Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Googly





Sunday, September 27, 2009

Vibram Fivefingers

I was weeding at work, which means I was looking at all the kid's books that haven't been checked out at all in the past five years to see if we should get rid of them. One of the books was on the Tarahumara Indians of central Mexico. One of the interesting things about them is that they are renowned as super distance runners--reportedly able to run up to a 100 miles in a day. After a little internet research, I came across this article by a guy named McDougall who has also written a book ("Born to Run") about his experiences learning to run with the Tarahumara. One of his main points is that running in modern running shoes actually allows your foot and calf muscles to atrophy--leading to joint pain and other injuries. Barefoot running, like the Tarahumara do, is the way humans were designed to do it. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that there are these shoes called Vibram Fivefingers that mimic being barefoot and give you a protective layer--so your foot can move and flex without bits of broken glass getting embedded in your skin. And, um, we got some...











Thursday, September 24, 2009

One Clean Window




I spent my day off on Monday cleaning this window. This is the before--20 odd years of dirt.



Here's after--including leaning out the window to get the outside, using paper towels rubber-banded to a wooden spoon to get the outside of the lower pane, and putting white aluminum flashing over the rotting inner window sill. Ahhh, satisfaction!

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Lakeshore Bikepath









We happily discovered the lakeshore bikepath this weekend. It took about the same amount of time as riding the El to get all the way downtown, and was much more enjoyable.





Here's the inside of the auditorium structure in Millenium Park.





The auditorium from the front.





Can't get enough of the Bean.





From the skybridge to the new Modern wing of the Art Museum, looking back at Millenium park. The Modern wing is really nice with all natural light and tons of cool stuff including a big display of Joseph Cornell's boxes.





Michigan Ave. from the skybridge.





Starting back on the bikepath.