PaperGirl had a nice post about her twitter usage, so I'm making one too. I've been tweeting for almost two years now as @spudart. My tweets tend to be about fun ideas and interesting observations. My most-used word is Chicago. So many fun things happening in Chicago, especially when I work at the Tribune Tower. Tribune is my 3rd most used word.

I also like to tweet about things I like. Hence, "like" appears as my second most-frequent word. I like Chicago.

"Good" ranks in at #4. I like good things in Chicago.
"People" at #4. I like good people in Chicago.
"Happy" at #7. I like good happy people in Chicago.
"Art" at #8. I like good people and happy art in Chicago.

Here's my frequency list:
118 CHICAGO
115 LIKE
48 TRIBUNE
47 GOOD
42 PEOPLE
37 TOWER
35 HAPPY
31 ART
31 TIME
31 IPHONE
30 LOVE
29 CTA
26 BUS
26 TEA
26 CHOCOLATE
24 FUN
24 WALGREENS
24 FUNNY
24 BACK
24 GREAT
23 TRAIN
23 COOL
23 PAPER
23 LOOKING
23 YEAR
I'm so happy that my most-used words are such fun words.

I used tweetake.com to download the complete archive of my tweets. Then the word counter gave me the numbers. Thanks guys!

Do you think the sentence should be:
I like happy people and good art in Chicago.
instead of
I like good people and happy art in Chicago.

One of the fun things about frozen pizzas is that you get to slice it in any way you choose. Want pie slices? No prob. Squares are your thing? Totally.

But the coolest thing of all is to do wacky cuts. Pictured above is a half of a pizza that I was planning on saving (so I don't eat the entire thing myself). But then I thought it would be fun to just cut out the center and eat the exact middle of the pizza. Then that looked like a sunset. I cut out some sun rays. I tell ya, eating a pizza sun ray is just really cool. Now looking back at this pizza, it looks like a rabbit.

Other fun cuts to do are:
* The spiral cut
* The totally random mis-shape cuts
* The wave
* The extremely thin long rectangle slices
* A regular pie cut, but instead of the epicenter being in the middle, move the epicenter to a point on the circumference

What are some fun cuts you have done or are thinking of doing?

This year I'm going to call Thanksgiving to be "Thank You Day." The term thanksgiving often loses its meaning, because we don't think about word actually is: Thanks giving.

We are to give thanks. One method is to thank other people by simply saying, "thank you."

I realized this in a response I was writing to friend who wished me a happy thanksgiving in an email and I responded with the following:

Thanks for the thanksgiving wishes. Oh look! The thanking is already started. Thank you for starting the thank yous for the thank you day! I hope you have a happy thank you day as well.

Thank you for reading this post. And thank you to Lyle for inspiring this blog post.

My tummy hurts today. What could it be? Here's what I had today:

* Boing! Tamarind juice (I don't even know what a tamarind is)
* Jalapeno-stuffed olives
* Almond-stuffed olives
* Nutrition digestive health mix
* Coca-Cola from a glass bottle
* Silk chocolate soy milk
* Pineapple wine
* Cholesterol tea
* Chai tea
* Some weird european cookies
* Halva with pistachios (mediterranean sesame fudge--which isn't fudge at all, it's more like gritty dough mushed into a brick)
* Zone double chocolate energy bar
* Honey Bunches of Oats cereal

I have a weird diet. I ate all these things today. Which of these is making my tummy mad?

(polar bear cannonball anyone?)

The fact that rivers and lakes have a bottom oddly unsettles me. Is that strange? I want to be able to safely cannonball into the Chicago River from the Michigan Avenue bridge.

Third grade. Family trip to Canada. When my dad would drop the anchor in the lake for us to fish. I found it odd that the anchor would thud so close to our boat below. How can the lake be only nine feet deep? It's so wide. Would sort of bipedal creature living below reach up and grab our boat? That happens in Canada, y'know.

The same fear holds true for the Chicago River. The average depth of the Chicago River is ten feet. Does that bother anyone? I find it unsettling. I want that sucker deep. Like Lake Michigan, it averages a 279 foot depth. Ahhh, nice deep lake. I can safely cannonball into Lake Michigan.

I don't understand why people complain about the city giving more parking tickets. You park illegally, you get a ticket. Pretty simple.

That was something I tweeted recently. I got some interesting reactions:

• aaa: @spudart I think the problem is how nit picky they become: almost vulture over meters.
• supah: @spudart they're complaining about getting caught!
• bearfanabs: @spudart because there are some loose interpretations of the laws and the burden to prove your innocence lies on you.

