James’s Blog

Jim alerted me to this Tribune article about little-known spots in Chinatown. The summary:

• Alleged late night (after 10pm) cheap eats: Triple Crown, Mountain View and Happy Chef.
• The article goes into a deep discussion about Saint’s Alp, but everybody who knows me knows about that place already.
• Sunday Cafe, located at the basement of Three Happiness Restaurant, has karaoke. Private room is $25 an hour.
• Q-Spot is the place to play some pool. $6 for half an hour.

This reminds me that I hear there’s a vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown, but a quick search only turned up this place called Asian Cafe, which doesn’t have any other reviews anywhere. It’s time to do some legwork.

What’s with the theme of three? Someone ought to open a restaurant in Chinatown and name it Ménage à Trois. Three Happiness indeed.

This New York Times article was the impetus for me to submit photos to various online stock photography sites. I got rejected at Shutterstock, and learned that they really care about the noise level in the photos. Since you can’t reapply at Shutterstock for another 30 days, I reapplied at iStockPhoto, and a few of the pictures have been accepted so far. Here is my portfolio.

It’s a rare event for me to find shoes that fit my small, slightly wide feet. So I was very happy to find this pair of Merrell Landpro Ultra-Sport at Nordstrom, while out on an impomptu shopping spree with Carson, who shall henceforth be considered my good luck charm of shoe shopping.

They were on sale, too! The price was about $73 with tax, saving me about $30 from the usual price.

That pesky wisdom tooth that caused so much grievance in the last year or so was taken out today. The operation, once it got going, lasted only 2 or 3 minutes. The doc injected some numbing chemical into the gum, and suddenly there were lots of terrible looking instruments near my face, evoking some vaguely traumatic childhood memory (or maybe it was just from a movie). Then it was over before I realized. The whole thing was surprisingly painless, but now I’m in a dull pain, which I hope will not get much worse.

Come to think of it, it’s been quite a few years since one of my teeth came out of its place, and that had always been a pretty exciting event. Here’s the culprit.

It’s April 11 and we had a snow storm. So this is now officially a bad winter. It had the latest snow (April 11) and the coldest temperatures (a high of 2° F during the Superbowl) I’ve exprienced since I moved to the Midwest in ‘99.

I exited the building this morning to find Irving Park deserted. The police had cordoned off the section of Irving Park between Pine Grove and Lakeshore because of falling ice from Park Place. I realized this when I heard a big thwap well behind me; I looked back as a few guys giggled and darted into the building. I thought, great, just let me make it to the bus stop alive. This closure was mentioned in today’s CTA press release:

Several bus routes…had to be rerouted in both directions due to falling ice from a building on Irving Park and Pine Grove.

That’s us! Hardcore highrise living in Chicago. If only I could stay in the highrise until winter goes away.

I’m a little weary of this weekend’s forecast, with multiple days of highs in the single digits.

I couldn’t remember if there were ever days with highs in the single digits when I lived in Michigan. I went to NOAA’s Ann Arbor page to check how they’re faring with this cold spell, and found this amusing tech glitch.

Tomorrow morning I say goodbye to Lansing, and begin a new chapter in the city of Chicago. It will be the first time in my adulthood that I live in a major city. Let’s see what happens.