when I look back on all the things I learned in high school

 So not only does Old Dog have a room with a view, but his window faces the south.  Reminds me of that venerable old Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys song.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYarHymJjL8  

Whenever I see a shot of downtown the first thing I look for is of course Marina City.  I can make out the Hancock and the soon hopefully to be renamed, Trump Tower, but not Marina City.  Perhaps Old Dog can make them out with his naked eye.  

I didn't remember the Deagan Building discussion but with the magic of the blogger search window I was instantly able to find it.  Nice memory.

I say instantly because I am now using my new computer which I bought maybe a month ago and have been very slothful about setting up and getting my stuff transferred to.  Not only is it blazing fast but I have a keyboard where half the letters are not worn away.

Sometimes when the conversation gets to high school it turns out that that was the defining moment of the other person's life and they still carry their grievances and lost loves as deeply as if it were yesterday.  I had my comfortable little niche of nerd guys, and I guess we had enough fun, but no girls of course so it was not that much fun.  

In college I lived in the men's dorms, so no girls there either.  It wasn't until I started hanging out with the hippies that there were a lot of girls.  But as we aged and people settled down their were fewer women.  Well after a certain age you don't find women hanging out in bars too much. Now here back in Chicago I am surrounded by women, not in the bar of course, but in my improv and watercolor classes and condo activities.  Women can be a little too responsible  sometimes, but they are easier to get along with than guys who have that propensity (myself included) to puff out our chests.

I think Italians have some kind of prototype of what became pizza in the United States, and some of those snobby foodies are all like we should eat that what they eat is some small village tucked into the Apennines because it is authentic, but really it looks like burnt toast with some tomatoes on it, and those folks who eat it would be happy to trade it for a fat deepdish pizza.  

And they don't do the Polka in Poland because they are proud of their symphonic heritage and the polka is just some kind of Americanish jitterbug.  And in Ireland St Patrick's Day is a solemn religious holiday, nothing at all like what goes on in Chicago.