GrubHub Brings Meal Delivery to Your Keyboard
About a week ago, Kelly and I were trying to figure out what to do about dinner. It was a week night and we both had really long stressful days at work and just weren't in the mood to fix anything. The weather outside was the
usually winter/spring mix in
Chicagoland. You know the kind not cold enough to snow but not warm enough for the rain to stay all the way liquid. We found ourselves trying to decide what was worse. Mustering up the energy to cook dinner or braving the nasty weather so someone else would cook for us. We decided on a compromise of having some poor delivery person brave the weather for us. During our decision making process I remembered advertisements I had seen on the 'L' for a new website called
GrubHub. So instead of trying to remember what places delivered I jumped on the computer and pulled up the site.
We were blown away from the get go. The site allows you to bring up a list of every restaurant that will deliver to your address, but it doesn't stop there! Once you type in your address you can sort by cuisine, delivery hours, distance from your address, or whether they have coupons available. The main page incorporates an interactive map that shows you the restaurants on your list and their relation to you. Once you have selected a restaurant, you can pull up an 'e' version of their menu and place your order online by selecting the items and amount of each that you want.
Did I mention that they make every attempt to be 'eco' friendly too? That's right, they allow you to select options that instruct the restaurant to not send napkin, plastic ware and other items that you don't need so they are not wasted and end up in a landfill, but they also purchase "carbon credits" with every order that is made in an attempt to offset the emissions that released into the atmosphere from the delivery vehicles at the participating restaurants. Carbon Credits are used toward green related activities like planting trees. The feature for excluding utensils needs some work because we selected it and the restaurant still sent those items along with our food, but that may have been user error on their part.
You can also, create your own account which gives you cool features like your own "menu drawer" where you can keep virtual copies of the menus you order from regularly. Furthermore, you can leave and read reviews on restaurants, which come in handy if its a place you have never used before.
It was a great experience and cool resource that I would recommend for anyone. The only drawback right now is that they only appear to operate in three metro areas at this time. Those areas are Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston, but if others have the same reaction we had to the site then its only a matter of time before it expands to other areas soon!
Labels: Business, entertainment, food
Dempster Gets It Done...Against Popular Belief
A few days ago, the Cubs got their first win of the season behind a solid starting pitching effort by Ryan
Dempster. What makes this story even more
interesting is that
Dempster, was the Cubs closer for the last 2 seasons. When he originally joined the Cubs, he was part of their starting rotation, but a glut of starters and a lack of a solid closer out of the bullpen caused the team to experiment with him at that position. He did well enough to hold down the spot and that is where he remained for 2 seasons.
During his time as a closer,
Dempster was solid and consistent, but for whatever reason, fans never warmed up to him at that position and would constantly criticize and hound him. I have actually met Ryan in person and I can say he is a very easy going, affable guy with a good sense of humor. These things probably helped him get through the times when fans were on him so much. Honestly, I believe many Cubs fans were taking their frustrations out on
Dempster purely because they did not know where to lay the blame on an underachieving team. So, over time he became the scape "goat."
After last season, the club decided to move
Dempster back out of the closer role and give him a crack at the starting rotation again. The thought was that if Kerry Wood and/or Carlos
Marmol continued to perform at such a high level they could easily take over that closer role. After being asked to compete for a starting role again
Dempster could have easily been frustrated by the constant shifting of his responsibility, especially knowing that a starting spot wasn't necessarily guaranteed. Also, taking into account, that he would need to recondition himself to be able pitch past one or two innings and be able to get six to seven in every fifth game.
Well once spring training came around, it was obvious that
Dempster was ready to go. He performed so well that he was named the starting third pitcher in the rotation early on in camp. He probably could have been the second pitcher behind Carlos
Zambrano, but that spot was being reserved for a lefty, which Ted Lilly filled. As anyone who watches baseball knows, someone who performs well in Spring Training could easily stink during the regular season and vice
versa, but
Dempster went out and gave a solid first performance.
The Cubs are now 4-3 after a typically sluggish start and so far the only solid starting pitching has come from Carlos and
Dempster. Ryan, pitches in his second game of the season on Wednesday so we will see if he can keep it up. My question is, will Cubs fans continue to hound him or see that we actually have a pretty good pitcher in this guy?
