I have a birthday coming up. Just saying.

In anticipation of a lot of airport and plane time for the trip last weekend, I wanted to borrow a book to read. One of the books that I've heard is a "must read" for someone in my job is Daniel Goleman's "Ecological Intelligence". He's the guy who wrote "Emotional Intelligence" and I suspected this new book was just a search/replace of emotional for ecological.

I know that a lot of people in my office have read it, or at least skimmed it, and so I started asking around for a copy that I could borrow.

"Have you read Ecological Intelligence?"

"Yeah - a good read. You should check it out."

"Could I borrow it?"

"Oh. It's on my Kindle."

"Oh. I see. I don't have a Kindle. Hmm."

This happened several times just like that. Until:

"Have you read Ecological Intelligence?"

"Yeah - a good read. You should check it out."

"Could I borrow it?"

"Yes. It's on my Kindle. Let me get it for you."

"What? You're lending me your Kindle?"

"Yeah."

"Whoa - are you sure?"

"Yeah. Just give it back when you're done."

So I got to use a Kindle for the weekend and, I must admit, I am completely addicted. There are a few things I don't love - like you can't flip quickly through the pages to see how far to the end of the chapter or to the next neat graphic and you can't use your to do list as a bookmark. It also isn't as good a coaster on the coffee table. But all told, I think it is kind of a magic thing and I really like it. (Would it be awkward to admit that if I had one I think I would have a really hard time lending it out?)

Oh - and Ecological Intelligence is very much worth a quick read except that it is one of those books that makes you think about many scary things that would be much more comfortable not to think about. Even so - you should read it.

Un-giving up on the garden

The garden on my roof, also known as Rooty Rooftop, has been, how you say, a great learning experience. Let me bring you up to speed.

First, I built a garden on my roof from scratch:

Then I planted seeds in it. I had high hopes! I planted many glorious things like lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, cauliflower, chard, spinach, et cetera.

And lots of them grew!

And they grew and grew...sort of. You see, the roof is a very windy and miserable place in spite of getting lots of sun. The plants looked to be surviving, but they were paying a price: the spinach and chard were as thick as pennies and they had the texture of scrambled eggs when we tried cooking them up. Most of the other plants just looked generally traumatized all the time.

The wind howled relentlessly.

It wasn't long before everything had gone to seed or died.

It was sad and frustrating. I let it go wild for a while, stopped watering it, and then dug almost all of it up and sent it back to the compost heap.

I then proceeded to completely forget about it for a little while. Sometimes I'm not good with learning experiences.

But then one day I went up there to pick some of the sole survivor - cilantro, which had turned purple but was otherwise still sort of viable - and noticed something amazing: there were little tomatoes on the otherwise completely dead-looking tomato plants.
What a miracle!

So now I am un-giving up on the garden. I've started watering it again and I pulled out all the junk. Lettuce seems to be able to grow up there reasonably well up there so I planted a bunch and am now thinking about Rooty Rooftop as our own private, fresh - if limited selection - salad bar.

I'm learning.

Fan club

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in my office, minding my own business, when suddenly the ceiling fan in my office turned on and started spinning.

"I have a ceiling fan?" I thought to myself. I'm fairly sure this is new. It's very shiny.

I watched it for a moment. It was on. Fanning away. I sat there and looked around: I was alone in the office and no one was near the door. I stood up, walked to the door of my office and peered outside.

Nobody.

It had been a little stuffy in my office, so I just nodded at the fan, sat down and went back to work.

Time passed. I got chilly. It was time for the fan to be turned off. But how?

I decided to ask our new office manager Linda who started last Thursday and was camped out in the office next to me. Because, having been with us for one and a half days, she was clearly going to be the best person to ask for help. More importantly, she was the first person I came across upon venturing out from my office.

I had barely gotten five words out of my mouth when she burst out laughing. Apparently, much earlier in the day and all the way across the office in the supply room, she and Emily had found a homeless remote control and pressed all the buttons, joking about how they were probably opening and closing someone's garage door somewhere.

She went and got the remote and we tested it: sure enough, fan on, fan off, fan on, fan off.

