Rainy and Dreary Day

Hello. As usual I did not sleep well last night. I have had trouble sleeping through the night for a long time now, so I am well-versed in all manners of late night/early morning infomercials. Also I've noticed that all of the ads on TV at 3:00 AM are for debt reduction help or bankruptcy advice. I didn't realize that everyone with bad credit is also an insomniac. I wonder what the connection is.

I also use my extra hours of being awake to watch the numerous DVD boxed sets I have acquired.  I am a "user" of DVD boxed sets, by which I mean that when I get a new boxed set (which recently have included: the 3 seasons of CSI, the 4 seasons of The Simpsons, the 2 seasons of Futurama, the 1st season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the 6th season of Sex In The City I bought for my roommate, etc) I tend to watch 5 or 6 episodes at one sitting. My roommate, H.I., is an adamant believer in only watching one or two episodes at a time, so that she doesn't "squander" the boxed set. I think that is a male/female perspective thing. Then again, I am happy to re-watch DVDs all the time; often times I will bring some work home with me to do on my laptop, and I will throw in a DVD to have something on in the background which I can half pay attention to.

So as my headline explained, the weather sucks here in Chicago today. My office view here on the 86th floor of the Sears Tower is not great...in fact I can't see anything at all out the window. Though I have a west and south view, which means I can't see Lake Michigan, the view is still usually pretty impressive. I am not a fan of heights at all, but the height of this building doesn't bother me at all anymore. We had a few investors in from out of town recently; they got up to the 66th floor and decided that they could not handle the height, so we had to have the meeting in the Starbucks in the lobby. All in all, the Sears Tower is a pretty cool place to have our office. On really windy days you can feel the building sway a bit, and if you have a cup of water or coffee, you can see little ripples appear from the wind. People always ask me if I am worried about terrorism given where I work. And honestly the answer is no. I really don't think that the next terrorist attack will be jet planes. The truth is, for better or worse, that the military will not be hesitant to shoot down a hijacked passenger jet. To get into the building, you have to go through a metal detector and have your bags scanned, like at the airport. I think the metal detectors are in place simply to give people here peace of mind.

-Ben