So back in September, I took my new girl on vacation to Door County, WI. Doesn't sound like much, but a very quiet place, with lots of small towns, unique shopping, local art, coast line and not overtaken with urban sprawl.

It was nice to get away without computers and especially without phones (I'm on the phone 8-9 hours a day and I long for my time away from it).

If anyone is interested in details I might post more, but thought I'd at least get some pictures up:

Everyone knows Hello Kitty. Sweet, simplistically drawn kitten that has adorned many a girls rooms for several decades.

But wait... just how innocent is she? All these years, tramping around with he friends and still playing the sweet young thing? Yeah right! And I have proof that not only is she gasp sleeping around... but that her indiscretions have now infected her friends as well. Yes, Hello Kitty has crabs! See proof here: click me.

It all started one morning in a game that I help moderate. Several friends and I were talking about how any thing can be found on the web, no matter how weird or sick. And then one of them randomly made up a uh... very questionable site and sure enough it existed. We have a quick key for any link posted. Press F2 and it automatically opens the last link displayed. Another friend of mine did not want his F2 to link to the questionalbe site and so posted a Hello Kitty link instead.

I don't know why I was in such a mischievious mood. But I do know that about 10 minutes later I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. That poor Shelby was forced to come to the room, see what I had done and wonder if she had made the right decision to move in with me. For I had just manipulated a nice serene beach scene proof of Hello Kitty having crabs and giving it to her friends.

I tried using the infallable logic I plundered from Alice in Wonderland: Start at the beginning and when you get to the end stop!   But what is the beginning?  Far too much for too long to summarize quickly.  So I'll just skip the lead up.

Shelby moved in.  And this is a VERY good thing.

First of all, she puts up with me and for those that know me, this is not easy to do.  Especially hour after hour.  Day after day.  Month after month.  Well, you get the idea of how painful that could be.

But she is here!!  Or rather has been here a while now (a few months).  And I must say, we are meant for each other.  Ok, well maybe she is meant for better things - I'll give you that.  But for me, she is perfect.  I truly don't remember ever laughing and having such a good time with anybody before.

And she encourages me!  If I was an artist, she'd be a muse.  But I'm not.  I'm just full of various bad jokes and random, silly behaviour.  But she still encourages it and laughs and looks at me as if I've lost my mind (which I have).

And she cooks!  It's amazing to be able to get away from frozen dinners for a change and have real food.

And for those of you who want details, she's about so tall, soft in all the right places.  Very lady like with long hair.  Right number of fingers and toes and usually by my side

First suggestion: Pizza and Portland

I visited Portland this past week.  Was there for some training related to work.  Unfortunately training rarely offers a chance to explore new places. So while I got accustomed to a hotel room and the class room, I had little chance to get to know the Portland so many people were telling me about the week prior to the class.

What I saw though was impressive.  A beautiful and green city.  Virtually no vandelism along major highways.  Architecture to be proud of.  River and streams lacing the city.  And rolling hills that make driving relaxing and not a chore.  Would definately like to get to know Portland better at another time.

As far as pizza goes, I can do a Meat Lovers... but I love Sausage and Mushroom and Extra Cheese!!

I get a few email / messages asking me to update this blog more often.  I live my life.  Everything flows together and is part of everything else.  Picking out a single moment is not my speciality.

So it's time to make this interactive... want more posts?  Then ask me to post about something.  Ask a question.  Suggest a topic.  ghrae@ghrae.com.  Get those emails coming!

This past Christmas I brought some Chocolate Chip cookies up north to my parents house.  They were great, but I got criticisms because they didn't look like my dads cookies.  We both followed the recipes and well... I didn't give a shit about it.  I only bake once a year and I still thought mine tasted great.

But recently Shelby made some cookies, and to my chagrin, they looked just like my dads.  I had to ask what she did and what I didn't do.  It seems that Baking Soda and Baking Powder are two different things.  I still don't fully understand the difference.

But before you laugh, know that my cookies were fluffier and thicker than theirs!  And didn't have a tendency to burn slightly at the edges.

Greg and his wife Marcia from work asked Shelby and I to go get pizza with them.  In Chicago.  I really don't care much for the drive or the big city, but it was a chance to get out and for Shelby to meet people other than me (though I'm sure in her world I'm the only one that exists - a belief that my ego keeps in tact).

