My mom just got back from ten days in Hawaii. Before she left, she asked what I wanted her to get for me. After we decided that something for my wall would be great (a photo or some art if she found something pretty), she was startled when I also asked for something tacky for my cubicle. I told her about my recently departed rubber chicken (it got too brittle and broke in half after eight years) and I now need something equally tchotchke-cheap. I told her a hula dancer that danced would be great, thinking of those girls with grass skirts. She one-upped me, though, and got me a male hula dancer!! I'm looking forward to getting it in the mail.

I hate that Foxx woman. I somehow got on her email list, and could NOT get them to stop sending me that garbage. I finally started replying by forwarding all the lefty-liberal pro-GLBT, pro-life, pro-evolution from other mailing lists to her email site. One.at.a.time. I somehow slipped off her list without a murmur.

Let me amend to say I hate that woman's politics. The woman I merely dislike intensely.

I somehow slipped off her list without a murmur.

Hee!

so the WHO went to Alert 5, but now the company is balking on telling everyone to stay home.

ION, how offensive (on a scale of one to ten) is this quote from Byron York:

Obama's sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

The black-white divide in Obama's popularity

It sounds like Fiat and Chrysler may complete a merger deal later this week. Good news for Chrysler, but I can't shake this feeling that I wouldn't have much confidence buying a Fiat-Chrysler vehicle.

It sounds like Fiat is going into the deal so they can start distributing their cars through the Chrysler dealership network. I love the look of the Fiat 500 revival and wouldn't mind test-driving it (not to buy it, since I'm still loving and paying off my Civic, but the Fiat is still really cool).

There's a great article here by a guy who likes to walk the long streets of Chicago from beginning to end. In this one, he strolls along Belmont Avenue from the lake to Elmwood Park. His walking stories always seem to show the city at its heart, and this one's particularly good.

I'll just go for the hat trick post here!

I'm not buying a place (yet), but I like to keep my eye on the local market. I never looked at single family houses before, thinking that I wouldn't find anything around here for under $150K unless it was a townhouse/condo. Well, there are a few short sales on tiny 1950s-era houses in Wheeling under that price! They definitely don't look fabulous--tract housing never is--but the fact that some are going for that low blows my mind. One's a 3BR/1BA house with detached garage and is NOT on the direct approach path to the local airport (the other two are), and it's asking $140K. Wow.

ETA: I bumped up my search to $175K, and got a lot more hits. Look at the living room here--it's oraaaange!!

One thing to consider in buying. Expectations are that housing prices will continue to drop for some time, and that when they stop dropping they will level off, not rise. So don't be in a hurry to buy anything you are not thrilled about living in. (Buying a house you love is different cause it is not just a matter of economics.)