Iwritecode

We cut down our tree on Sunday and it's standing in our living room but it's not decorated yet. We may be putting 1 or 2 other trees up as well. One will be a small black tree with all my Sox ornaments on it.

Dear Illinois winters, I hate you and I would leave you if I could. Sincerely, Counting the days until spring.

Dear idiot driving 5MPH under the speed limit in the left lane, MOVE THE HELL OVER! Sincerely, the 20 drivers that were forced to pass you on the right.

QUOTE (shipps @ Nov 26, 2010 -> 02:47 PM) I dislike Chase. I have my savings there but my wife and I checking account is with Bank of America. Now those guys I love. There ATM's are more advanced IMO and way more freindly staff. Plus we opened a "keep the change" savings account there. Every time we use our debit, if there is any change left over til the next dollar it goes directly into the savings account and they match it for the first three months. And then they match 5% after that. But its money we dont miss and it accumulates really quickly. We just recently opened a Chase account simply because they have branches in both Rockford and Chicago. We love their ATMs because we've never had one that we could deposit checks into before. I've never had to pay any fees for anything either.

QUOTE (Soxy @ Nov 27, 2010 -> 01:55 PM) I think part of the problem is that she is a first time dog owner and got a massively expensive pug puppy (which, frankly, pisses me off as the owner of two rescues). She did basically no research into the breed (and if she had she would find that they are impossible to train, difficult to housebreak and a walking health problem). And, judging from the dogs behavior, she does no training with it. Ugh. I feel so dumb for saying I would do this. But I think, generally, when you ask someone a favor like this it is implicit that the dog is housebroken and knows basic manners. I am not saying my dogs are perfect--but they are housebroken and understand house rules. I just feel so bad for my poor monster dogs. The big dumb lab mix is absolutely traumatized. I am just hoping that the reason the dog is eating its business ISN'T because it has worms. Because if it gives my girls worms I am going to have someone's head. Lack of training and house-breaking is usually on the owner, not the dog. Pugs are actually pretty smart.

Looks like it touched down in Caledonia. They just had a tornado go through a few years ago that destroyed Edward's Apple Orchard.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 22, 2010 -> 12:57 PM) Thats pretty much a calendar function on any smart phone. I don't even have a smart phone and mine can do what he's describing as well.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 19, 2010 -> 05:04 PM) I know alot of people are saying Schaumburg, but you would have to put a new stadium in Naperville, its the second largest city in the state. You could put it off of Rt 59 somewhere. Actually it's 4th behind Rockford and Aurora. Might even be behind Joliet too.

From a 2008 interview

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 19, 2010 -> 03:39 PM) Doesn't matter, the Sox don't own the stadium. ISFA does, a state agency. I know this has been discussed either here or at WSI but I think JR is on record as saying that he would not let the Cubs play at USCF. Also, I believe the Sox own the parking lots.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 19, 2010 -> 01:49 PM) They would have to play their games at the Cell most likely. They'd have to convince JR first.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 19, 2010 -> 01:25 PM) Check out two trailers for Family Guy's Return Of The Jedi parody, It's A Trap! I've got all the seasons on DVD but I hope they release this as a 3-pack with the other two. I've held off buying them while waiting for this last one to finally come out.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Nov 19, 2010 -> 08:03 AM) I've only been to Wrigley 4 or 5 times, including for the Winter Classic. I can say, however, that the park is a dump. It has a ton of history, and the location is great, but I agree that a new modren park could be built there and it would be fine. I'm not a Cubs fan, so I'm not going to pretend to know how they would react. But imagine a ballpark like PNC Park on that site. A beautiful, fan-friendly park would win over most baseball fans. You'd still have the neighborhood and you'd have a nice ballpark in which to watch a game. That's the problem with the Cubs though. If the stadium was just filled with baseball fans, they'd probably only average 20,000 a game. They fill up the rest of the stadium with "Wrigley" fans and busloads of people from Iowa.

