Traffic Analysis

CTA Eisenhower

We were down in the Oak Park Arts District (formerly Harrison Arts District) last weekend for a street festival. While Kelly was checking out some clothing shop, Julia and I walked around. She heard the sounds of the Blue line el in the background, and wanted to see the "Choo-choos."

We walked over to the embankment and Julia watched the choo-choos and brrrm-brrrms contentedly. I suspect that she shares my interest in transit policy and was imagining plans to upgrade the CTA blue line to decrease auto congestion.

Get'em When They're Young

Marketers and advertisers like to imprint brands on people at an early age. Children's mind are impressionable, and if you get them early you potentionally have a customer for life. If that's the case then Chipotle and Starbucks can chalk up a two year old girl as a loyal customer. We were driving down Lake street last night and as we passed Chipotle Julia said "Chicken!!!" One minute later we passed Starbucks and Julia exclaimed "Coffee!!!" Now we've been to that Chipotle regularly so maybe she recognized the location, but she's only been to that Starbucks once before. Plus she's recognized other Starbucks locations that she's never been inside. I guess this is why companies prize their logos.

Happy Feet

Kelly bought a DVD of the penguin movie Happy Feet recent. Julia just loves the movie and calls all the penguins "duckies."

Kelly and I have come to appreciate the movie too, and I especially like the Hispanic adelie penguins. I'm pretty impressed by the degree of realism that the movie, as it is fairly true to the life cycle of Emperor penguins as depicted in that other great penguin movie, March of the Penguins (well except for the speaking and tap dancing.)

Oh Crap, Recession Here We Come

New York Times - "Economy Lost 63,000 Jobs in February"

Looks like we're definitely sliding into recession. There will be plenty of pain and suffering all around.

But on the bright side, Apple announced some cool updates for the iphone. Too bad fewer people will be able to afford one. Luckily, for now Julia is blissfully unaware of the downturn in major economic indices. She's still doing her part to stimulate the economy.

"I'll take both!!!"

The Years are Short

While surfing the intertubes I came across this link (h/t Instapundit) at www.theyearsareshort.com.

It was so touching I wanted to go wake up my daughter and hold her tight. Despite my best efforts I'm becoming quite sentimental as I get older.

Baby Talk

Well, its been a long time since my last post. Having a little baby tends to get in the way of other less important things like blogs. It's hard to remember what life what like before she came to us. Kelly's actually be quite prolific in writing a baby-specific blog (littlemissjulia.blogspot.com), separate from this one. Because we're a bit paranoid, we've decided to password protect that one. If you're interested in reading it, send us an email.

I'm going to minimize the baby stories posted here, which will be a bit odd, since she's about 90% of what's going on in our lives right now, but hopefully I'll try harder to find other topics of interest

-Brian