By far the best time I've ever had at Wrigley Field came on New Years Day involved the Blackhawks playing the Red Wings in an outdoor hockey game.

Two layers of socks. Thermals under the jeans. T shirt under a hoodie under a Blackhawk jersey under a ski jacket. Surrounded by 40,000+ hockey fans. All that made it quite warm in the Frozen Confines (and I didn't even have a drop of whiskey from Al Pitcher's bar-noculars, although i HAVE to find me a pair of those!). The whole time walking around the ballpark before the game, all of us looked at each other in disbelief that the whole thing was happening. It was surreal. It was silly. It was fantastic.

Blackhawks jumped out to a 3-1 lead at the end of the 1st period, but then Detroit took over in the 2nd & 3rd, scoring 5 unanswered and ended up beating the Hawks 6-4. But as any Cub fan can tell you, it's still possible to have a good time at Wrigley even if your team loses. I just wish it wasn't against f#ck!n' Detroit. And luckily the Blackhawks don't have to play there again so they won't make a habit out of it.

But now it's over. Time to move on and get back to real hockey. And back to winning games and get into the playoffs. LET'S GO HAWKS!

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Favorite radio broadcaster, favorite hockey team come together as I got to throw this background image together at work today for Stever. Steve will be Twittering for the Chicago Tribune during the Winter Classic on Thursday. Silha (S-I-L-H-A, party of one!) must've been on vacation.

Just four short days until the Winter Classic.  I can honestly say I've never looked forward to attending a game at Wrigley more than this in my entire life.

After 12 years of hand-coding pages, parshall.net is going full-Movable Type-mode as of 12/27/08.  I tried upgrading a while back to version 4 and failed miserably, but I think I've got it this time, running 4.23.   Still a lot of default template stuff around here, some things I'll keep, some things may likely go and I'll make it all my own eventually, but progress is being made.

So tonight I decided to give the Trailguru a spin on the commute home. 3.97 miles, 46 minute walk from Tribune Tower to the home offices of parshall.net (you'd think that would burn more than 357 calories, wouldn't you?).

And contrary to what you might believe from looking at the map, i was NOT drunk. something tells me those skyscrapers in the loop play a little havoc on the tracker.

The Trailguru may be one of my favorite apps on the iPhone. Wish I would have discovered this before I went to NY & Boston...

Four days, three nights in the city so nice they had to name it twice. It was a spectacle to see that's for sure, and now I can say I was there, but to be honest not sure if I'll ever go back (maybe to see the new Yankee Stadium and Letterman since he was on hiatus).

Four days of Full Tourist Mode... a ton of walking around Manhattan, from Broadway/Times Square down to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan back up through Central Park and around museums like the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and MoMa. And closed the trip out with a Harbor Lights boat tour.

And who would have thought that two hours before game time wouldn't have been enough to get into Monument Park (they shut the line down by the time I got over to that side of the park).

Through my alumni association I hooked up a ticket to see my Sox take on their Sox at Fenway in Boston on Labor Day weekend. Sure, their Sox walloped mine, but it was great to see Fenway and the city of Boston for the first time. Kinda wish I could have spent another day or two there, but I gotta save up to see my Sox take on the Yankees in a couple weeks...

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So for a good part of Saturday I was going through some Lollapalooza withdrawl, but not enough to actually go buy a ticket. But as the afternoon sun started to set, I got the itch to jump on my bike and go ride on down to Grant Park to see what I could hear and perhaps catch a listen of Rage Against the Machine's set.

If you've ever played Where's Waldo, this game is for you.

Where's Parshall?



Give up? Here's the answer.