I’ve only read 6 that I know of for sure, although I read Great Expectations in high school and don’t really remember any of it. I’m not 100% sure about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Lovely Bones I only read because we watched the movie and my wife happened to have the book lying around the house. Half of them I’ve never even heard of. The other half I’ve heard of because they are classics or had a movie made from them. It’s funny because I really love to read but have just never gotten around to many of these. I’ve been meaning to read Lord of the Flies for years. Read: 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (I think) Heard of: 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Inferno - Dante 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Never heard of and know nothing about: 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 34 Emma -Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession - AS Byatt 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

I don't currently have insurance but my wife just went to her open enrollment meeting. If we take it it's $254 every two weeks for just me and her and for just medical. Looking at everyone's replies that seems terribly high.

QUOTE (rockren @ Nov 16, 2010 -> 06:25 PM) Because it's in a neighborhood that provides one of the best atmospheres in all of sports... Maybe for the fans but I've read about numerous players that hate being forced to play so many day games throughout the season. A friend of mine is a die-hard Cubs fan and he is convinced that they will never win a WS until they get out of that stadium.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 16, 2010 -> 03:10 PM) When I first read this, I thought you were referring to one of these. I was gonna say, they don't work over water. "Unless you got POWER!"

I had a cop stop in front of my house and ask me what I was doing because he saw me unloading grocery bags from the trunk of my car. He thought I looked suspicious for some reason.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Nov 12, 2010 -> 11:01 AM) Disagree with your assessment of Dye. We are looking at a DH here with a good bat. No different then a signing of Jim Thome. It's the position you fill to better the team. I have yet to hear him say he's willing to be a full-time DH. I thought that was one of the reasons he didn't sign with anyone last year.

QUOTE (beckham15 @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 03:50 PM) For all you backstreet boy and new kids on the block fans they are touring together in chicago summer of 2011 haha my wife just told me about this she's dying to go apparently I haven't told mine yet. She's been to see them 3 or 4 times in the past couple years.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 03:56 PM) You are the only one I have ever heard of that likes that show. Funny you bring that up because last night it came on after....South Park maybe? And I was at a house w/ some friends and we all had a conversation about how terrible the show is, and how the same guy who is behind King of the Hill and Bevis and Butthead can possible produce that garbage. No offense. lol That's because he didn't produce it. The garbage he produced was called The Goode Family.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 11, 2010 -> 11:09 AM) That comes to approximately $33k per year on a 40 hour a week basis. That is a decent wage for an unskilled worker, but it's a poor wage if significant training or skills or experience are required. Actually it's closer to $31k per year assuming paid vacation time. Sadly, that's not much lower than what I was making at my last job after 11 years.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:41 AM) Even before this bill there were some protections for people with pre-existing conditions. If you had insurance for 5 years or more, and needed to switch carriers due to a job or loss thereof, the new company couldn't deny you because of a pre-existing condition. What they could do is say if you were uninsured for 6 years, then developed diabeties and tried to get insurance to cover it, you were screwed. Like trying to buy a bullet proof vest after you have already been shot. I don't understand the thinking behind that. I haven't had insurance for many years simply because we couldn't afford it. So because of that, I haven't been to the doctor for years. I'm worried to go get checked out for anything because if they find something then suddenly I have a pre-existing condition. If I do have something and don't know it, does it count as a pre-existing condition?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 10, 2010 -> 09:05 AM) That's the worst. It's like, I'll give you the f***ing $80 radio. Just dont make me go through the whole process of getting the window replaced. I actually had somebody steal the removable face plate to my radio once. I accidentally left the doors unlocked so they didn't break any windows but it was almost more of a pain in the ass to replace just the face than to get a whole new radio.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 9, 2010 -> 10:13 PM) I'm pretty happy with SOA tonight, and it leaves a nice little problem to solve before the end of the season for Jax. I'm also glad they didn't kill off Jimmy O yet, as I think he can be useful and a good character down the road again. I liked a few of the lines in this episode. "What a little slut!" "Yes he is." "I almost shagged my brother!"