Case closed.

Buy me some peanuts

When you're trying to think of something fun to do with your dad in Chicago, think about going to a Cubs game.

A few months before this trip, we got the idea that this would be a fun thing to do in spite of the fact that my dad is now actually a Sox fan. It was already sold out so we got tickets from an online ticket vendor for a price that I barely want to admit to paying for these seats. They, like our opera tickets, were squarely in the Wrigley Field death zone.

This is the post that we spent most of our time looking at and hoping there were no critical plays at second base.

It was very reassuring to watch it standing there keeping the roof up and, I'm sorry to say, also significantly more fun than watching the Cubs lose a shameful 11-2 to the Brewers.

One of the favorite rituals of attending a Cubs game with my father is after the game is over moving to new seats while everyone else is busy shuffling out and then sitting there are long as you can until they kick you out.

I was at a Cubs game the day before I was born - my parents and their friends used to sit out in the bleachers and have a good old time. Not sure if it was that game, or the many others that I've been to in my life since then, but Wrigley Field always kind of feels like home. But with more peanut shells on the floor.

Whatchu talkin about Willis Tower

On Friday, I did something that only I, the ~74,000 other people in line with me, and a few others will ever be able to do.

I looked straight down from the top of the Sears Tower.

Let me explain why this is so exceptional.

You see: the Sears Tower is about to change its name to the Willis Tower due to a change in ownership.

Before the name change, however, the tower has just this past week opened up a new tourist attraction which immediately got our attention. They've built these clear pods that stick out of the side of the building so that you can walk out into them and look straight down 1,300 feet to the street below.

You'll notice them in this photo just a little below the very top of the building. They look like little off-color growths:

And again here, you kind of want to ask your dermatologist to freeze them off.
They've done experiments with crawling infants to see if they will crawl off the edge of a table onto reinforced clear plastic to get to their mother.

The question with adults is not what it would take to lure them onto this ledge but what is the maximum price they would pay for the privilege to do so*.What I didn't think of until it was too late: I was wearing a skirt. Whoops!
Most people who venture out into these clear pods of near certain death will do so in the Willis Tower. We, and the thousands of others who went over this past weekend, will be the privileged few to have done so in the Sears Tower.

Also, we learned that the Sears-soon-to-be-Willis Tower is washed entirely by robots.

Afterward, in spite of having seen very clearly from the top of the tower that it was a scene of oppressive crowds and limited shade, we went to The Taste and stuffed our bellies with food.


*$15 if you want to wait 3-4 hours, $30 if you want the "Fast Pass" which whisks you to the top in a mere hour and a half.

Big day in Chi-town

We finally made it to Chicago last night after a long time at the airport and what felt like several days on the plane, though it was only four hours. When we finally got in, we disregarded the fact that it was 11pm and proceeded to have a normal dinner of Chicago-style pizza and salad. We finished around 2am.

It may be several days before I eat again. Or it might be sooner, as we are heading down to check out the Taste of Chicago now.

1000 words

Let me paint you a picture. It is a picture of me.

It is a picture of me riding my bike to work this morning.

In the picture, you'll notice that my backpack looks especially full. It is. It is full of meat*, buns, ketchup, mustard and mayo. It also contains my own packed lunch, and all of the items one might expect to find in a large purse.

You'll also notice that I have another bag hanging off my person. It's a yoga mat bag with two yoga mats and a set of yoga clothes all squeezed inside. It is oblong and hanging awkwardly sort of in front of my body so that my knees hit it each time they come up and around.

Upon continued examination, you will further observe that there are two Whole Foods paper shopping bags hanging from my bike, one from each handlebar. These paper bags contain approximately 20 pounds of local organic peaches and plums for my office. The effort it is taking to prevent these bags from swinging in the wind and smashing into my bike and wheel, crushing the tender fruit inside, is clearly written across my face.

If it were a video, you would see me careening wildly down the Embarcadero holding my breath and just trying not to fall. But it's just a picture. So you can't.


*Somehow the vegetarian drew the meat assignment. Go figure.