Labels: baseball, Cubs
Cubs Being the Cubs
Well, after 100 years of relative futility you think the Chicago Cubs would be coming out of the gates hungry to win and prove they can be a force to be
reckoned with in Major League Baseball. Instead they have come out and sputtered in their first 2 games against a key division rival.
Initial analysis would suggest that they are picking up where they left off last year with minimal run support for starting pitching and stranding runners throughout the game. On paper this team is built to dominate a weak
NL Central but in reality they just don't seem to live up to expectations, excluding a handful of players. If they don't start playing with some fire, fans will soon begin to think that this team just has no fire in their belly and are content going through the motions.
The average rabid Cubs fan does have to keep in mind that most of these players haven't suffered through the years of frustration that we have gone through following this team and may not understand when fans become pessimistic and upset. But the players also need to remember that they are out there putting a product on the field for the entertainment of the fans and one begins to wonder if they are giving it their all. I have no doubt that there are competitors on this team, but sometimes I wonder if they are out-weighed by those who are "just happy to be here."
I know the season just started, and believe it or not, I still think this team is going to pull it together, but it is tough to watch them struggle, yet again right at the beginning. I am considering putting together a separate blog for this year's Cubs team as a way to
celebrate and
commiserate the, no doubt, roller
coaster ride this team will be putting us through this year. I will let you know where to find it once I put it together.
Go Cubs Go
Labels: baseball, Cubs
Last year when I met Kelly, she started getting me into running. Anyone who really knows me probably just laughed, and rightfully so. It's not that I live an inactive lifestyle. Quite the contrary. I would much rather be outside, hiking, camping, fishing, walking around the neighborhood than sitting at home. Furthermore, I love to participate in all kinds of sports including basketball, football, bowling, soccer, etc. You name it and I have tried it or would be willing too. But, for some reason I never really got into running for the sake of running. I had a brief stint in track and field where I performed fairly well in the sprinting competitions, but never latched on to it like I did other sports.
Well, the year before I met Kelly I decided to sign up for the Chase Corporate Challenge here in the city. Mainly, because my company offered to pay half the entry fee if we signed up and wore a shirt with their logo on it. So I figured why not. I could use the exercise and it might be fun. Well, I ran/walked the entire 3.5 miles and really didn't enjoy it much. I had a terrible finish time and my joints were in a lot of pain. I then went the rest of the year without running another race.
Then, just before I met Kelly, my college buddy Dan asked me if I wanted to run in the Muddy Buddy with him later that year. I had heard of the race before and it sounded like fun so I agreed more for fun than for competition. Then a few weeks later I met Kelly. I told her about this race I was in and she suggested that I sign up for a serious of 5k races with her to make sure I got in shape enough to run my race with Dan. Well the first one we ran together was the Corporate Challenge and I did a ton better when I ran it with her. After that I tried a series of races and really began to enjoy them. They were all 5
k's (3 miles) and I never really thought I would do any longer than that, until this winter when Kelly convinced me to sign up for the
Shamrock Shuffle with her. It is an 8k (5 miles) race. I was a little concerned about the distance but she set up a training program for me that I was able to stick with for the most part, except for the few weeks that I had the flu. Well come race day I was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to run the whole thing and that I would hold Kelly back.
The race started out tough, with my legs and joints tightening up within the first mile or so. I told Kelly to go on without me because I wasn't sure how the pain was going to be. So, for the next mile I ran alone, but started to notice some of the pain go away, by 2.5 miles I had caught back up with Kelly again and we ran the next mile and half together and then somehow got split up while running through the water station. I went the next 3/4 of a mile by myself wondering where she was. Apparently, I had got ahead of her and didn't realize it. She caught up to me with about 1/4 a mile to go and we crossed the finish line together. Finishing the full 5 miles in about 50 minutes. We averaged about 10 minutes miles and ran the last mile the fastest at around 9.5 minutes. This was a great time considering I fully expected to have to walk parts of the race, but thanks to Kelly's support I ran the whole thing.
Next up the Race to Wrigley. Its a slightly shorter (5k) race, but should be fun because you finish the race by running through the
concourse at Wrigley Field. The
proceeds got to Cubs charities.
Labels: exercise, Running