I feel rather strongly about that people should not be upset about getting a parking ticket, and especially a ticket by a camera if they go through a red light. It makes me think why I feel so strongly about this. I use the argument that it's the law and if people break it they should be fined. It makes sense.

But I'm not a big rules guy. I much more believe in grace and love.

Maybe I get riled up about people complaining about parking tickets, because I don't own a car. If you don't own a family and you live in the city, having a car is a luxury. Yes, there are exceptions, like those who have jobs in the burbs where there is no Metra. But for the most part, I think people way overuse their cars. It's simply a luxury item in my mind--for those who live in Chicago. If the city needs more money, then go ahead and fine more people for breaking the law. After all, if you park at a meter and don't pay, you are breaking the law.

Am I being a jerk for thinking this? Maybe. I should be more nice. But really. The laws are pretty simple. There are certain exceptions where the meter is broken. Most times people like to think that they are innocent, just because we like to think we are right. "By golly, I've always parked at this spot before and never got a ticket. And now that I got one, this isn't right." We get stuck in our mindsets about our behavior. But really, it's wrong.

Hmmm, there are some spiritual applications to this too. Maybe I do need to show more grace in this area.

An eBay seller is trying to sell some "Chicago Cub Half Dollars from 1907 and 1908." Only thing is that they are not Chicago Cub Half Dollars. They are merely normal half dollars from 1907 and 1908--the years the Cubs won the World Series.

I sent a question to the seller, chicagosportsandmoresanto:

=================
The image on these coins look like a woman, and not a cub. Is this a cub dressed up as a woman? If so the cub is doing a good job with the costume, it totally looks like a woman. Wait. Why would a cub dress up as a woman? Wouldn't the cub dress up as a baseball player?
=================

I'm not sure that I'll get a response, since I didn't ask a direct question. But c'mon, someone had to say something to this seller.

After making the last blog post, "A humidifier with water fills my heart with joy," I was thinking that maybe it was too cheesey. But then the next day I across these verses in Psalms 65.

It's cool how even the hills have joy. The meadows and valleys shout and sing together with joy. Even "the going out of morning and evening" shout for joy. Even time itself shouts with joy. Which is interesting for a couple reasons:

1) Time can sing.
At first it sounds like such an abstract concept--time singing. But any song has time in it. In fact, you can't have song without time.

2) Time praises God.
Creation vs. Evolution. Creation is the mastermind by God's design. All things are thought out, all the animals. All the different plants. All carefully designed by one master supermind.

With evolution, every thing is made by accident. Over time things get deformed and accidentally changes into something else. Which sounds rather crazy--that we'd get human intelligence by accident. The only way evolutionists can explain this is by tacking on billions and billions of years. "Of course anything can happen over a billion years." People who believe in evolution worship time, not God. Time is their god.

It's amazing here that even time praises God. Time bows down to God. Time loves God. Time shouts for joy to God. The very thing that evolutionists believe in--time--is something that worships God. For that matter, the hills and the mountains sing for joy to God as well.

First sentence:
-- I'm happy in the morning when my humidifier still has water inside the tank.

It's funny how if the above sentence has slightly different meaning if the phrase "i'm happy" gets moved elsewhere in the sentence.

Second sentence:
-- In the morning it makes me happy when my humidifier still has water inside the tank.

The first sentence describes a situation that just makes me happy overall. It's a joy to see the humidifier with water. The second sentence starts to lean towards that yes, I'm happy when there's water, but it implies if there's no water, then I'm not happy. It's very subtle. But the voice is kinda there.

This is what I thought about yesterday morning when I was thinking about my humidifier makes me happy. I was phrasing it my mind and thought about how these two sentences are a little different.

Do you ever dream that you discovered a new rooom in your house/apartment? I mean sleeping-dream about it. Sometimes I'll dream that there was this room all along in my apartment that I never knew about. I get so excited about how there's a new room. Yet it's also perplexing that I never knew the room was there.

The other night I took it up a notch and dreamed there was a whole lecture hall in my apartment building. (I'm in a 30-unit courtyard building). How cool would that be to have a lecture hall in your building?! You could have all sorts of clubs meet there. Or have a regular schedule of interesting people come and talk. That would rock.

I was at home sick all last week with some sort of flu. The doctor didn't know if it was the seasonal flu or the swine flu. He thought I had the seasonal flu, but H1N1 is so similar to seasonal flu in the symptoms, I could have possibly had H1N1. Who knows?

