1000!

Well, I passed my first anniversary writing this blog although I don't think I started the counter until October or November 1st. I got up to 1000 hits today. It took a while to get to 700 but my hits have been increasing since I came back to writing. Thank you to the 1000th person who looked at my site.

I had a very eventful weekend despite fighting a cold. My brother, Marty, came up for the weekend and while it would have been nice to have been able to bring him into the city, circumstances didn't allow it. He did spend the night at my place on Friday night and we went to dinner at Olivetti's. I had veal and chicken and it was very good.

I had a couple of volunteer events I had to do on Saturday. My plan had been to leave Marty with my friend Guy who was going to be in town visiting his Mother when I went to do my first event, doing admissions, preparing grapes for a wine crush and being a general gopher for the winery people who were at the Old Town Wine Crush for Y-Me. After that, I was going to walk to the Hideout for the Hideout Block Party. The Hideout every September holds a block party featuring a lot of great bands. The money that is raised at the block party benefits Causes, P.L.A.Y., and Tuesday's Child. I sold beer tickets for two hours and got to see a couple of bands that I wanted to see, Eleventh Dream Day and the dB's. After that, I drove up to my sister Tracy's house where Marty ended up going for the day. I got there about 9 PM and the impromptu party that Tracy decided to have was in full swing. It was nice to see Tracy's in-laws who are visiting from Spain, Tracy's friend Kelly and her husband, Chris, Tracy's friend Jennifer, and her husband Nolan, and Nikki, the woman who is presently staying with Tracy after having lost everything in New Orleans.

Yesterday, I went back to Tracy's and Marty made dinner. We got to try several wines that Marty bought recently.

I saw several websites recently that I found pretty interesting; Ferrara Pan, which has an interactive pages showing how they make several of their candies including Lemonheads, Atomic Fireballs, Boston Baked Beans, and Red Hots. I also found a webzine called Love, Chicago which features art, music, and bars focusing on Chicago, and several record reviews.

The totals in Iraq are now up to 15 for September and 1899 in total.