Last year the parking meter revenue was almost $20 million, and approximately two-thirds of the meters cost 25 cents per hour which is really much too low anyway. At that rate, you don’t get any turnover of meters because workers at nearby places park and just feed the meter every couple of hours and then people who want to shop can’t find any place to park. Raising those 25 cent meters to $1 will give the city an additional $40 million per year which doesn’t cover the budget shortfall, but over 75 years will give the city an additional $3 billion dollars. Throw in the Sundays and Holidays that we will now have to pay for (about $11 million) and that’s another $825 million over 75 years. My math says that $3.825 billion dollars is greater than $1.2 billion dollars by quite a lot.

Since just increasing the 25 cent meters will not cover the budget shortfall, one thing that will, and would also make this city a safer place to drive and walk, would be to start ticketing drivers who don’t stop at stop signs. We live near a park, and maybe one out of every 20 drivers actually comes to a complete stop - and there are little kids playing! I have no idea how more kids aren’t hit by cars in this city.

Anyway, I have no idea how much the fine is for running a stop sign, but let’s say it’s $75. If one traffic cop in the city writes 8 tickets an hour, 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, that comes out to $1.25 million per year. If you hire an additional 85 traffic cops, you could pay their salaries and also rake in $100 million per year. Similarly, you could enforce the hands-free cellphone law to close the budget hole and make the streets slightly safer. Budget crisis solved and no future revenue is given up by the city.

After the corn maze, Emiko played a bit on the John Deere pedal tractors.

There is an observation tower so you can look out over the entire corn maze. It’s 50 feet high, but Emiko walked up and down the whole thing!

There was also a small pumpkin patch.

Instead of buying a pumpkin here, we decided to head south the next weekend to Butterprint Farm in Monee, IL. On the way in, there is a petting zoo with a couple of goats, geese, and a small cow.

Butterprint Farm also has a corn maze at the end of the pumpkin patch. We attempted to solve it, but after 25 minutes or so went back out through the entrance because Emiko doesn’t yet have the patience or stamina required.

Afterwards, Emiko wandered through the pumpkin patch and picked out a good looking pumpkin for us to take home. I’m sure Emiko had a good time, but I’m not sure if she knew exactly what we were doing out in those two places. Next year I’m sure she’ll enjoy this kind of stuff a lot more.

On Friday we went to Superdawg because my parents had seen it on the Food Network. It was good, as usual. Then we went to the Museum of Science and Industry since the weather was not that great. Emiko loved running around, especially in the rotunda on the top floor. She also enjoyed the idea factory a lot. Plastic balls floated down some water to the end, and she could take the balls and place them in an air tube which would shoot the balls back to the top. Traffic home was a nightmare, though. Friday traffic + rain = misery.

Since Saturday broke the record for most rain in Chicago in one day, we pretty much stayed indoors except for a brief trip to Target for some fall clothes for Emiko. Then Alex came over to babysit while we went out to dinner at Takashi. We had a great time and the food was very good, although we paid $14 for a pork belly appetizer that was basically a deconstructed char-siu bao. The flavor was excellent, though.

My parents left the next morning, and now we get to transform our guest room into Emiko’s new bedroom. We checked out some wallpaper prices at Lowes, but even for her small room it was going to cost over $300 so we updated our plans and are doing mostly paint with only some wallpaper. Any visitors from now on will have to crash on the couch!

My favorite memories of her are when Steve Shadley, former news anchor at WBEZ, would try to hit on her. Frequently there would be uncomfortable silence before she said anything. Anyway, I missed Abby Ryan’s last traffic report on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ but it can be found here.

Does this mean she was for it before she was against it? She may indeed be for reform, but saying “thanks but no thanks” in regards to the 223 million dollar earmark for the Gravina Island Bridge is flat out lying, especially since Alaska took that money anyway to use at their discretion for road projects.

At least the Obama campaign is trying to show she’s a hypocrite with this ad using the picture above.