H1N1 is like the mystery flu! That's why H1N1 doesn't want to be simply called swine flu. That's too simpleton for this mystery flu. It wants a more secret agent sort of name like H1N1.

I had the secret agent flu last week. Only secret agents can get it. I am a secret agent. (by the way, I got my secret agent spy button from Joseph Conrad.)

What did the doctor say to me on Monday regarding my potential H1N1 flu? Here's how it went down. My normal doctor couldn't see me for another couple days, and i wanted to know if I had H1N1 now. It's Monday and I got work to do. Am I deadly contagious? I set up an appointment to see another doctor I haven't met. I go over to the doctor's office to get my answer.

Maybe he'll be nice
I'm sitting in the super tiny room examining the cute cell poster on the corner wall. The poster is clearly drawn by a child for a science fair project, but it's also signed with the same name as this doctor. It's probably a poster he made when he was in grade school! That's neat. Maybe this doctor will be really nice.

The examination in the doorway
The doctor opens the door but stands in the doorway as he asks me several questions. "Have you been coughing and sneezing today? Do you have a fever today?" Both of which I answer, "no, not today." Still standing in the doorway he looks perplexed and says, "We have these blue charts on the door to warn us when someone might have a virus, I'm going to go wear a mask and come in an examine you. This is only for precaution." I told him, "Oh yeah, that's cool, masks are fun. If you have any extra, I'll wear one too--for double safety." I totally thought the doctor was going to do the full examination with him standing in the hallway with the door cracked open.

The mask
The doc comes back wearing a mask, but none for me. I think he left too soon to hear me say that I wanted one. He fully enters the room this time and sits in a chair in the opposite corner of the room. His mask looks like it's perfectly sealed onto his face. His eyes look very worried.

Seriously. I'm starting to think that I'm in an episode of 24, and I have the world's most deadly virus and I'm going to die in 24 hours--even though I feel fine, this doc is starting to creep me out a bit. We run down the normal list of symptoms. Then asks me to take off my shirt and he'll take my blood pressure. He does the standard leaving the room (to make the patient not feel like he's in a strip show), but honestly I think he left so he could get a breather from an oxygen tank.

Turning his face away everytime I speak
I sit on the paper couch shirtless, and am getting a bit cold (the chills are one of the symptoms). The doc finally returns after a while. I think he covered his entire body in anti-virus cream. As he's taking my blood pressure he has to get in closer, I start to tell some story and every time I speak he turns his head away! I mean, I understand he doesn't want to catch it, but it just seemed so socially unusual.

The biohazard trash can
As he's feeling my lungs as I deeply breath, I have to cough. He quickly hands me a tissue and I cough out a little loogie. He asks to see it, which is REALLY COOL. The fact that a someone--especially a doctor--wants to see my loogie. I dunno. It's neat. After quickly glancing at it, he determined, "Oh, that looks ok." Then I go to throw it away in the standard garbage can. OH NO! He told me to throw it away in the BIO-HAZARD MATERIAL TRASH CAN. I get a huge laugh out of this. Whoa! My tissues are so deadly contaminated, they have to go into a BIO HAZARD trash can. I gotta get me one of these! As I laugh, the doctor turns away his face.

Rivers flowing of hand sanitizer
Then he gets out the hand sanitizer. As much as I make fun of the doctor's attention to catching the virus, he is truly doing a fantastic job. His role is to make sure this thing doesn't spread. To that end, he's fulfilling his role perfectly. It was just funny how it seemed extreme to me. Even with the the hand sanitizer. When he pumps it out into my hands, he pumped out SOOOOO MUCH. I mean SRSLY. I know I'm a guy, so I don't use lotion all that much, but he really put so much sanitizer out, I could have done my hands and all of my arms! But hey, the man is being gracious. Very very gracious.

The diagnosis
At the end of it all, he gives the diagnosis. He says I probably have the seasonal flu. All the symptoms point to that. But the H1N1 virus often acts like the seasonal flu, so I might have that too. He tells if I live by myself or with anyone. I tell him I live alone. He said that I should avoid all human contact at least through Wednesday. If I did live with someone, I think he would have told me those people would have to live elsewhere for the time.

The virus is contagious from 12 hours before the symptoms show up and up to 7 days after the first symptoms. So for me that's Wednesday night. Today is Wednesday, so hopefully by tonight I'll be over the contagious period.

