I was awakened just now by a very loud, highly amplified announcement: “[FirstName LastName], This is the [MyTown] Police Department. We need you to answer the phone, and come to the door with your hands in the air. You are under arrest.” Sometimes they vary it by adding the street address, and adding “we are not going away.” This started at some time before 5am, and it’s been going on for at least 10 or 15 minutes. It repeats and repeats, almost like a recorded announcement, quite calmly. I got up and looked to make sure that no cop car…
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And just visible behind the lovely bent-up directional sign is the Mobil station on Roselle, still haplessly advertising gas for $3.47. I misremembered the other day the difference in gas prices; with just one 10-gallon fill-er-up at Marathon, I saved one dollar and sixty cents, USD. That’s about, oh, £0.75 GBP. Heh. I simply haven’t paid attention to the “off-brand” or smaller chain stations in the area, but I will from now on. Ginny I can has iPhone? Via: Flickr Title: 347 mobil By: GinnyRED57 Originally uploaded: 2 Apr ’08, 7.49am CDT PST Ginny I can has iPhone?
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Okay, here’s my lovely nearby Marathon station. I do love how picturesque and scenic my suburban neighborhood is… but I took this picture to capture the novelty of gas prices less than $3.45, which is what it was at the big Mobil on Roselle. I couldn’t even get into the little Mobil on Roselle… (why are they only 2 blocks apart?). I’ve pledged not to trade with Mobil anymore, since they’re so bound to screw up the planet for their own profit, and they’re not very big on human rights. I will confess that I’ve slipped a few times because…
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Google Calendar Wake yourself up with our new Google Wake Up Kit Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? We do, too. In fact this problem became so serious at times that it sometimes resulted in lacklustre attendance at team meetings. To help solve the problem weve created an innovative solution called the Google Wake Up Kit. My testimonial: I can’t hack mornings without Google Calendar. Not even a hungry cat yowling in my ear gets me out of bed, but Google Calendar motivates me because of the sheer nails-on-the-chalkboard urgency of its summons. I highly…
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Seen various places, but most recently at The Lead: Many people around the world are planning on observing an hour of “darkness” tomorrow night as a way of participating in a global earth hour. The event was created by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007.From the Earth Hour Website: “Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More…
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As rain shifts to snow, mushy morning rush is forecast — chicagotribune.com Afternoon rains turned to snow Monday evening as a storm expected to bring around 6 inches of snow moved into the Chicago area. It started snowing around 2pm today. In spite of grumbling about the cold and the piles of grey, frozen blocks of slush along the margins of the roads, I really love how pretty everything gets after a few hours of snow. Big fat flakes came down as I drove home, and it was starting to “stick” on the parking lot and not melt away. A…
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Since I was sick week before last, we canceled the regular twice-monthly housecleaning service and deferred it to this Wednesday. Which means that in addition to more than the usual amount of clutter, there was a lot of stuff on the carpet and dirt in the front hall and a huge number of dustbunny-type junk in the upstairs bedroom. It takes a while for my completely dormant housekeeping skilz to stir themselves, but today I’d finally had enough of looking at dusty margins and clumps of cat hair on the carpet, so I got out the vacuum cleaner. Fairly quickly,…
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We had a trickle of water coming in the basement on Sunday during a thaw with plenty of rain, and since then it’s been really cold, so everything froze up again. Even the streets – where on Sunday there were running streams of water, trying to find their way to the storm drains (which were mostly blocked by snow and ice dams left by the village plows) we now have sheets of hard frozen ice. The bottoms of everyone’s driveways are also either ice dams or sheets of smooth, glassy ice, and in some suburbs, there’s so much ice left…
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I’m still battling the cold and cough, hoping to avoid a 5-month bout of bronchitis like last year… when it finally went away after I started taking anti-acid reflux drugs in addition to some prescription and over-the-counter medications for general cough and asthma. There’s some kind of connection. In about half an hour, we leave to go to lunch with the family, at a deli up in Highland Park. It’s bitterly cold, and with the wind-chill factor it’s about -20 degrees, something that’s guaranteed to get my cold-weather asthma to kick in (something else I have to avoid if I’m…
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Teresa‘s recent comments got me thinking about a better choice of gas station. Based on what I can figure out for the area, Marathon Oil is less evil than most. Business & Human Rights : Marathon Oil