Disappointing Pizza

I have to say, I was not impressed with Giordanos pizza tonight.  We ordered sausage stuffed pizza and it was soggy. :( I don't know if I've been spoiled with Lou Malnati's pizza, but I don't think I will be going back to Giordanos. 

It sort of makes me sad.  I grew up on Giordano's pizza.  The restaurant is down the street from our house.  I have probably had hundreds of pizzas from that restaurant, it used to be my favorite pizza!  And then I moved out to Palatine, and someone introduced me to Lou Malnati's. Lou Malnati has a butter crust.  I don't know how they do it but the crust is AMAZING.  Lou Malnati also makes its own sausage and seriously, its to die for. 

Needless to say, I haven't had anyone's stuffed pizza other than Lou Malnati's for a few years. Until tonight.

Personally, I think Ginos East has amazing thin crust, but Lou Malnatis takes the cake with stuffed. 

Its been a week, negotiate already!

Chicago Public School (CPS) are on strike right now.  And they have been for a week.  All I have to say is I'm going to get a LOT of flack for this post, and I'm sorry, but this is the way I feel.

My cousin, my friends, and several of my Aunts and Uncles are teachers. but COME on!!

What are the teachers striking over?? CPS wants to increase the school day.  A 7 hour school day for elementary students (increase of 75 minutes), and a 7.5 hour day (increase of 30 min)  for high school students.  All I have to say is omg... these elementary students only had a school day of 5.5 hours?!?!?   That's crazy!  When I was in elementary school (A LONG time ago) I had a 6.5 hour day.  So personally I think 5.5 hours is WAAAAAY too short.  And yes, that NEEDS to be increased. And yeah. highschool should be 7.5 hours!  I mean wow... Just crazy.

Unfortunately, the teachers want a pay increase for this time.  But honestly, the state and city are BROKE!  I think that's pretty selfish to demand more money.  My father works for the state of Illinois and they are doing layoffs.

Personally I think teachers are spoiled because they do not need to worry about getting laid off or anything after they get tenure.  I knew SOOO many High school teachers that would just get lazy in their tenure years because they didn't have to try.  Normal people constantly have to worry about job performance and getting fired/laid off.  I am very grateful for my aunts and uncles and cousins and friends who get tenure, but there are MANY people who don't deserve it.  Personally, I think teachers Tenure should get re-evaluated every 5 years.  If a teacher starts to slack, I would put that teacher on "probation" for tenure removal for 3 school year.  If they didn't turn it around that first year, they would get tenure removed.

The CPS school system also wants to tie teachers evaluations to performance.  Personally this just makes me laugh.  I mean seriously, shouldn't this be like a no brainer? lol!  But I do understand why the CPS teachers don't want this to pass.  The CPS teachers think that student performance is directly linked to home conditions.  So, alright.  I take the CPS teachers side on this one.

One of the problems is... CPS teachers are among the highest paid in the country.  According to CNN "The median base salary for teachers in the Chicago public schools in 2011 was $67,974."  I mean that's a pretty good salary!  These teachers have 3 weeks of June, all of July, and 3 weeks of August off of work.  So... lets do the math.  A typical man year is 2088 hours, or approximately 261 work days (including paid holidays)  However, teachers have 3 weeks off in June (15 days), All of July (20 days), and 3 weeks in August (15 days).  A total of 50 days they have off.  (This is conservative considering July this year had 22 work days).  So teachers work 211 days.

An elementary teacher has a 7 hour day at school.  But they should get at least 30 minutes for lunch off.  So that really means they work a 6.5 hour day, because I mean I don't get paid for lunch, do You?

So... lets assume each day the teachers spend 1.5 hours after classes grading papers or preparing for the next day.  That's EVERY day some days its more, some days its less.  I'm NOT taking into account that teachers get Spring Break and Christmas break off.  That's a total of 120 hours they don't work (or approximately an extra half hour of over time a day), so any teacher that argues with me saying they work more than 40 hours a week, please take that into consideration.  I'm also taking into consideration that teachers work 1.5 hours on the days they have off for holidays.  So, please, on average lets assume that these teachers work 8 hour days.

That means that, if teachers only work 211 days or 1688 man hours, the median hourly rate is $40.27 per hour!!! If you take into account that these teachers used to work 75 minutes per day less, that means they used to get paid - $47.70 / hour... That hourly wage translates to just under a 6 figure salary!!!

All I'm saying is teachers... take the increase in your day and stop arguing.

More landscaping

This weekend we (with the help of my Dad and C's brother) cut down 2 more trees and pulled a bunch of weeds.  C's brother, lets call him Navy (he is leaving for Navy boot camp in a few months) lives with us.  So he helped me with my house today.  He didn't really get a choice, he just got a come on, we are all leaving now.  My parents did get a choice, they volunteered, although I'm not sure if they will be volunteering next week due to the amount of work we did.

