A story about "Visions of Ireland"

Visions of Ireland

This is a beautifully filmed video. It’s nearly trance-inducing. You will get to see great shots of Irish scenery. If you are looking for serious details for your own education or travel info, it would be best to skip this.

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Good news!

The Skokie Swift now runs on the weekend!

This should make this goal a shade easier.

See more progress on: Ride to all stops of all the Chicago "L" lines

A story about "The Thief Lord"

The Thief Lord

by Richard Claus

I picked this up on a whim at the library, because Venice was featured on the cover. And it was better than I expected.

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Don't forget the gas

If you’re here and your tank is low, get gas. I made the mistake of thinking, “ach, a quarter tank is fine.” Wrong. No gas between town and the interstate. Nothing at the interstate. Nothing. There was nowhere, so far as I could see, that sold gas between Wahpeton and Fargo that was open after 6 PM on a Thursday night. 6 PM!!!

Luckily, I didn’t run out of gas, but it did make me paranoid for the rest of the trip.

See more progress on: Wahpeton

But I'm going to go a pinch harder

By making it 5 of my original 43. I know. I bothered to keep track of my original batch of 43 places.

So far:
1. Nevada
2. Las Vegas
3. California

Think I can make it to two more before December? I think I can. Anyone care to guess which one is 4? Winner gets a t-shirt from the location. Provided I can find one. I doubt there are too many Iran t-shirts.

See more progress on: visit at least 5 of my 43places in 2008

Almost didn't

But now I am. I had an unfortunate negative balance on an account at one of my banks. The bank racked up a fee that, let’s be polite, would make a loan shark blush. So I went in and negotiated it down, because some is better than none.

And I was happy enough with the situation.

But then the banker made a blunder. She suggested that I use cash for small debits. I immediately got the sense that the bank didn’t value me as a customer, which is funny. I have a six-year old truck which I financed through this bank, and any person looking to capture my business on the next loan would’ve tread far more carefully.

Indeed, after a tiny shade of thought, they could’ve turned this into an opportunity to get more of my business. But they let slip that it wasn’t valuable.

So now I’ll be doing all of my banking at one bank, where they seem to value my business. I’ll protect the non-customer focused bank by not naming them, but the lesson here is to make sure that you bank with folks who appreciate your money, no matter the amount.

See more progress on: close my bank account

Tiny bits of paper

I did it. I finally conquered the pile of come-steal-my-identity papers. It’s been mouldering in my basement since shortly after we bought the house. What shame! I can’t blame the baby for this one.

Anyway, now I have redeemed myself and gotten rid of a tempting spot for the cat to pee in one stroke.

See more progress on: shred the shred pile