Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]
More about Daley’s efforts to sell off city parking meters and other property, and how his idea of ‘quick money now so I can keep services going now and the heck with the future’ isn’t working so well. Also, there’s the damage that the Olympic bid will do to the parks system, and Daley’s pledge [...]
From the Chicago Reader: Part 1 and Part 2, along with the Easy Version,more concerns, and legal action from aldermen trying to kill the deal. Over a year later, on December 2, 2008, Mayor Daley held a press conference to announce that after a rigorously monitored bidding process (as opposed to handing the deal to [...]
The tax refunds came back in, and back out again; Susan’s SUV needs immediate work on brakes and tierods (chaching), Mere and her cousin need to be signed up for some Summer stuff Right Now (chaching) and I’m getting the document scanner that I need, which is on sale at Egghead with free shipping (chaching). [...]
The big items of getting the taxes out and getting a pile of documents out for the refinance to the lender is over with; I don’t, at present, have a scanner that can handle legal-sized paper, and I killed a lot of time trying to figure a clever way around that. My clever ways all [...]
Home today, loaded down with getting the fricking taxes out (this is my latest to do them in a while) and a big set of documents turned around for the lenders. There were some ugly surprises in the lender’s last set of questions last night, including ‘have you fixed your chipped and peeling paint yet’ [...]
Mere has a roller-skating competition in Racine next weekend, and she’s doing better on some things, and is still having trouble on jumps. She spent most of the day today on Easter-egg work with her old pal Alicia, who she has warmed back up to recently. Mere was having such a good time with that [...]
I am unbelievably happy to be *done* with work-work for the week; incredible drag and endless stuff to zig and zag and do. Now, to shift over into HOME work. Aaaaaagh. Susan is off with Mere seeing HANNAH MONTANA, THE MOVIE. Apparently, since Mere had today off from school, her idea of what to do [...]
LJ: cedarseed is in Ethiopia; I’ve always been intrigued by the classical end of Ethiopian civilization (I need to pick up a Budge book on Ethiopian magic one of these days) and love looking at classic Ethiopian art. Some good photos; check it out and her LJ in general. Jay Lake and his family (especially [...]
I wonder how many of the people who are going on about “teabag” protests understand the common slang usage of the term? Retail vacancies at malls and shopping areas are soaring. Men aren’t buying new underwear, which was one of Alan Greenspan’s classic uh-oh-the-sky-is-falling barometers of how well business is doing. My question on Coleman-as-sore-loser-and-endlessly-litigating-this [...]
The tax program choked and died on me on install; had to clean everything out and reinstall. Had to also dig up our old tax files for the program, so that it could pull forward old information for multi-year stuff affecting our taxes, and those had gotten stuck away somewhere and were more of a [...]
If the Seattle Press-Intelligencier survives the next month, it will be as a online paper only. Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver is about to cease publishing. The new US government budget (PDF link) under Obama is going to cap federal employee raises (the automatic kind) to 2% next year; the base this last [...]
Forgot to mention that the foot doc is pleased with my progress on healing up the streesed spot on my foot, and that the orthotic seems to be working very well and comfortably! That last part surprised me a good deal; I expected it to be a major PITA, and it really isn’t. He says [...]
We’re looking at refinancing the house; there were some consumer debt stuff that built up while money was sorted over to the pay-the-medical-bills area, and it’s gotten stiff enough that we really want to get rid of it. Some of the credit cards belonged to outfits that have suddenly decided that No Matter How Good [...]
With huge numbers of people unemployed, and more rolling into the offices, the states are running out of money to pay benefits. Like 30 out of 50 states. Drill-baby-drill just went *choke*, as oil companies are suddenly unwilling to finance new exploration. Existing wells are being shut down as uneconomical to operate, and forecasts are [...]