Mom grew up on a farm outside of Lockport, IL.

That's where Grandpa A's farm was!!! In fact, I lived in Lockport the first three years of my life!

My grandfather made the BEST milkshakes.

awww, lisah. That's cool.

Now I want a milkshake, except I have a head-cold so dairy is the last thing I should have.

I have some leftover wonton soup in the fridge, but it's kind of nasty. I don't think I'm going to get that from that restaurant anymore.

I just discovered that gmail played a trick on me: it marked a number of emails I get (including all my "google alerts") as spam.

I'm still wierded out that my mother grew up in a town and had no street number! The address was just Family, Street, Town.

Another friend of mine from college was weirded out that my parents' address has a single-digit number -- it made her think I was from some small town. But that's because she lived in the kind of suburbia where every house has a five-digit number.

That's where Grandpa A's farm was!!! In fact, I lived in Lockport the first three years of my life!

Lordy - our grandparents probably knew each other!

My mom is from poor, rural folk, so they had chickens and goats which were used for food, but my grandfather actually worked on the railway, so they moved to town when he retired or the railway shutdown, whichever came first.

My dad's family were townies, but my grandfather decided to be a gentleman farmer after he had made some money during prohibition. But my Grandad wasn't a great farmer and he went back to working in a bank after he spent all his money importing Jersey cows and buying a generator so they could be the only house in town with electricity. There's still some farmland back in Newfoundland that my family owns.

WP editorial: In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

...

The boyish Stephanopoulos, who has done wonders with the network's Sunday morning hour, "This Week" (as, indeed, has Gibson with the nightly "World News"), looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy. He came up with such tired tripe as a charge that Obama once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist. That was "40 years ago, when I was 8 years old," Obama said with exasperation.

...

"It's not the first time I made a misstatement that was mangled up, and it won't be the last," said Obama, with refreshing candor. But candor is dangerous in a national campaign, what with network newsniks waiting for mistakes or foul-ups like dogs panting for treats after performing a trick. The networks' trick is covering an election with as little emphasis on issues as possible, then blaming everyone else for failing to focus on "the issues."

she lived in the kind of suburbia where every house has a five-digit number.

I love that shit. I used to live at #11 on a street. Was it a small town? No! It was just a really short street. Densely packed in with a million other short streets, none of which matched up into a nice, even grid. Welcome to old cities!

Snce I grew up with a four-digit house number, I always thought of those who had a FIVE digit house number as rich. Kinda funny how childhood perceptions operate.