Finally, after weeks of hearing Rhya talk about little Lindy kicking her in the bladder, I felt the kick with my hand. It wasn’t strong at all. In fact, if Rhya hadn’t told me that I had looked at her at the exact time she kicked, I would have thought it was just Rhya shifting.
And, Rhya just called me and said that she actually saw her stomach move during one of the kicks!
Bad news. Remember 99-cent gallons of gas? Forget it. It looks like $3.00/gal or more is about to become the staple for awhile. Unfortunately, the heartless witch Katarina decided to take out some key refineries and oil import terminals.
Of course this will have an adverse reaction in the price of gas. What can we do about it? Well, there are some obvious choices:
However, if you are reading this, chances are you don’t live in a heavily-populated metro area and are quite dependent on your car or truck for your commute to work. For those of you, like me, there exist websites where we can share published gas prices to make smarter choices at the pump. For those of us in Illinois, Illinois Gas Prices is a good website that you can use to find cheap gas in your area. For instance, I use a search to find gas stations in Peoria that have reported the lowest prices in the last 4 hours.
There exists many websites that track this information for other areas of the country as well. The most well known is probably Gas Buddy. It keeps a pretty large database for all metro areas, and there is a Googlemaps implementation of this at Cheapgas.
It’s official. Chloe is a fly-catching master. The other night, she sat very still, watching and waiting for a lone fly to get in her range. Then, just as Mr. Miagi snatched his fly out of the air, Chloe snatched the fly out of the air and spit it on the rug. Rex-kwan-do has nothing on her.
We made the trip up to Rockford for the second time in as many weeks on Friday. Rhya’s cousins (David, Caryn, and Joanna), and Joanna’s husband Andy were in town for their grandmother’s funeral. I wish we could have seen them under better circumstances, but it was nice that we got to see them nonetheless.
We made it up late on Friday, so we hung around their hotel and talked for a couple of hours before people started to get tired. However, we set up some plans for Saturday to get one of Rhya’s other cousins(Brett) out of the house, as he has been couped up with a broken leg for a couple weeks.
On Saturday, all of the guys met at Rick and Melisa’s house and headed over to the Rochelle car show. It wasn’t a car show like at the Peoria Civic Center, but it was a 3 block long line of old, restored classics. There were definitely a few that I would have driven off of the lot, like a couple old T-birds and a 77 Corvette.
After the car show, we met the girls back at the house and eventually met up at the DeKalb Cornfest. Yep, it’s just like it sounds. It’s like a fair, but they also hand out free boiled corn. 17,000 ears to be exact.
Some of the party headed for home to rest up (carrying around a baby in the heat is killer), while the true troopers continued into the beer gardens, where the Miller Lite flowed freely. We played some flippy-cup (where I did not miss a single flip – Hey, we all have talents) and tried to finish all the beer in DeKalb. Surprisingly, we were unsuccessful, but we did make a valiant effort. Caryn and I can be seen at the right during this incredible quest.
After the Cornfest, we went back to Rick and Melisa’s to swim and work on some more beer. Alas, all great quests come to an end, and some earlier than others. For this fallen soldier, it ended about 10pm. I can’ believe my cousins slipped something in my drink. It is the only thing that makes sense.
Anyway, most of the cousins went to Great America on Sunday, while David, Rhya, Tammy, Hank, Sonja, Betty, and I went to Damon’s for lunch before David flew out.
It was a quick weekend, but I’m really glad we could get together.
Rhya is showing quite a bit now, and Lindy is getting more and more active! I haven’t been able to feel her kick yet, but Rhya is constantly getting kicked in the bladder.
She’s gonna be a socca playa! She is, She i-i-i-is! – Adam Sandler
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
It took awhile for me to get these pictures off of my phone and into Flickr, but JP and Lea Anne invited us on the 12th to Join them in JMP Media’s suite to watch the Chiefs (Cubs farm team) battle the Quad Cities Swing (Cardinals farm team). We had an awesome time, and it was really nice to hang out with JP’s family. We always have a good time when we get together.
Plus, the Chiefs rolled over the Swing.
In a weird twist, it was Albert Pujols bobble head night, so Josh: expect a USPS package on its way.
Honestly, the hits just keep on coming. A little over a month ago, the Supreme court ruled that private property could be seized for “economic development” — which basically means you can take property from one private entity to give to another. I already got my blood pressure up over this story.
Now, the city is charging the man back rent for the time that this was being litigated. I’m sick to my stomach.
This makes me want to go out and give money to Freestar Media for the Lost Liberty Hotel Initiative. Here is an encouraging quote from their site:
Logan will visit Weare, New Hampshire from August 20th to the 23rd. He will talk to local supporters who are planning to use ballot initiatives to seize the land at 34 Cilley Hill Road and clear away other local laws that may hinder the project. It appears that an initiative can be placed on the March 2006 Weare N.H. ballot with only 25 signatures and can win with between 1,020 and 2,777 votes. Whoever said this project “will never happen” might find themself sitting in the Just Deserts Cafe eating crow pie next to David Souter.
Now, I need to qualify this: I only want this initiative to pass so that it can be challenged in court again. I’m not looking for an “eye for an eye.” However, this is the sweetest way I can think of to bring further attention to the issue.
If some of you more well-off readers want to support a good cause…
Thanks, Josh, for sending the link.
Read on the Cub Reporter today:
After today’s action:
Good (true .600 team) and lucky (1 %ile probability): finish 32-9 for 91-71, can be tied by:
Houston or Philadelphia 27-15
Washington 28-15
Florida 29-14
New York 30-13That scenario, in English, is what’ll happen if the Cubs play like a 97-win team from here on out and get a large amount of the breaks. That’s a lot to ask on both counts. More realistic is:
Kinda good (true .550 team) and kinda lucky (10 %ile probability): finish 27-14 for 86-76, can be tied by:
Houston or Philadelphia 22-20
Washington 23-20
Florida 24-19
New York 25-18Today’s games, with the teams above us winning and losing in equal numbers, illustrates the problem. At least one of those teams in the second scenario is all but guaranteed to beat their mark, while there’s a pretty big chance the Cubs won’t even do that well.
Echoing Crunch, the Cubs more or less sealed their fate with the ATL dive. They need to play ridiculously well and get all the breaks in their games and hope that nobody else catches fire. I’d like to hope too, but this is going to be over sooner rather than later, in spite of the inspired play they’ve shown recently.
by Ron Galt
This is an excellent breakdown, and it shows just how lucky the Cubs would need to be to make the postseason. Doesn’t seem likely.
Cubs, Bears, and Illini (football)…It’s a long time before college basketball…
Last night, I read Wrigley Field from A to Z to Lindy, and I made sure to include at least one piece of Cubs’ trivia after reading each letter.
And you know what? She liked it. Maybe she can’t see the pictures, but she liked it.
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What are me and my homies doing?
