The Burial Mound is Restless
Ten-mile long traffic jam this morning. Luckily, I spotted it early enough to take my main alternate route to work. Except the entrance ramp back onto the Interstate merged us in right where one of the three major accidents this morning on the Interstate near the office was being cleaned up. Bleh.
The late evening news was spewing some statistics about the sheer number of accidents that occur on my usual route to and from the office. Basically, there has been around 3500 accidents in a 5-year period. That's an average of just under 2 accidents per day. And of all that crumpled and twisted metal and fiberglass, only 9 fatalities (which was the only bright spot in the statistics).
The projections for land use along that corridor indicate the problem will only get worse, and it will cost the state about $1 BILLION to upgrade the Interstate to accommodate the traffic. My opinion is that they need to stop building crap so close to the Interstate and enforcing the traffic laws a lot more tightly. Yes, a number of the interchanges do need to be upgraded. They currently are designed for Model T-era vehicles.
In our county, I completely blame the greedy descendants of one of the textile magnates. They sold off a huge amount of land along the Interstate that their father/grandfather had been deliberately holding on to, and the developers leveled it, and built a huge number of shopping districts--drawing businesses and traffic away from where all those businesses had previously been located. It created a large area of paved blight on the city.
Speaking of Weak Infrastructure
I have been told that our state has the largest amount of paved roads per capita in the country. Considering that one of the bridges near our house is being replaced, and one near the railroad museum actually collapsed last week, I can see why we cannot maintain all those roads if that claim is true. I wonder if all those secessionists realize how much Federal money goes towards keeping up the roads and bridges. If there isn't enough to maintain what we have now, what do you think will happen when those funds dry up as a result of NOT being part of the Union. Error ID:10-T5
Ick.
Decluttering Resumes
There were four more boxes of books sitting on the hearth. For some reason, I had completely forgotten about their contents. I spent some time last night moving them onto the bookshelves. unfortunately, we are short a couple of bookcases. A folding one was being used as our queue for reading and video watching, so all of that is on the double-bookcase. The other one is in the craft room and ealdthryth has already loaded it up.
At any rate, four boxes worth of books have been dealt with, and I weeded out a few in the process. I think I should get back on track with my read-and-dispose plan for eliminating parts of the collection. I recently re-read Raymond Feist's Krondor series, and I think I am ready for that whole section to move to a new home. I am slogging my way through one of Tad Williams' series, but I may give up on it. That is slightly more than one shelf's worth of material that we can let depart.
And the cool thing is that I can actually see the fireplace again. Perhaps not completely, but a lot of it is now visible.
Garage Fu
AElfgifu appears to really really really want to get out into the garage for some reason. Every time we open the door, she heads for it. Is she trying to escape Kiera? Or is there something very interesting out there she wants to investigate? While ealdthryth moved some of the empty boxes back out into the garage, AElf' did managed to do a little exploring. Quickly opening and closing the roll-up door herded her back into the house, though.
Safe and Sound
I finally got through to Lil Sis last night. She didn't have cell phone or Internet access for several days. She was only in the city for a couple of days with the power out, eventually heading down to DC to stay with friends. She said it was really eerie and the fact there were no lights and a paucity of noise made NYC "creepy". Even now, the nearest working subway station to her is about 30 blocks away, so getting around is a bigger pain than normal (not surprising).
Normally, she considers her area to be "safe", but with the power out and telecommunications down, she thought it was a better idea to get out of town. Her biggest fear was to return home to find her apartment had been looted. I reminded her that even looters are lazy and aren't likely to schlep stuff down pitch dark stairways unless it is only a couple of floors--they're just looking for easy opportunities.
At least that is one worry off my mind....
The late evening news was spewing some statistics about the sheer number of accidents that occur on my usual route to and from the office. Basically, there has been around 3500 accidents in a 5-year period. That's an average of just under 2 accidents per day. And of all that crumpled and twisted metal and fiberglass, only 9 fatalities (which was the only bright spot in the statistics).
The projections for land use along that corridor indicate the problem will only get worse, and it will cost the state about $1 BILLION to upgrade the Interstate to accommodate the traffic. My opinion is that they need to stop building crap so close to the Interstate and enforcing the traffic laws a lot more tightly. Yes, a number of the interchanges do need to be upgraded. They currently are designed for Model T-era vehicles.
In our county, I completely blame the greedy descendants of one of the textile magnates. They sold off a huge amount of land along the Interstate that their father/grandfather had been deliberately holding on to, and the developers leveled it, and built a huge number of shopping districts--drawing businesses and traffic away from where all those businesses had previously been located. It created a large area of paved blight on the city.
Speaking of Weak Infrastructure
I have been told that our state has the largest amount of paved roads per capita in the country. Considering that one of the bridges near our house is being replaced, and one near the railroad museum actually collapsed last week, I can see why we cannot maintain all those roads if that claim is true. I wonder if all those secessionists realize how much Federal money goes towards keeping up the roads and bridges. If there isn't enough to maintain what we have now, what do you think will happen when those funds dry up as a result of NOT being part of the Union. Error ID:10-T5
Ick.
Decluttering Resumes
There were four more boxes of books sitting on the hearth. For some reason, I had completely forgotten about their contents. I spent some time last night moving them onto the bookshelves. unfortunately, we are short a couple of bookcases. A folding one was being used as our queue for reading and video watching, so all of that is on the double-bookcase. The other one is in the craft room and ealdthryth has already loaded it up.
At any rate, four boxes worth of books have been dealt with, and I weeded out a few in the process. I think I should get back on track with my read-and-dispose plan for eliminating parts of the collection. I recently re-read Raymond Feist's Krondor series, and I think I am ready for that whole section to move to a new home. I am slogging my way through one of Tad Williams' series, but I may give up on it. That is slightly more than one shelf's worth of material that we can let depart.
And the cool thing is that I can actually see the fireplace again. Perhaps not completely, but a lot of it is now visible.
Garage Fu
AElfgifu appears to really really really want to get out into the garage for some reason. Every time we open the door, she heads for it. Is she trying to escape Kiera? Or is there something very interesting out there she wants to investigate? While ealdthryth moved some of the empty boxes back out into the garage, AElf' did managed to do a little exploring. Quickly opening and closing the roll-up door herded her back into the house, though.
Safe and Sound
I finally got through to Lil Sis last night. She didn't have cell phone or Internet access for several days. She was only in the city for a couple of days with the power out, eventually heading down to DC to stay with friends. She said it was really eerie and the fact there were no lights and a paucity of noise made NYC "creepy". Even now, the nearest working subway station to her is about 30 blocks away, so getting around is a bigger pain than normal (not surprising).
Normally, she considers her area to be "safe", but with the power out and telecommunications down, she thought it was a better idea to get out of town. Her biggest fear was to return home to find her apartment had been looted. I reminded her that even looters are lazy and aren't likely to schlep stuff down pitch dark stairways unless it is only a couple of floors--they're just looking for easy opportunities.
At least that is one worry off my mind....