Kelly is at her second annual American Marketing Association meeting, this year in Chicago! Chicago has a special place in my heart. I have flown through there a LOT over the years and have known a lot of people and good times in that great city. She met some great friends there, so some great sites and, above all, ate some truly great pizza. In the great Chicago versus New your pizza wars, I am definitely a Chicago partisan. I have to admit that I will NOT admit it when I am in New York–liking the pizza where you are is liking the barbecue where you are. It maximizes the food opportunities to like the food of the home team, wherever you are.
Chicago is where Grandpa Milo took me to my very first trade show in the Conrad Hilton Hotel Downtown. That is where we stayed, too. And, better than anything else, we went to Gino’s East for pizza. Some people say Giordanos is better, but I reject that out of hand. Tradition is not nothing and Gino’s has an ambiance of its own! To my Chicago friends, I salute you!
Betty Blonde #396 – 01/21/2010
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I think my buddy, Troy, sent me these images just to torture me. We regularly met at Pam’s Farmhouse in Raleigh on Saturday mornings before we went into the lab to work on the 
It is early in the day and you can see in the picture that Lorena is already hitting the sauce. Christian turned in his last project for the semester yesterday so all he has on his schedule today is a haircut and a trip out to one of our church conventions in Casa Grande. They are having way too much fun.
Lorena is scheduled to fly to Arizona to visit Christian for a week so she bought a bunch of fruit and set it beside the juicer so I will take the hint to eat a healthier diet. She has been juicing up a storm ever since we got the industrial strength slow speed juicer. The thing can even make stuff like peanut butter and pasta. I have to do something I am just entirely too chunky right now even though I am down about ten pounds.
I drove down from Prescott to Phoenix last night to spend the weekend with Christian at his apartment in Tempe. We have been out shopping all day. He spent less than $50 to buy a coffee table, a side table for the sofa and a computer monitor table. Then today, we went out and he bought a guitar stand, a desk lamp, a floor lamp and a hand vacuum. We had a great time. He is now heading out to a game not at his friends house while I hold down the fort in is apartment and get some work done. Tomorrow we get to go to meeting and hang out together again.
My buddy Troy posted this picture on Facebook. He took it a store called 
We were all stuck in the house over the last several days, but that did not stop us from finding a way to celebrate Valentine’s Day eating fattening stuff! Actually this was quite nice. We sat on the couch and ate it all.
I have a great appreciation for cinnamon rolls, but Lorena likes to make them whenever we have a snow day. When it snows in most of the places we have lived, there is not infrastructure in place to remove the snow quickly (not enough snow plows) so we end up stuck in the house for two or three days. It is a perfect storm (no pun intended) of really fatting foods combined with no access to exercise equipment nor any good way to even go for a walk outside. This is a very bad combination. I think I am going to have to buy new pants.
Service that would make Chick-fil-A proud, really cool, retro uniforms, and great food is not enough to impress Lorena, but if they can provide chiles with the hamburgers, too, then Lorena is VERY impressed. Now Lorena is a BIG In-N-Out fan just like Christian and Kelly. I became a huge fan myself about a week and a half ago when I found out they have what they call Protein Wrap Burgers–Hamburgers wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun!
I used to eat the 
This is NOT the perfect Mexican meal because it does not involve tacos, cabrito, tamales, or even mole. That being said, it is something that is pretty high on the list. A hamburger with jalepeños and a coke. Shortly after we got married, Lorena and I went to a McDonalds to get a hamburger. She worked at McDonalds for a couple of years while she was in high school in Monterrey. She still love McDonalds and we still go there pretty often. This first time we went in Boynton Beach, Florida, Lorena ordered a Quarter Pounder.
Lorena’s thing lately is Caprese salad. It consists of fresh tomato slices topped with a thing slice of fresh mozarella cheese topped with a basil leaf all with olive oil and a little bit of salt and pepper. It is VERY good and probably pretty healthy. Saturday night, though, we went over to dinner at my old boss and friend, Igor’s house. For an appetizer, the served something that reminds me of the Caprese salad, but, at the expense of possibly offending Lorena, might have been even better.