stopping, then going 10 feet, and then stopping again off and on throughout the ride. All the while it is getting packed. Next about 3 people get on my car that are apparently heading out of town for about 10 weeks based on the amount of luggage they are dragging around and they plop down right around me. Once we were good and full we get stopped between stops and are told that there is a medical emergency at the stop directly in front of us and we had to wait until the paramedics showed up to help the person. So after about 20-25 minutes of sitting in a cramped train we finally start moving again. We eventually get to the loop and about one stop before mine I decide to stand up and get my
backpack situated. As I am doing this the conductor decides to slam on the breaks throwing me forward where I slam my shoulder into one of the hand rails! I final get off the train and get to work.
I was all settled in for a productive day and put the commute behind me when I get a bunch of frantic emails from my manager saying I need to start jumping on multiple calls regarding issues we are having. I pointed out that we have someone who is on call for that, only to find out that she is out sick today and that "I need to stop worrying about my own projects and start worrying about the company." Well, as you can guess, this got me in a real cheery mood, because anyone who knows me, knows I bust my butt to do the best job I can. I was just trying to make sure that we were following the process we set up, not try and get out of extra work. At any rate, I have had to
cancel all my meetings today to sit on a bunch of conference calls and listen to our support folks scratch their heads on what is going on with our systems.
Riveting, really.... So as you can see its been a wonderful day so far and it all started with the crappy ride in. I can only hope the commute home is smoother! Thank you
CTA!
Another Building In My Work Hood
So recently, there has been a ton of construction in the neighborhood where I earn my living. I work out of the 300 East Randolph building (See first picture). It has to be one of the best locations for an office building around. Our front yard is essentially Grant and
Millennium Parks with views of Lake Michigan. To top that off, we have the
Pritzker across Randolph from us where we can catch free performances during our lunch hour over the summer. Our building also has another unique feature, it was designed to expand upward over time. Similar to building
lego towers when were kids the
HCSC (
BlueCross BlueShield of IL) building was build in 1998 with the expectation that future growth would dictate that we add extra floors to the top of the building at a later date. Well, that date has come much sooner than anticipated thanks to recent growth and construction has begun on adding an addition 30 floors to our building. This building is the only one like it in Chicago and possibly North America! It should be interesting to see how this all comes together over the next 3 years considering they will be doing the work while we are working away at our desks! That's right no relocation during this process!
Now, back to my original point. Directly north of our building is a gigantic hole which was
originally a train yard then a golf course. Now the area is being developed into the new East Lake neighborhood complete with high rise condos, shopping, a school, park and
town homes. One of the buildings that they recent broke ground on is the Aqua (see picture 2). It will be interesting to see if this thing turns out as good as its picture!
Labels: Architecture, Chicago
I May Be Certifiable!
Ok, so I just spent the last couple of days in a training class for the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (
ITIL) foundations certification. I took the standardized test this morning to earn my certification. For those of you unfamiliar with
ITIL, it is a framework of
best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality
information technology (IT) services. It was developed about 10 years ago in Great Britain and is widely adopted throughout Europe. Being Americans, we have been stubborn in adopting this framework, especially since we didn't come up with it. The nature of the framework is very common sense if you have spent any time in an operations environment, but for some reason that didn't make the test any easier. Over the past couple of days I have spent time going through several practice test, passing each one with little problem. But when I got to the actual test, I right away noticed that the questions were much more vague and written in British "
English" which made things more confusing. Couple this with the fact that I usually bomb standardized tests and I am looking at a recipe for disaster. I am holding out hope that I passed and will not have to take it again. It will definitely be nice to have this certification since a lot of companies in the US are just starting to adopt it and will be looking for people who have experience with
ITIL. Definitely makes me more marketable! Well, I should know by Monday if I am certifiable or not. Stay tuned!
The Fordham Spire
So, one of the great things about living in Chicago is all the cool architecture, but lately there have been a lot of bland looking condo buildings going up in the downtown area that are kind of screwing up the city skyline. Its too bad that this "cookie-cutter" buildings are getting in the way of some of the more unique looking and historical buildings that make up this world class city skyline. There is one exception on the horizon. I have been keeping my eye on the progress of the new Fordham Spire. This building looks awesome. It is designed by Santiago Calatrava and is estimated to cost 1.2 billion dollars to build. The twisting design is inspired by local native american history in Chicago. It is intended to look like a plume of smoke, spiralling into the sky from a Native American campfire at the mouth of the Chicago River on Lake Michigan. Once completed it would be the tallest building in North America. Currently, they are still working through some local and government hang-ups before then can begin building. Many of the current residents in Streeterville, the neighborhood where the tower would be built are concerned about traffice congestion among other things. I really hope they are able to move forward with this building. It would definitely add to an already spectacular skyline!
Hello Again Bloggin World
Well, its been quite some time since I have been blogging, and lately I have been
itchin to get back and start writing again. For those of you who used to read this blog when I first started it you know that I mainly fired it up to have something for my brother, Luke to read while he was in Iraq. Once he got back in January of 2006 I stopped writing and haven't created another post until now.
I have been thinking about getting back into it for some time now but have just lacked the motivation/time to do it. I used to enjoy writing about random things in the past and had quite a following of loyal readers (thanks, mom and grandma) at that time. Well this is my attempt to start it up again. I make no guarantees on how often I will post, but I will try to put something out here at least once a week if not more. It should be fun and hopefully, I will get my old readers back including some more.
Again the topic will vary quite broadly and could range from sports to politics to random musings. Hopefully, enjoyable to someone. Please feel free to comment. Its always good to know that people are actually reading! But if you are one of those annoying advertisers trying to pose as a fellow
bloggers please do not post. I can assure you, my readers nor I are interested in your scams.
