A snowy box of hookah parts found in the alley

Indoor lettuce farm

I got about 48 lettuce plants donated to the garden club, but almost all of them died in my office during parent-teacher conferences.  Six managed to survive, somehow, despite being left on the porch last week in 20 degree weather.  Today, I built them a PVC grow light stand and set it up in the basement.

Closer:

Even closer:

Closerer:

Uncomfortably close:

A piano with dicks carved into it

A pile of clothes next to a tree in Albany Park

Also pictured: back 1/2 of dog.

Part of a breakfast I ate at the Huddle House several months ago

Clown painting found in the alley

I still have it if you're interested.  My wife won't let me hang it up in the dining room, so it's no use to me.

This was behind the wall in our bedroom

A broken down Meister Brau case from several decades ago and a bunch of other shit.  I tore down the wall, which turned out to be asbestos, myself, without using any respirator or safety equipment.  This will probably kill me one day.

Some asshole did this to the neighbor's garage door a while back

Fortunately, it turned out to be a dry-erase garage door.

A can of Squirt impaled on a fence spike on the 4700 block of North Lawndale

Several months ago.

Alley toilet

I ate this in the backyard like 5 months ago

Cooking by Ishmael's wife.  Beer an American pale ale homebrewed back in the extract kit days.

Proper vocabulary trumps basic sensitivity

Student: "Mr. ______, a teacher at my old school hung herself.  And she had a kid."

Me: "That's terrible."

Student: "Yeah."

Me: "Hanged."

Student: "Huh?

Me: "Hanged."

Student: "Hung."

Me: "Hanged."

Student: "OK.  Hung."

Some stuff I grew in the garden last year

A cat

Storm door

Our old screen door blew off during that weird week of super low pressure in the Midwest.  We put it in the alley and it sat there for a while, then someone took it.

Today, we went to Home Depot to buy a new one, but, bringing it out to the car, we realized it couldn't fit.  "We're bad at home ownership," my wife sighed.

I went inside and brought a $13 rope.  We tied the shit out of the new door to the roof of our Honda and got it home safely.

Salsa on pants

Years ago, I went to a 4th of July party at my friend Ben's.  Someone knocked into me and spilled salsa all over my pants.  This is what it looked like:

Then someone shot a bottle rocket into my wife's head (I didn't get a picture of that).  Otherwise, it was a pretty good party.

Bottles

On the right: Blue Heron Pale Ale clone -- 10 days in primary, 1 week in secondary (so far)

In the middle: Sierra Nevada Bigfoot clone -- 5 days in primary

On the left: some product that's supposed to make our washing machine work better

The dog in happier times

My poor puppy's suffering knows no bounds

She wears the cone of shame.

Idaho Potatoes

I was at Jewel yesterday standing like an idiot in the produce section waiting for my wife to come back from the bathroom when this elderly woman in a Cubs jacket started mumbling something to me.

"Huh?" I said.

She replied, "I was just talking about those potatoes.  They came down from $2.49 last week." (They were $1.99.)

Unsure of how to respond, I said, "$2.49 seems kind of expensive."

"Well, those are Idaho potatoes," she reminded me.

The old water heater

... draining in the alley.  We put it out there at 11:10, and by 11:40 it was gone.

It is sideways!

No more cold showers

Tomorrow's the day Edgar and I are supposed to go buy and install a new water heater.  I hope he knows how to do the power-vented kind.