The first thing we did was go on the carousel since it’s right at the entrance. We then headed to Wiggles World where I had to cram into a couple of rides with Emiko. There was also a play pirate ship there, so Emiko ran around there for awhile, although there were many older kids there who kept almost running her over so we left that area. The Wiggles show was about to start by that time, anyway, so we sat down and watched Emiko dance along to the show for a bit.

We ate pricey and decidedly sub-par cheeseburgers at Johnny Rockets, and the chocolate shake came from a machine. Emiko picked at her popcorn chicken and ate mostly french fries. She really likes dipping things in ketchup; usually she’ll just eat the ketchup and keep dipping the same thing over and over. It’s kind of gross, actually. Next time we’ll bring our own food and go back to the car to eat lunch.

We then went to a couple of the other kid-friendly attractions. It’s hard to tell if Emiko really enjoyed any of the rides because she puts on a very serious face while on them - no smiling or laughing. She must have enjoyed Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine ride, though, in which the van goes up and around, because she immediately ran to get back in line to go again.

There was one ride that we went on that Emiko didn’t enjoy, The Jester’s Wild Ride. This ride rocks back and forth while spinning around. Although she didn’t fuss or cry, she did try to get off the ride by getting off the seat and sliding under the bar. I tried to sit her back down and she went limp in an attempt to prevent me from doing so. She was a trooper, though, and finished the ride without a fuss.

Afterward, we decided to go home as it was really time for Emiko’s nap and she was getting a bit cranky. I didn’t get to ride any roller coasters this time. The one I would have ridden, the new Dark Knight coaster, wasn’t running anyway. Even so, it was a fun time. Emiko was eying all of the bigger rides so I bet next time we go she’ll want to ride everything!

Amy and I had discussed various girls names earlier, but couldn’t agree on one. Our discussions on boys names similarly went nowhere. Then Amy asked about Hideo, which was my great-grandfather’s name. That sounded OK. It also is a name that Americans may have heard of before because in 1995 Hideo Nomo became the first Japanese-born Japanese major leaguer to relocate to the United States to play Major League Baseball for the L.A. Dodgers. His success paved the way for the current influx of Japanese baseball players to MLB (Ichiro Suzuki, Tadahito Iguchi, and Kosuke Fukudome to name a few.) Hideo’s middle name will be William, after Amy’s dad.

So without further ado - meet Hideo!

As for agua, Emiko only says the word agua, never water. Even when we say things like ‘would you like some water?’, she always replies by saying ‘agua.’ It’s pretty funny because we will be driving and Emiko will see a puddle on the side of the road and say she will say ‘agua.’ At daycare, Alma’s assistant, Lara, only speaks Spanish, so we’re not sure what other Spanish words Emiko knows.

Emiko is also getting good at repeating words that we say. It’s getting to the point that we now have to start self-censoring ourselves. Our most common swearword is douchebag which we now have changed to donut. Mmmm….donuts.

Here is what Lake Delton currently looks like.

Many resorts that relied on the lake to attract tourists have struggled this summer so we decided to rent a room at one of those resorts for the weekend. We stayed at Baker’s Sunset Bay resort which was nice. It looks like the last renovation was in the early 70s, but it was good enough for our needs. One of our reasons for staying there was that it had a kiddie pool, which Emiko loved!

We also played some miniature golf, went downtown to Monk’s for a burger and cheese curds, and visited the Wisconsin Deer Park to feed and pet the deer.

However, Emiko’s favorite thing at the Dells was a carnival ride at Riverview Park called Moby Dick. I don’t know if it was the motion of it going around, the music playing from it, or what, but she was drawn to it and started dancing right in front of it! She even saw it from across the street when we were at the deer park, shrieked, and ran over to the fence to get a better look!

Finally, it was time to go. We stopped by Market Square Cheese on the way out of town and also took a detour in Rockford to see the riverfront. We didn’t actually go to any of the waterparks because Emiko is not really old enough to enjoy them yet. Maybe next time!