Below are some before and after pictures. To the left is the house the day we closed on it. :)  In my opinion, its really cute, but I never really liked how secluded the front door was.  Its behind the bushes and trees.  I always thought the front door was a burglers dream.  And, a few months ago we actually had an attempted break in.  The house is currently undergoing remodeling and so when the contractors arrived at the house they immediately called the cops.  A police report was filed and everything.  The cops then called me and told me what happened.

A few days ago I found out that my general contractor thinks they know who did it.  We have had a few plumbers working on the house.  The first plumber had no idea what he was doing and was fired from the job, the second plumber was not licensed in our town so he was let go, and now I think we are on the 3rd plumber.  I met the first and second plumber.  The first plumber was .... interesting.  He had a ton of empty cigarette cases laying around in the house but the house didn't smell like smoke so it didn't really bother me.  I knew eventually the house would be cleaned up.

While the 1st plumber and I were talking, I noticed he had the shakes.  I assumed he was just an alch-y and hadn't had a drink for a while.  He tried to explain plumbing stuff to me; he was all excited about how he found this connection they don't make anymore and I told him I didn't really follow everything because this is my first house.  He said "This is my first house too!."  I'm pretty sure my mouth dropped.  He went on to explain that he normally does flood control and doesn't normally do indoor plumbing.

In hind sight, I probably should have called my GC and told him what I just heard.  But I thought was that my general contractor knew what he was doing!  It wasn't until my project manager went to the house and saw the plumber smoking INSIDE my house that they fired him.  All I have to say is had I seen that, I would have been PISSED.  To make things even more amusing, the plumber started telling my PM that he knew me from high school, and me and him go way back.  The plumber claimed that I allowed him to smoke in the house, ALL lies!   
 
Turns out, the plumber had no idea what he was doing and my 2nd plumber had to come in and fix everything.  Apparently the 1st plumber hadn't vented anything.  (I have since learned that venting is a MUST)

Well,  unfortunately the first plumber got paid, but not by me.  I pay my GC a flat fee, thankfully, except for change orders.  So if the plumbing or framing or whatever has to be done 3 different times it still costs the same for me.

But a few weeks/months after the first plumber was fired from the job my house was broken into.  I guess the GC, PM and some other guys who met him think he is the one that tried to break in.  The house was dead-bolted so the door frame held.  But it was pretty much 1 more good kick from yielding.  The GC thinks the plumber was a coke-head and was trying to break into the house to steal the copper pipes.  Thankfully, the GC also thinks the plumber is currently in jail so we shouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

Anyway, even though the plumber is probably in jail, I still wanted to make the front door less secluded so we cut down two trees. The one tree was pretty much dead already because of the drought we have been having. 

While Navy and my Dad were cutting down the trees, my mom and I were working on the back yard.  There are TONS of weeds and rocks everywhere.  Not to mention the fact that the former owner buried clay pots in the ground.  At first I suspected she just got angry one day and smashed all the clay pots against the fence, but I think she just buried them.  I think I found about 5 different clay pots buried.  Below are some more pictures of the day. 

Dublin enjoying his backyard.

Maggie - My parents Dog

The after picture.  : ) Now we need new lights by the garage

My Labor Day Weekend

As soon as C left to go to New Jersey for an undetermined amount of time (I'm thinking he may be home by Thanksgiving) I felt like my social life went down the tubes.   Originally we were going to go camping in Wisconsin this past labor day, but a $300 plane ticket is pretty expensive just to go camping.  So we cancelled and I was left at home with no plans.  Since my house is under construction, and has been since June 6th, I've been living with my dog in my parents house.  I should have moved into my house 3 weeks ago (I hate village inspectors), and I had reserved most of my fall weekends for getting the house livable and doing projects.  Since I am not living in the house my weekends are WIDE open. Which is another way of saying I'm spending a lot of Friday's at home.  Normally when I decide I want to stay at home on Friday and watch movies its not lame, however if I were to tell you I am staying at home on Friday with my dog and watching movies with my parents the lame factor SKYROCKETS.  All I picture when I hear that sentence is a spinster.  The story would only be better if it was a cat instead of a dog.   So I decided to tackle some of the landscaping at my house to at least be lame and productive this past weekend.   

A few months ago, I made a comment to one of my friends about how many weeds we have.  They said "Why should you pull them if you wont get in the house until winter anyway?" I thought over that response and decided it was logical, why should I pull them? 

I'll tell you why you should pull them, you should pull them because they will grow to be ~ 3 feet tall!  The picture to the left shows a small portion of my "garden."  Basically just weeds.  And that was after my mom pulled the entire pile of weeds in the picture below.  

