Baby full speed ahead!

Another sign the baby is coming soon, for the first time, Mei Mei recieved a seat on the train today by someone who noticed she is pregnant!  We have also officially entered the begining of the 8th month, so only two months to go and the baby will be here!  In case anyone is wondering, Mei Mei and I will be moving into our new place mid november, and after that will be going on a baby supply buying binge to pick up our car seat, stroller, crib, diapers, etc etc.  Luckily Mei Mei's folks already sent us quite a large care package with baby clothing, bottles, a strap on baby carrier, and much more, which will definetly help us get started.

I'll send/post photographs off the new place once we have a chance to get moved in and do some basic decorating.

A fun Recipe

Here is a quick recipe i've discovered for a fun snack to cook.

Ingredients:
Mixed nuts (I prefer peanuts, cashews and almonds, but pretty much any type of nuts will do)
Egg whites
Sugar
Vanilla extract
Almond extract

The exact proportions don't seem to matter much, but I take the egg white and mix in enough sugar to create a liquidy paste, and then add the two extracts for flavor.  Next, add the nuts to the paste and mix, shake etc. until fully coated. next spread out the nuts on a coated flat pan (I use parchment paper).  Bake for approximately 10 minutes at 400 degrees (untill the sugar carmalizes).  Remove from the oven and allow the nuts to cool.  Remove from the pan and enjoy!

It seems to be a very forgiving recipe, so give it a shot and enjoy a great snack!

Two Cool Halloween Costumes

In the past I've come up with what I thought were some good Halloween costumes, but they don't quite stack up to these two!

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=transformers%20costume&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=hulk%20costume&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#

Chicago Olympics?

Today at noon (central time) the International Olympic Comittee will anounce the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic games.  I've been following the race closely for months now, and even had an inside look at the early development of Chicago's bid from my time at A. Epstein. 

Apparently the odds makers have it down as a close battle between Chicago and Rio De Janeiro.  I believe Chicago would do a fantastic job of hosting an Olympics and would help redefine what it means to host an event of this magnitude. 

In recent years, many host cities have spent tremendous amounts of money building massive facilities that become obsolete immedietly after the games are concluded.  These facilities are often built in one large, olympic campus that quickly turns into a ghost town.  Many cities have gone into considerable financial distress over these expenses (Montreal supposedly took something of 30 years to pay off the debt acquired from hosting their games)

Chicago's proposal for the games is both to integrate the games into the city by hosting events all around the city and near by suburbs, and to utilize as much existing infrastructure as reasonable possible.  Existing facilities such as Soldier Field (the newly renovated stadium where the Chicago Bears play), The United Center (Home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks) and McCormick Place (Chicago's massive convention center complex) will all play key rolls in the games.  The largest piece of new construction will be a new stadium in Washington park that will temporarily hold up 80 or 90,000 people for the games, but later be scaled down to a modest 7,000 person perminent facility. These ideas should make the games substantially less expensive for Chicago to host, and create a road map for other medium sized cities to host the games in the future.

Beyond redefining how a city should approach the games, the Olympics would be a wonderful opportunity for the world to come and see the beautiful city of Chicago.  Chicago would do a great job at hosting the Olympics, and I hope we are given the chance!

3rd Trimester Time

Mei Mei and I have officially entered the 3rd or "money" trimester of the pregnancy. So far so good. I'm constantly impressed with how well Mei Mei has made it through the process so far. We've actually managed to get to the gym on a fairly regular basis, which I think is helping both of us out. Sometimes I have to ease Mei Mei back and remind her to take it easy, but I do think the nice light workouts are helping her with the back pain she experienced at the begining of the pregnancy. I can only imagine that new pains will come as the baby continues to grow. Currently the baby is listed as the size of very large cucumber according to our baby tracker in What to Expect when you are Expecting. I really wish they would choose size descriptors that weren't things that constantly vary in size, but so far we have only gotten fruits and vegetables. It has been fun watching the baby grow from a mustard seed to a grape to a prune to a plum to a peach to an orange and eventually on to a cucumber. Apparently the baby went from being extremely wrinkly, to nearly perfectly round to its current cylindrical shape. Hopefully, in the end it will come out baby shaped and not watermellon shaped.

In other news. Mei Mei and I very close to getting our new place. We still have some legal formalities, but if there are no hiccups, we'll be able close the deal and move in early November! We are both excited about the prospect of having our own town house, with a small private garden/patio space and garage (great for storing our bikes and doing "project"). We'll only be a couple blocks from our current place, so we will still get to enjoy the neighborhood we've come to know and love.

Streets and Sanitation

I’ve recently been made aware that the City of Chicago provides regular garbage pick up only for low rise residential buildings (which I believed are defined as 4 or less units). All larger buildings, such as most townhome developments as well as mid and high rise buildings, are required to contract out and pay for their garbage pick up through private companies. It occurs to me that this is counter to principles of urban living. Presumably, a high rise building will collect its occupant’s garbage at an accessible, centralized location, making the per capita effort to pick up and remove the waste less than the per capita cost to stop at individual single family and small condominium buildings. Currently, higher density living residents are paying taxes that fund garbage pick up for low density buildings, while they are excluded from this service. As such, the system penalizes those residents living in higher density developments, and rewards those living in the lowest density developments.

Anyhow, I’m not sure what I can do with that information. I’ve not heard anyone raise this issue before, it only occurred to me after I learned that the new townhome I’m looking to purchase is part of an association that has to pay for garbage removal. I’m going to try to find out more information about the history of this situation, and how it came to be, though I don’t really know where to begin. Perhaps I can become the new crusader for garbage equity in Chicago!

EDIT:

A reader informed me that the city does offer a "scavenger's rebate" which should atleast partially rebate the cost of the service. This is good news. However, from a city planning perspective, the easiest buildings to collect from are high rise buildings, and more generally, I think the city should be encouraging the more dense forms of development.

Los Angeles to Tokyo in only 35 Day, 2 Hours

I came across this quirk in Google Maps earlier today. Apparently if you ask for driving directions from Los Angeles to To Tokyo, it reccomends to legs of Kayaking, one from LA to Hawaii (2756 miles) and another from Hawaii to Tokyo (3879 Miles). Going in reverse, from Tokyo to LA, they actually reccomend doing it all in one big stint of 6243 Miles, skipping Hawaii.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Los+Angeles&daddr=Tokyo&geocode=&hl=en&mra=ls&sll=34.885931,-169.277344&sspn=80.111975,178.066406&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=3

I'm not saying it wouldn't work, it just seems a little ambitious!