Visits with Friends

As Aimee and I sit here, in the laziness of a Saturday afternoon, we’re thankful for the recent opportunities to visit with our friends, old and new.  Despite the fact that we’re both not feeling great but oh well. 

Last weekend Michael and Joanna came down from Chicago for a great visit. We hung out, had some delicious food, and enjoyed catching up.  We ate dinner Saturday night at Wisteria and enjoyed their “new Southern” cuisine which was followed by some game playing and wine.  Turns out (a) Joanna and I are particularly unremarkable at Scrabble and (b) exclaiming “Plum!” during Clue when discretely shown a picture of the Professor is not strategically sound.

In our first touristy outing, we went to the CNN Studio Tour.  It was pretty good actually though it felt somewhat ephemeral, like we were just scratching the surface the entire time. 

Michael and Joanna joined us at IHM for mass (it was nice to look up from the piano and see Michael in the choir, just like when Meg and Katie were here) and then we got to try a new Italian restaurant with the group: Nino’s on the Cheshire Bridge. 

On to some new friends… we hosted our neighbor Megan, her boyfriend and their dog Piper for wine and cheese on Friday night.  It was Crowley’s first “play date” and it’s nice to know some more people in our building.  Then this morning we had brunch at Rosebud with Katherine and her husband Beto from IHM. 

Lastly, a couple quick observations of a Chicagoan living in the South.  First, for all the complaining about Atlanta traffic, I grabbed these screenshots of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Chicago Tribune on the same day:

Second, while working from home last Friday after the snow storm, I happened to notice this industrious example of snow removal and had to video it. 

Southern Snow Removal

One more special thank you to Michael and Joanna for flying down here to be with us.  We loved it and look forward to future visits to Chicago and meeting more friends down here in Atlanta.

Six Months In: Blog Statistics

We are a little over halfway through our year in Atlanta and are really and truly enjoying this experience.  I hope that our blog has been indicative of that -- we’ve been happy to share some of those experiences with you.  But who are you?  Where do you come from?  And what browser do you use?  Below are some stats from our blog since July 1…

Starting with a chart of visits over time.  We routinely get 4-5 visits per day, except for the spikes you see which are when I e-mail the link or post it on Facebook.  In fact, facebook.com is the number one referring domain to our blog.

Clearly our “readership” is anchored in Atlanta, the Chicago area, and Michigan but we’re pretty well spread out in other places too.  If you live in a small city, you probably have your very own dot on the map!



Specifically, these are the top 20 cities in the US with Visits and other corresponding data points.  Pages/Visit measures how many pages you  click to in one discrete visit.  Given that it’s a blog, one page per visit is reasonable.  Higher than that means people are clicking on other links or specific posts.  Avg. Time on Site is interesting because you get a feel for whether people are checking often for updates or actually reading a page.  Bounce Rate should be pretty high as it’s the percentage of “singe-page” visits on the site.  However if Bounce Rate is 100% and Avg. Time on Site is 00:00:00…  Joliet… Megan? 

Today the US, tomorrow the globe!  We’ve had visits from United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Malaysia, Denmark, Netherlands, Israel, Germany, India.  However, as you’ll see later, not everyone who has landed on our blog got there intentionally (at least initially).

These are the Keywords that people have typed into Google (or other search engines), that resulted in (a) our blog being returned as a result and (b) the user clicking into our blog.  A couple of these are pretty interesting, particularly people looking for recipes for lamb ribs or searching for what I can only assume is the Bill Knapp’s Chicken Fricassee Recipe.  Also those searching for “easy fortune, happy life” probably were left unsatisfied with our posts.

This one surprised me a bit.  The median usage statistics in the US for Internet Explorer is around 46% and Firefox is a second at around 30%.  Evidently we have a disproportionately high number of Chrome users (visits from our apartment are removed from all of these calculations by the way).

I don’t always visit with my mobile device, but when I do, I use “______” [see below]. Keep reading my friends.  iPhone is the clear favorite here.

Special thanks to Google Analytics for their almost scary web tracking ability.  Expect another post like this in another 6 months or so.  Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Snowed in, in Atlanta

We’d been looking forward to witnessing the “city shutdown” that accompanies a dusting of snow here in Atlanta.  Well….   check.  After fighting a woman for the last gallon of milk left in the city, we are home in the warmth, safe and sound. 