Now, I will bet you $100 (figuratively, I don't have that kind of cash laying around now that I bought a house) that the old lady who lived here had gardeners at one point and then just stopped caring.  There is no other logical reason why on earth she would have gardened the way she did.  She had bushes in the middle of the yard (which makes mowing the lawn a pain in the butt), a garden walk way that you have to use to get to the ally where you put the garbage can that you couldn't actually walk through because the bushes were placed too close together, random rock gardens... its nuts.  I'm pretty sure she was also a pack rat because there were old broken clay planters she had in her rock garden... it didn't look pretty at all.  But we didn't buy the house for the gorgeous landscaping, we bought it for the potential.

But by far the most annoying thing (related to landscaping) was this 4 foot tall evergreen tree in the middle of the yard with 2 more evergreen trees next to it.  I don't know what she was thinking except for the fact that having a shade tree in the middle of the yard would be nice.  Why she would plant an evergreen, I have no idea.  I mean I know nothing about gardening and even I know that evergreens take forever to grow.  If you want a nice shade tree plant a maple!  Anyway, C and I did not like this random tree in our backyard so we planned on removing it as soon as we moved in.  

Well, thanks to the drought, the tree died. :) So I didn't feel like a bad person cutting down a perfectly healthy tree.  

And I spent my labor day eve (Sunday) cutting down the tree.  I didn't trust myself to use a chain saw, so I used a hand saw.  It wasn't really all that bad.  My arms got a good workout.  

But it would have been a lot easier if I trusted myself to use the chain saw.  I even used my brand new shovel to remove the stump! :) The picture to the right shows the other 2 trees smack dab in the middle of the yard, and you can see where the evergreen used to be.  

I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but personally, I think I did a pretty good job. :) 

Last day in Boston

On our last day in Boston we decided to go to George's Island.  We took a ferry to the island.  To the left are two views from the Ferry.  As soon as we got on the island we took a tour with a park ranger.  Turns out that since this is a historic landmark the park rangers are federal employees, opposed to regular park rangers are state employees. 

They don't actually know how George's Island got its name.  The original founder of the island named it after himself, and then a few years later it was randomly called George's Island.  They don't know if it was named after King George, or the founder's middle name was George, or George some random guy... But that's the name that stuck.

George's Island is home to Fort Warren.  Fort Warren is a well defended fort that has never fired a shot in anger nor has been fired upon in anger.  It seems like it was more of a cold war type thing.  The fort was built so well that no one wanted to try to break in.  Back in the 1800's when the fort was built it was next to the only way into the Boston Harbor.  Since then more channels have been dug (?? Perhaps?  Actually I don't know if I understand how there are more channels)  and there are more ways into the Boston Harbor, but everyone was afraid that if this Island fell to the British (or whomever) Boston would not be able to get any imports.  So they built the fort as strong as possible.  To the upper right is where soldiers would sit with guns if an intruder was coming. Basically the fort was built so you can see an intruder come from every direction.  And then the picture to the right that shows where the draw bridge used to be. 

 More pictures of the fort

After the fort we went to The JFK Library and Museum.  The museum was about his life and Jackie O's life.  It was a pretty neat museum.  We saw a bunch of items Jackie was given (purses and jeweler and whatnot) by other diplomats.  We also saw some famous dresses of Jackie's.  And then we saw a lot about JFK.  I didn't realize he almost lost the election!  If I remember correctly, JFK won in the electoral college, but lost in the popular vote. 

More about Boston

I've been lazy the past few days.  Sorry for not posting. 

The  morning after my cousin's wedding we slept in and ate at Atlantic Fish Company.  The restaurant was very good.  We ordered crab cakes as an appetizer, clam chowder soup, I had the halibut  and C had the sashimi grade tuna.  Everyone, including my Aunt, Uncle and cousins were thrilled with the food.  While we were ordering the waiter brought out a 40 year old lobster.  It was 7.5 lbs.  I would have thought this would cost around $500.  But it was only $127 and could feed 4 people easily.  My aunt felt bad for the lobster and she said she wanted to buy it only so she could set it free.  Personally, I wanted to see how it tasted. :) haha.

After we left the restaurant we stumbled upon two REAL old churches.   We saw Old South Church which is an Epispical church or something like that.  We were able to go inside this church and it was gorgeous.  While we were inside we heard someone playing the organ.  It was pretty neat.  However, since I'm Catholic, I was more interested in seeing Catholic Churches.  We didn't stay that long at this church since the server at the Atlantic Fish Co thought the Trinity Church was Catholic.  We make our way to the Trinity Church and The Church is gorgeous.  We walk inside to see that you have to purchase TICKETS to see the church.  Needless to say, we did not go inside.  We just admired the church from the outside.  Below is a picture I took of the church in the facade of a nearby building.  I thought it was a very cool picture, sort of old world meets current world. 

