Bad Signs

I spent most of the day preparing my Federal income taxes so I’m not in much of a mood to think of anything profound. I swear the tax code gets more complicated every year. My brain has nothing left to give. Come back in a couple of days and I promise I’ll have a topic that requires a though process. Here’s something juvenile to tide you over until then.


How’s that job working out for you, Mr. Blagojevich?

Welcome to Illinois sign. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Last June I visited Wisconsin’s Point of Beginning, the starting place for every public land survey conducted in the state. It sits right on the Illinois border too. So I wandered over to the line and snapped the “Welcome to Illinois” sign since I was there anyway. I also made sure I stepped a few feet across the boundary so I could pick up a new county. All-in-all a rather routine jaunt.

I’d forgotten all about the sign so imagine my surprise when I was looking through my files yesterday and stumbled across this image I published originally last summer. Someone was stealing my bandwidth by linking an image without attribution so I was in the process of doing something nefarious to them and my eye happened to catch the Illinois photo.

My, how things have changed in the intervening eight months. Rod Blagojevich of course no longer serves as Governor of Illinois. The state removed him from office a couple of weeks ago in the wake of his arrest for bribery and a variety of other charges. I’d never heard of the guy when I took the photo. Now it’s an interesting keepsake to remind one of a strange time in Illinois politics.


Would You Eat at the Aso Cafe?

Aso Cafe. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

We took the family out to dinner over the weekend at our favorite Mexican/Salvadorean place nearby. Normally called the El Paso Cafe, it experienced a rather unfortunate neon lighting failure. My older son is just learning to read so here’s the scene:

SON: Hey dad, part of the sign on El Paso is burned out.
DAD: (chuckle) Indeed it is.
SON: Yeh, it says AAAH… uh… it says AAAHSS… uh…
DAD: Nope, that’s not a word. Quick let’s get inside before we get cold.

Dad dodges a bullet but returns a couple hours later with digital camera.


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One response to “Bad Signs”

  1. Anton Sherwood Avatar

    Ah, so.

    In Hayward, California, I was briefly puzzled by LA TAB RNA; the existence of a DNA Lounge in San Francisco probably contributed to the mental crosstalk that kept me from seeing TABERNA.

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