So there was actually no altercation at the grocery store but a few things are interesting to note:

1. There really is a serious run on eggs, milk, and bread at the grocery stores.  It is not a joke.
2. They announce school closings 2+ days before the day in question.
3. School closings are always accompanied by “church closings” (not a pairing I’m used to hearing).
4. They really don’t have the infrastructure to handle snow removal or salting.  As a seasoned veteran of Northern winter driving, you really have to be on your game because roads just aren’t touched so in many cases the conditions are actually worse than I’m used to.

And to be fair, this isn’t a dusting.  As I’m sure most people have heard or read, this has been a significant “weather event”, amplified by persistent cold temperatures, sleet, and freezing rain.  Aimee, who works more days than the mailman, even benefitted from the Emory Clinic closing both Monday and Tuesday. On that note, USPS, UPS, FedEx, and MARTA buses are all out of service. Strange.

The extra time at home has meant extra time to do some cooking, staying up a bit later (to catch the National Championship game), and just hanging out.  We had a Pasta Night at Tommy’s house so Aimee made a batch of her homemade spaghetti sauce and some Chocolate Tiramisu. It’s fun to make all the espresso and necessary fillings.

 

I was thinking about Yolk in Chicago and decided to make some Banana Blue Crunch Cakes using whole wheat flour, and homemade toasted granola, all topped with some pure maple syrup from Montreal (thanks Daniela!). 

 

Our other cooking adventure was a first for us:  Lamb.  Beautiful French-cut chops from Trader Joe’s topped with olive oil and fresh thyme, rosemary and peppers.  We served it with scallion mashed potatoes and asparagus.

 

Unlike many Atlantans I’ve come across in the past couple days, Crowley is no stranger to the snow.  Born outside Minneapolis and raised in Chicago, she simply loves it.  Except when it’s frozen snow, topped with freezing rain and no place to walk without some degree of  discomfort.  So we broke out the booties!  Before you watch, I assure you she got quite used to them once we got outside and loved it!  Getting used to them initially however?  Not quite as graceful:

Crowley tries out her booties for the first time in a year!

Veni, Vidi, Visa

Which, roughly translated, means:  “I came to the restaurant all dressed up with Aimee for their New Year’s Eve Prix Fixe dinner, I saw the delicious courses and wine pairings as I consumed them, and I paid handsomely with my Chase Freedom Visa card”.  Seriously it was a really fantastic evening at Veni Vidi Vici.  We had four courses and went with the selected wine pairings for each one:  Antipasti with prosecco, Primi (orchietta with Italian sausage and rapini and porchetta with crisped artichokes) paired with a chianti, Secondi (trout and potatoes and beef tenderloin) paired with a deeper red for Aimee and a pinot grigio for me, and finally a Dolci course with moscato d’asti.  It was fun to dress up and celebrate the new year (and a Notre Dame bowl victory!).

On New Year’s Day we relaxed the whole day, aside from some much needed grocery shopping.  After watching the Michigan State Alabama game, we decided to do some cooking of our own.  Aimee made beef tenderloin and delicious potatoes.

I made chocolate chip cookies with my newly acquired pure Mexican vanilla extract (we’re not in Madagascar anymore Dorothy).

Inspired by my success with those, I moved on to freshly baked bread.  I use the double rise recipe in Better Homes but modified it slightly to made a cinnamon swirl variety as well.  Both turned out great!

Today I did a long overdue re-arranging of the furniture and received this little delight in the mail:  a returned Christmas card with some phonetic advice for my budding southern accent.

Happy New Year’s everyone!!!!

Merry Christmas, In Pictures

First we flew with Crowley (for essentially the first time*) on AirTran to Detroit.  What a difference between Southwest and AirTran, it’s hard to believe they’ll be co-operating soon.  I think we need a new designation for airlines:  “Low fare, high cost”.  We drove to Lansing and then to Munster the following morning to be with Aimee’s family.  The full complement of pictures is available here:  Christmas 2010 Photo Album.

Once in Munster, we opened gifts with Aimee’s parents and had lots of time to kick back and catch up a bit.

That evening, they graciously hosted the extended family for dinner and dessert so that we would get a chance to visit with everyone.  Megan drove in for a visit and a lovely lunch at Jalapenos: “The Hottest Mexican Restaurant in Schererville”.