I get to skip checking out
The doctor departs, and so I go to check out at the desk. But nobody comes. I stand there for a few minutes wondering if I should be checking out if I'm so highly deadly super contagious, and maybe that's why nobody is coming to the desk. Eventually the doctor walks by--without a mask, how strange to see his mouth--and says nicely, "Matt, you can just go home." So I did. And I would try to keep a 28-foot distance between me and and people on the way home. (That's four arm-lengths, I walked around imagining four people with their arms out-stretched and tried to keep that distance).

The tricky part was the L ride home. I picked the car that had no babies and no elderly people. Thankfully the car was pretty empty.

Now where is my biohazard trash can?

The following is what I submitted for the "Incident Description" field on chicago.stolenbike.org. They ask, "Describe in your own words what you think happened to your bike. Please include any important or unusual details that make your situation unique."

Was my thief in a halloween costume? Or perhaps a Halloween ghost?

I locked my bike in front of Chicago's second largest library figuring it would be safe with the constant car traffic and people that always sit in front of the library chilling out. Across the street in Welles Park is a group of older gentlemen who play bocce ball every weekend.

When I left Sulzer library and saw my bike missing, the couple people sitting outside said they didn't steal it. Then I saw my lock sitting on the ground. Cut. Either with a bolt cutter or a hacksaw.

Also, this happened on Halloween. In this neighborhood, all the kids do their trick or treating on Lincoln Avenue, so there were even more people walking around.

How can someone steal a bicycle with all these witnesses? My only guess is some sort of Halloween ghost. All in all this is shaping up to be like a game of Clue.
-- We know the location. The LIBRARY.
-- We know the weapon. The BOLTCUTTERS (or hacksaw).
-- We do not know the CRIMINAL. Who could have seen this? The pedestrians. The trick or treaters. The auto drivers. The library loungers. The bocce ball players.

This is a Halloween mystery that will haunt me for ages.

I tried to write this in a humourous way, because while it is a serious thing, it's also a rather funny story about how all these different things come together on Halloween. Who knows? Maybe the fact that it's funny might garner it more attention. The more eyeballs, the more likely the changes of the mystery being solved.

However, I do kinda regret saying that this mystery will haunt me. Because I do feel at peace with it. It's important to me that I am at peace with it, because:
A) It's just a material possession
B) Justice is in God's hands, not mine. I trust God.
C) I hope that someone else will be able to use and enjoy my bike

It's Halloween. I'm at home feeling sick. Laying around was only making me feel more sick and I really wanted to be able to volunteer at the mens' shelter tonight, so I take a bike ride to get some fresh air. The ride through Winnemac Park was just beautiful with the autumn leaves.

I ride over to the nearby Sulzer Library to get some photo books as I'm thinking about reviving my photography by shooting again with my DSLR. I lock up my bike in front of the busy library. A couple hours later I come out and my bike is gone! I'm shocked. Plus I'm already a little dizzy and confused from feeling sick (side point: H1N1? Eep).

I look up and down the block, but I totally remember locking my bike to the bike rack. I tell one of the guys sitting in front of the library that my bike got stolen. He said, "I didn't steal it." Yeah, no duh. You are sitting here with no bicycle. Sheesh.

But then... then... there was my bike lock laying on the ground by the bike rack. Cut. They left the bike lock behind? What balls. In a way i was actually grateful, because it gave me real final evidence that my bike was stolen. It actually felt better to have that lock in my hand. Before i had nothing. At least now I have this final closure.

Then here's where a couple interesting things come into play.

A nice older biker guy pulls up to lock his bike among all the other bikes there, and i warn him. At this point I just really need to let out what happened. This fellow listens to me and is very understanding. He also lost a bike a couple years ago. He shares with me how it's hard to lose a bicycle, even if it wasn't worth that much. We talk for a bit and I thank him very much for helping me, that he was a Godsend. Literally. I often find when I'm in the dumps, that there's someone that comes along either a stranger or someone I know that brightens my day. Little did I know I would be getting both in this situation.

I walk (not bike) home. I thank God that at least this happened within walking distance of my apartment (just about five blocks). I'm getting hungry, for some odd reason I feel like Subway. There's all these nice food places on Lincoln Avenue, but I choose Subway. I walk in, get my meatball sub, and as I'm about to leave, who's outside the door? A friend I haven't seen in over a year! My friend who lived above me for six years.

It was really nice running into him. We eat our lunch together and he was also very consoling about my bike loss, and he also agreed with me that this is a good lesson to not hold onto things too tightly.

All-in-all with this bike loss, I'm happy God brought in two people right away to help me. Tomorrow is a blog post about my submission to chicago.stolenbike.org.