It's not quite right.

If you ride the CTA with any frequency, you can’t fail to notice the In Case of Emergency signs posted next to each door. They instruct the reader in what to do in case disaster strikes during your commute. You see the signs every day on the way to work and every day on the way home. You see them so frequently that you stop paying attention to what they really say.

Which makes them ripe for disruption.

Some genius changed the every day warning into a stick figure parody with rail cars filled with water, crawling on top of the cars, two-faced conductors, and a field of lemming-like people heading towards certain zapping on the third rail. I howled when I saw it, but what was even more funny were the faces of the people who had no idea what was so funny about the sign in the first place.

They had their urban blinders on. In case of emergency, they wouldn’t know what to do.

I plan to blame any lapse in judgment on the snooker game happening in the background. I need the excuse because to be perfectly honest, the water commissioner vote just wasn’t high on my list of things to research before heading to the polls. However, I did pay attention to all the big races and did my civic duty to avoid another “Blago”. Fingers crossed.

The city of Chicago sponsors some unexpected, cool events from time to time. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon this outdoor exhibit while searching for a photo safari. Ten foot blocks of packed snow were being sculpted by teams into shapes ranging from Oscar the Grouch to snOprah to a graceful Asian portrait and the delicate wings of an eagle.

It was enough to make even me appreciate Winter. And that’s saying something.

See the entire set here.

I’ve been threatening to do it for a long time, but I finally got around to creating a portfolio of my photography. It was a long process of sifting through five years of photographs to find what represented the best of my work. The most enjoyable part for me was developing a methodology, noting my selection criteria and then testing those criteria against the discernment of a few select friends. It’s everyone’s idea of fun, right? I will confess that by the time I was done, I was certain I hadn’t taken a single photo worth anyone’s consideration. I’ve been assured this isn’t the case.

You can view the entire shebang here. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

My endless thanks go out to Erik, Yukako, Pattie and especially Karen for the help!

On New Year’s Day I had a rival food review site use one of my photos without attribution. My first reaction was to fire off an angry email about not reading the Creative Commons license that accompanies the photo, not to mention the bad manners of swiping images from a competing site. I wrote the email and sat there tapping the keyboard, ready to send it to the so-called editor of the site.

And then I took a deep breath and wrote a very different email.

This one explained why the license prohibited use, and how the photo’s presence on their site diluted the uniqueness of their site as well as mine. I told the editor to keep it on the site, but to give me the attribution for the photo and link love. I finished up by offering to license photos in the future or quote jobs for freelance photography projects. Heck, I figured if they liked my photo well enough to use it now, then they might be a future customer.

It was a great idea, but it didn’t pan out. The editor wrote me back and in two sentences apologized for the trouble and said she deleted the image.

I’m still upset that the image was used at all, but now I have a more commerce-minded way of dealing with the inconsideration. I’m going to try this approach for a while. I’ll let you know if it does anything for my blood pressure, to curb uncredited use of my photography, or to generate income. *fingers crossed*

I got a text message over the holidays from my brother that I am going to be an aunt. To say the news came out of the blue is to state the obvious, but I was really floored that it came via SMS. Seriously? Have we become such an insta-contact, constantly connected society that this is now acceptable? Every time I think I’ve become inured to the way mobile technology & social networks have changed my life, a new wrinkle comes along to slap me in the face.

I know my brother wasn’t thinking about it that hard. He’s a typical guy and was going for the easy share — texting is a quick and efficient. He’s got a few other things on this mind. However, I firmly believe that some news should be delivered personally. Because in the end it’s not always the delivery of news that matters, it’s the opportunity to share in the experience.

He called me a few days later and I gave him all the ribbing that couldn’t possibly occur in 140 character conversation. A speedy text can never contain a lifetime of big sister’s shtick. If that makes me old-fashioned, then so be it.

I spent some time and actively thought about my New Year’s resolution for 2010. Everything I’ve done in the past has been relatively small — lose weight, drink less Diet coke, get more sleep. I address those things or not, but my life moves on as it always does. Having these little resolutions doesn’t poke any holes in the larger meta concerns of my life. Not really.

So my resolution is to identify and define those problems so that I can create actionable plans against them. It’s time to be grown-up about this.

Don’t know about you, but I’m ready to dig into the next decade.

Bridget and I get a lot of questions about food. It’s one of the occupational hazards of running a blog and podcast about Chicago restaurants. Whether we’re talking to tourists or old friends, they always want to know where to eat.

Over the summer, I wrote a week-long guide to Chicago dining for friends who were visiting the city. It included breakfast, lunch, a cupcake stop, and dinner for every day of the week. To actually use the guide as written was utter madness because there was way too much food, but my friends loved it. It took them out of their comfort zone and into the city’s neighborhoods. I was both the trusted source and goad to try new things, the purveyor of classics as well as the latest and greatest places on the scene. It was the type of reference that didn’t exist and couldn’t be compiled by looking at tourist sites or scanning through web reviews. At least, not without a lot of work and firsthand knowledge of Chicago. I felt that doing a guide like that provided a way of experiencing the city that didn’t exist anywhere else.

And then I started thinking about other ways of elevating Chicago’s restaurant scene. Guides for newcomers were one thing, but I wanted to do something for people who were stuck in a routine or who didn’t see the value of branching out to try new things. I picked cupcakes as the subject of my next guide, and realized that it would be bigger than a few pages — there was simply too much information and too much to say. Foodies in Chicago take their cupcakes seriously, and I realized that I needed to put together a guide worthy of their zest for baked goods. I also discovered that while everyone loves cupcakes, very few people have tried more than one or two places. There was nothing out there to meet the needs of the true cupcake lover — no information that showed them just how many good options they have.

I hope that people visit the site, buy the book , and then come back to share their opinions on what they find. If you try the guide and you find it valuable, please let me (and all your friends) know. If you think it sucks, I still want to hear from you. I love talking about Chicago food at the end of this, I still love cupcakes.

I want to add a very special thank you to Pattie for trying all those cupcakes with me and to Bridget for putting me through a special kind of hell known as “editing.” I think that the best part of my dining adventures is working with friends who love food as much as I do.