find at least one thing each day that makes me happy and record it everyday for a year

Oh the days of Scrabulous. Playing the super-duper fun game of Scrabble online. See what fun words my friends would come up with. Oh yes.

After IMing my brother about how I miss Scrabulous, I did a google search for it, just outta kicks. The first result was the wikipedia entry for Scrabulous. And lo and behold! SCRABULOUS IS BACK!!!! It’s now called Lexulous. Who knew!? I didn’t! How did this slip by? What happened? Wasn’t Hasbro’s undies all tied up in a knot?

The Wikipedia entry explains that the Indian high court ruled that they were allowed to make the game as long as they don’t call it a name close to Scrabble. So they just renamed it Lexulous. On September 27, 2008 www.lexulous.com was launched with all the previous stats! In fact on January 1, 2009, Lexulous was back on facebook! Crazy!

Oh so what about Hasbro? They withdrew their lawsuit on December 20, 2008. Hahaha. SWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEET.

AND THERE’S A LEXULOUS IPHONE APP. Yeah, it’s $3.99. But i’ll drop that for LEXULOUS ANYDAY!

I spent the weekend at my parents on the south side of Chicago…

Fri 6/13: bus on southside
Got off the wrong Metra stop. But a Western Avenue bus came right away, as did the 103rd street bus. It was interesting riding through my south-side childhood/teen-years neighborhood on a bus. The CTA bus and train is how I get around my north-side neighborhood now. But growing up on the south-side, we always drove. So it was an interesting two worlds colliding riding the bus on the south side of Chicago.

Sat 6/14: hang out at home
It was nice hanging out at my parents house with my sis and mom (dad was at a conference).

• Mama
• Arf (when she hears a dog, one of her favorite words)
• Dada
• Uh-oh (when something is dropped)
• Up (when she’s about to crawl up the stairs)
• Apple
• Out (used sparingly, sometimes when her shoes are being put on)

I taught her to say cheese (when she’s holding her string cheese, not when taking a photo). I don’t know if she’ll remember it. But she kinda uttered a “eez” a couple times.

After changing hosts for spudart.org, everything looked good. But then someone told me the comments form was busted. OH NO! After a long day struggling with actionscript at work, I wasn’t in the mood to fix this problem.

Spudart.org uses pmachine pro, which stopped development in 2004. Thankfully, they still have a forum! WOOOOOOOOOT-A! The problem ended up having an easy fix.

I like reusing tea bags. It makes me happy. “Oh here little tea bag, you still have some life left!”

And i’m moving all my website over to a new server. The hosting company even did all the copying of the files and databases and settings and crap. Now we just wait for the DNS to propagate through the internet for the switch to occur. HAPPINESS is having spudart.org load 24/7 instead of the current 23/6.

New job
Today was the first real day at my new position. I’m still with Tribune Media Services, and I’m still on the 14th floor of the Tribune Tower, but now i’m the Senior Web Marketing Strategist. Today I had three meetings. I love meetings. I do. Sure, it can be frustrating when they don’t start on time, and other little things. But really, I feel much more involved at work and it’s great to be able to start shaping decisions for our syndication company.

Plus, I was just really happy coming back to work after the great San Francisco trip. It really helped me to come back to work with a fresh mind.

Well, snap-a-licious. I haven’t posted on this goal in WAY too long! Often I get too weighed down with trying to pick just one thing every day, as in like, I’m trying to pick the BEST thing every day. Ok, so now i’ll just pick a random thing from every day.

Wed 5/7: Waiting for luggage
Instead of standing right by the luggage merry-go-round, try standing a bit of distance away. After getting off my SF to Chicago flight, i walked right up to the the little door on the merry-go-round, so i could see my luggage AS SOON AS IT CAME OUT. Aka, being obsessive matt. But then I realized that is just insanity. So I stood off to the side, a good distance behind everyone.

And just observed. People are so hilarious waiting for their luggage. It made me laugh. “Oh is that mine? Oh wait, is that mine?” All the stares. All the anticipation.

Tue 5/6: Getting lost on a San Francisco hill
After a business conference seminar thingy (and dinner with co-workers, which was also really quite a delight), I ventured off by myself to the tallest point in San Francisco, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. GREAT PHOTOS! SUNSET! It was great!

BUT what was really fun was getting lost on the hill trying to get down! There are so many freakin’ dead ends on that hill, I would walk down one street. Dead end. Walk back up the SUPER STEEP HILL. Oh did i mention that? That hill is like, REALLY STEEP. I bet it’s steeper than Mount Everest. So I would walk down another street. Dead end. Walk back up the hill. Walk down, up, down, up, down. 5Oh by the way, it’s like 10:30pm at this point, and there is NOBODY outside. It was a little scary, but it was also an ADVENTURE!

Mon 5/5: Walking around SF with Mike
I went to San Francisco with one of my co-workers Mike for a conference about “content on demand.” We both got to SF early, so we just walked around town aimlessly. Part of Mike’s past is 15 years as a newspaper photographer. He’s a fellow web geek. And he’s just a really neat guy.

Sun 5/4: Dcoumenting my dad’s show
My dad had a 40-year retrospective show of his photography at the Beverly Art Center on the south side of Chicago. On sunday we photographed the show together, with him shooting it in film, and i did digital. It was really cool to see people my dad knew looking at the show. And it was also neat to hear my dad explain some of the photos to them.

At work on our whiteboard, someone wrote a prediction that the Cubs will take their division easily (would be nice, i’m all for it). So I added more predictions, such as asking when people think Chicago will have its first 70 degree day.

We’ve been having such cold temperatures here this spring, it’s nice to think about when things will warm up, hence that is what makes me happy. Although, personally my favorite temperature for outside is 57 degrees.

Whaddya think? When WILL chicago have its first 70 degree day?
I’m guessing 4/17, cuz i’m going to a cubs game that day! wooo!

I was just about to make a Walgreens break when the art director comes in with a bag of Marshmallow Hershey Kisses! They are nummy, however they don’t have a marshmallow interior with chocolate exterior, instead they are one solid marshmallow-flavored chocolate.

A nice surprise for the candy dish.

3/30: Artists
My brother and I were hanging the show for my dad’s photo retrospective at the Beverly Arts Center on the south side of Chicago. They have a new multi-million dollar building, and it was just really cool seeing all the people walking around. It seriously makes me want to get back taking classes and being around artists.
More info about my dad’s show: http://www.beverlyartcenter.org/gallery.php

4/2: Quiet
Nobody talks in downtown Chicago in the morning rush. From 8:35am to 8:55am, I walked from the Metra LaSalle Street station in the south loop to the Tribune Tower north of the of the loop in Chicago. And I heard nobody talking. It was so eerily quiet. Plenty of people were all around. Lots of people walking to work. But nobody talking.

Quiet. Very Quiet.

I do like quiet. But does it make me happy? I think I’m more happy for the fact this is a weird observation.

Chicago got some crazy snow AND lightning AT THE SAME TIME. And then commuting home was crazy with the snowrain. It was just so crazy that it made me laugh and be happy. It sounds strange, but extreme situations like that where there’s a challenge to survive make me happy.