Greg drove us all down to Connie's, just outside China Town.  First of all, it was nice to have a resturant that remembered what atmosphere is.  Multi level, outside seating, local flavor everywhere.  Not just 4 walls with tables pressed too closely together.  And the food was really good - if you get a chance, try it out!

This was followed by a quick tour of China Town - probably would be a nice stop one day to just stroll through and check out all the shops.  Then on to down town and the Magnificent Mile (lake shore area with lots of shops and luxurious hotels).  Quite impressive!  Other parts of Chicago are typical big city, crappy buildings and too much traffic.  But downtown was old city done right.  Lots of historical architecture, parks, shopping, etc.  I had really only seen the highways up to this point so I was really impressed.

We then decided to stop at Navy Pier and walk along the pier.  Again, it was great.  Weather was beautiful and the slight breeze off the water made it great.  Another great place to visit when I have more time.

I'm not going to move to the big city or anything, but I an now more inclined to visit Chicago - just have to learn how to get around down there.

The company was great.  Dinner and the tour were unexpected and fun.  Definately something we'll have to do again with them

Weather is to an area as personality is to a person, unique.  When I lived in Florida, I remember amazing thunder storms that would light up the skies for hours and humidity during the summer so thick you could hardly breathe only to be made worse by daily storms that you could set your watch by.  Houston showed me long, dry, hot summers, non-existant winters and flash flooding.

And now North West Indiana... -20F winter temperatures.  Spring that doesn't start until May.  And storms that come out of nowhere and are gone so quickly you wonder if you hadn't imagined it.

But you haven't.  There's proof as you drive home from work only to be delayed 20 minutes because the traffic light is out at a highway interchange.  There's proof as you get home to a place without power and a wet kitchen floor from a water leak in the door.  There's proof when you head to bed early because it's too dark to do anything without lights and find your self awake at 11pm because power was finally restored.

That's how I spent my night. Now, 2am in the morning, can't fall back to sleep, but know I need to with another long day of work ahead of me.

Just dropped Shelby off at the airport.

I've had my doubts whether anything would ever happen.  There's been so many delays, so many stumbling blocks, that... well...

But she arrived Friday evening.  The weekend was intense.  And fun.  And everything I wanted it to be.  Though... not nearly long enough.

One great find this weekend was a restaurant recommended by Erin & Marcia who I worth with.  It's called Pestos.  An Italian restaurant in Valparaiso.  I knew the area it was in but didn't remember a restaurant there.  And for good reason.  The place looks like it's run down.  A non-descript block of a building with a parking lot littered with pot holes.

Once inside, you'll find a waiting area far too small to be comfortable.  But the place is packed.  Our wait was 20 minutes because they had 3 parties in attendance.  But hey, the place was recommended, right?

Can we have a booth?  Well... no.  There are only 2 booths in the place.  Did I want to sit in the bar?  Are you serious?  At an Italian restaurant?  So that leaves a large room, split level area for eating.  Ok, whatever, just sit us, I'm trying to impress a girl.

Atmosphere?  *shrugs*  No wonder I never noticed this place.

But then the food.  I ordered the Seafood Alfredo.  Normally I would have been all over the Lasagna, but hey, live a little, try something different.  And was I ever glad I did.  The very first bite of a piece of shrimp in alfredo sauce had me wide eyed and glad I didn't walk out after finding out about the wait.  This is a place you bring your friends when they come to visit.  To show off that you may live in a small town that isn't on most maps... but that doesn't mean you're isolated from the good things in life.

Oh, and more about Shelby?  Well... somethings are better left for private.

For the last week, I've taken time off of some my other ventures to try a new project.

It was to create a class... a integrated group of functions to created tables for the web that can sort themselves.  As well as some other minor features.

The main thing was creating a "class".  I've never done it before so learning the syntax and some of the rules took a while, but on the whole it has been working very nicely. In fact, it went so nicely that I had a working version in two days.

Since then I've been tweaking and adding minor features as I integrate it into some existing web pages.  Once fully done, it should be quite the handy tool.

The side benifit is that it is allowing me to clean up some web pages that I've been meaning to do for a while.

The only down side is once I get it working smoothly, I'll have to document it so others can use it.