We didn't really have any more plans for what we wanted to do while we were in Boston, so we went on Super Duck Tours.  If anyone has been to the Wisconsin Dells they know what the Ducks are.  Basically they are tour buses that can go on land AND water!  As a child, I thought that was SO cool. :)  The Super Ducks are the only ducks that can go in the Boston Harbor.  Apparently, the other Ducks can only go in the river or something.  First we went on a land tour.  The picture to the right is the "Ellis Island" of Boston.  Apparently if you immigrated to Boston, the chances are, you came through this building.  (Obviously it has been remodeled since the days of my ancestors)

We also were able to see the Old South Meeting Hall (Left) and the last remaining piece of the highway that used to run above ground (Right).  I guess this long ugly highway used to run along the harbor front, and it had a TON of traffic.  In order to solve the problem, Boston decided to go below ground.  So the "Big Dig" happened, and they created a highway that goes under the harbor.

After about 45 minutes of a land tour, we went to the water.  The below picture is what it looks like going into the water.  Its pretty neat.  C and I had a great view since we were in the front seats.

The picture above is the Boston Skyline from the Ducts.  

I'm a huge fan of Bridges, and I really liked this bridge.  The architect modeled the bridge off the bunker hill monument.  If you look at the below picture you can compare these towers with the bunker hill monument (which looks a lot like the Washington Monument)

 


The picture to the left shows the USS Constitution with the bunker hill monument. 







When we were done with the Super Duct tour we decided to go back to "The North End."  We had heard wonderful things about an Italian restaurant "Giacomos" and we just couldn't leave Boston without trying it.  We unknowingly walked through the St Anthony Festival. To the left is a statue of St Anthony.  For the non-Catholics, St Anthony is the Patron Saint of all things Lost.  We learned that you can put your dollar (or $20 dollars if you so chose) on St Anthony's  statue and pray to him to ask God to help you find whatever you need.  Basically since St Anothony is an expect at finding things you are asking him to talk to God on your behalf.  The festival was a dry festival (no booze) and all I have to say is Thank God!!  The festival was so crazy that I could not have imagined what it would have been like if liquor was involved.  Since everyone really wanted to try Giacomos, we did not have any of the festival food.  We pretty much just walked through the streets to get to the restaurant.  Then when we got to Giacomos we had to wait in line.  See, Giacomos is such a well known, good restaurant that they do not take reservations.  They also do not take your name down.  They just make everyone stand in line and you get seated when a table opens up. 

Since the line was like 20 people deep (I may be exaggerating) my cousin and I decided to walk to Modern Pastry (another recommendation) to get Italian Cookies.  We were not very impressed with Mike's Pastry, and all the locals said Modern was 10 times better.  Once again, we had to wait in line.  And while we were waiting in line we saw St Anthony being escorted by a marching band down the street.  (See photo to the left)  It was crazy!  We learned (from a local) that a second St Anthony statue is paraded down the streets and people can also attach money and pray for help.  We also asked the local what happens to the money.  And this is what he said "At the end of every block they take all the money off the statue.  Then a guy runs... Not walks, RUNS to the nearest bank to deposit it." I asked what they do with the money and the guy gives air quotes and says "charitable things."  When he said that, all I could think of was "Great... I just paid the Boston Mob..."  Thankfully I just gave $1, and I don't know how far that money will go now adays, I mean you can't even buy a pack of gum for that. 

Anyway, Modern Pastry did NOT disappoint.  Even though we had to deal with a rude man, (who yelled at my cousin who was holding the door open for him) it was worth the way.  We found out Local Boston-ians think Chicago is ... well... tough.  Lol.  The local Boston-ians said since we are from Chicago that guy who yelled at my cousin is lucky we didn't shoot him.  We didn't quite know what to say to that so we just laughed. 

We got back to the line at Giacomos and only had to wait like 30 more min.  But the wait, again, was worth it.  I ordered the pumpkin tortellinis.  Everyone in our group tasted the tortellinis (except for C since they were in a cream sauce and he is allergic to dairy) and they ALL loved them.  Overall, the 1 hour wait was more than worth it. 

Since we ate a ton of food, we decided to walk back to the car.  Along the way we stumbled onto some historic sights.  Including Paul Revers House (right) and the site of the Boston Massacre (bottom).  
 

After we got in the car, we drove past Fenway Park.  It wouldn't really be a trip to Boston if we didn't see Fenway Park.  We only saw it from the outside, and we never actually got out of the car, but we will see the park in more detail on the next trip.