  

 

We ventured back to Lansing in time for the traditional trip to Roma Bakery and Deli.  We were there for about 2 hours as we ordered some of their finest imported meats, cheeses, and homemade desserts:  salami (Genoa and Oldani), prosciutto, hot capicola, soppressata, and lots more. 

  

Also had a delicious lunch there and then homemade dinner before visiting with the Blundys and Sarah and Matt. I have no pictures of that but if I were to describe the scene…  “some old friends, catching up in the basement over wine and heavily fermented honey while Crowley cowers in the corner” … would about sum it up.  It was a nice visit!  Aimee worked on a scrumptious cherry pie the next morning and they turned out great!

 

Few trips to Lansing are complete without a trip to Georgio’s and Beggar’s Banquet in East Lansing.  We met up with Matt and Allison for brunch on Christmas Eve at Beggars.  They weren’t busy for we lingered over Bloody Marys and coffee and got to catch up for a while.

We celebrated the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord at St. Gerard, 6:30pm edition.  Aimee and I posed with [a very bored] Crowley in front of the stocking array and Christmas tree. 

When it comes to online tools, I’m a “Google” kind of guy for the most part (Gmail, Calendar, Documents, and of course Picasa).  However, Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 is refreshingly easy to use.  I’m not ready to convert just yet but I used their “Photo Fuse” tool to create the family picture below and was quite impressed.**

Overall we just had a great visit – food, family, friends, festivity, and a feline-like dog.

 

I hope everyone has a great year-end.  Aimee and I will be visiting Veni, Vidi, Vici for their Prix Fixe NYE dinner following mass at IHM. 

Coming soon to a blog near you:  I’ll take an in-depth look at analytics from our blog visitors, how often they visit, where they visit from, and more…

Footnotes:
* I flew with her from Minneapolis to Chicago when she was 8 weeks but I don’t really count it because neither of us really knew what was going on.
** Also, I’m using Windows Live Writer to create my posts now because the Blogger interface is just not flexible enough.

Getting ready for Christmas Vacation!

First, Crowley would like to share some Christmas photos of her.  As always, more are available in the Crowley Album on Picasa.

Second, Tonight is the Star In The East Christmas concert at IHM.  The concert is free and open to the public.  Aimee and Jeff will be singing my arrangement of “I Wonder as I Wander” for two voices, piano, and orchestra.  I’ll also be playing a Paul Tate arrangement of “Bring a Torch” for piano and flute, among a few others.  Hopefully I can get a recording to post.

Third, here is a video of Aimee and I decorating the Christmas Tree here.  I mixed in a recording of her singing “He Shall Feed His Flock” from Messiah.

Christmas Tree in Atlanta

Fourth, we leave for Michigan tomorrow!!!  We are flying with Crowley for basically the first time (she flew when I first got her but everything was so new at that point…).  We will be visiting with family in Lansing and Munster, most of whom we haven’t seen since June.  Also looking forward to visiting Matt and Allison, Sarah and Matt, and hopefully Megan during this time.

Lastly a brief warranty update (for those who care):

1. The Nerd Herd at Best Buy did in fact manage to fix Aimee’s fried laptop by replacing the memory and reconnecting the hard drive.  Being out of town, my first comment back to Aimee was to check if they put back the same amount of memory that we sent it in with.  They did not.  For over a week they’ve been “looking for it” and finally today decided to order in the missing 2 GB.  Best Buy, your warranty repair was good; your integrity and ability fix a wrong, not good at all.
2. Ed Voyles Acura had our car for a known warranty navigation replacement.  They didn’t bother to order the replacement unit until they had our car for a day.  We pick up our car and I call to check on the status of the order a week later – it hasn’t been ordered yet.  When it comes in, we bring our car back in, they do the replacement but, come time to pick it up, there’s no disc for the navigation system.  So we wait another week and a half for that to come in.  To top it off, I’ve asked them address our poor fuel consumption while they have our car.  After giving the stock answers on tire pressure, weather, driving habits, and maintenance,  I receive a last ditch effort to quiet me in the form of a decade-old service bulletin from Acura about how fuel economy tests are unrealistic.  The EPA agreed and required new mileage ratings in late-2007 and our car is still 30% below those lowest numbers.  C’mon, pay attention Ed.  It’s enough to make you need some wine and Drunken Goat cheese!
3. Canon – I decided to “take a limb” (as Aimee would say) and send in my 15-85mm lens for factory repair because it seemed to have some optical variability and lack of sharpness in certain circumstances.  I was right!  They fixed it and cleaned it all up, no charge.  Nice job Canon!

Oh, you’d like to send us a Christmas Card?

Recently, I’ve had several people freely admit to “stalking” us (it’s not stalking if you’re putting it out there) to find our Atlanta address on the internet.  To the best of my knowledge, it’s not out there.  So here’s a little riddle to deduce it for yourself:

1. Our street is named after our 5th president.  Once you figure that out, go ahead and append “Drive NE” to it.
2. Our address number is the year you get when adding one century to the year our 5th president left office.
3. Our apartment number is four digits and adheres to the following rules:
   • All four digits add up to a prime number.  Let’s call it 17.
   • The third digit + the fourth digit equals the two-digit number you’d get by concatenating the first and second digit.
   • The second digit is half the third digit.
   • The third digit is less than the fourth digit.
   • The fourth digit is often the most difficult to move independently of the others.
4. You know the city and state.  The zip code you can find by Googling the result of steps 1-3.

Here’s a little Christmas card from us:

* Crowley saw a squirrel as we took this one but it was the best take got (of like 30 pictures)

Chicago Weekend II

The Christmas party and concert season is in full swing and it so happened that many of our annual Chicago parties and concerts fell on the weekend of December 3-5.  So we figured it would be a good weekend to take a flight up to Chicago and spend it with our friends. 

We arrived just in time to hop in our Avis rental (their computers were actually functioning this time), get into the city, and go to our 5th consecutive Deck the Hall concert at Old St. Pat’s.  The OSP choir, made up of 75 vocalists, was conducted by Bill Fraher and accompanied by the 30-person Metropolis Symphony Orchestra.  The group performed to sell out crowds for three exhausting nights in a rows and did a very nice job.  It was especially strange for Aimee to be a mere listener this year.  Me, I’m more or less used to it.

The festivity of the evening was augmented by new-fallen snow and a late night of catching up at the Neary’s.  It was quite liberating to consume much wine, knowing that we only had to make it down the hall at night’s end.  We were most grateful for Michael and Joanna’s hospitality (and that of Miles actually).  Hopefully we get to return the favor when they come to the south to celebrate MLK day.

Saturday started with massages (and a chance to catch up with Meg) followed by lunch at Mayan Palace with Sara and Kristen.  It’s always to return to the palace where, not 50 yards distance away, I lived in my first apartment in Chicago, next to Sara and Kristen!

Due to some just lousy planning, we had to miss our annual dessert party in Skokie.  David and Maryjoy – we’ll be there next year to visit, pick up some new recipes, and meet little Theo. That evening Mark B hosted a very generous and thought-filled evening of dinner and socializing.  We got to reconnect with some old friends and meet a few more ND connections in Chicago.  I’m so glad we were finally able to make his Christmas dinner, though I learned my lesson about being the farthest traveled guest.

We had to make an early departure to get to Courtney and Frank’s home for a) their annual post-Deck the Hall party and b) our slumber party.  As is typical, we were treated to their warm, festive, yet comfortable décor, delicious food, new wine vintages, and this time, their guest bedroom.  We are so fortunate to have their friendship!

Sunday morning naturally brought the occasion for brunch.  Our selection was Gioco – good because I knew it wouldn’t be terribly crowded (though I don’t know why) and because they take reservations.  Aimee’s dad and sister made the quick drive over from Munster to be with us and our friends.  Sunday afternoon naturally brought the occasion for some group shopping in the “adult sleepwear” section of Target.

Made ya look.  Anyway, then Sunday evening we joined the choir for mass at Old St. Pat’s.  All in all a decent mass, despite a fiendishly out-of-tune Steinway and a little slip up while the presider sang the mass parts (on the bright side, it’s always nice to be personally recognized in the middle of the Doxology). 

After a late flight, we landed in a chilly-but-significantly-warmer Atlanta, ready for a trip to Austin, final preparations for the Star in the East concert, a piano lesson, a Paul Tate concert, Christmas shopping, and a trip to Lansing!  Busy times.  Fun times.