Meredith is now out of school, and sleeping some very long hours, catching up on her sleep, energy, you name it.  Her artistic roller figure skating training schedule for the upcoming meets (Regionals in Flint, MI at the end of this month, and probably the National Championships in Fort Wayne at the end of July)  mean that she’s spending every day ( Read more... )

(as per Susan’s facebook post on this)

She’s doing practices / training three days a week - Saturday morning, Sunday night, and Tuesday evening for about 2-3 hours at a clip at the local rink in Lombard. It seems to be going very well, and everyone is pleased with her progress. More on the details about Regionals and Nationals (both closer to ( Read more... )

Website for the remains of the old GM that they’re liquidating.   Wanna buy a golf course or a Superfund site?

At the first day of hearings on GM’s proposed asset sale restructuring chief Albert Koch estimated on June 30 that the company’s environmental liabilities for all sites are $530 million. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson said money ( Read more... )

Some read-this items on the GM bankruptcy:

• Cissna Park, Illinois struggles with the loss of a huge chunk of its tax base, as a local GM dealership is closed.
• A LA Times article on why GM went down for the count.
• Michael Moore, a GM kid like me, on where we go from here and why GM got to this situation.  “The glaring stupidity of this policy was that ( Read more... )

Dow Chemical donating contaminated fish to the poor.

I was asked about this earlier today at a family gathering; my understanding is that Chrysler’s only option is to go to Fiat for life support and that the government will assist *somewhat* in that arrangement, and that GM is going to go into some kid of para-bankruptcy, where it will be split into NEW GM (Caddy,Buick, Chevy, GMC Trucks) and DEAD GM ( Read more... )

So here’s my ideas, half-baked:

• Make the deal comprehensive, and mostly a take it or leave it scenario.  This sucker has been a political football for decades, and this ends here right now.
• All three companies essentially go into a central, nationalized receivership corporation.
• The equity in these businesses is pretty much gone, in any event.  Say ( Read more... )

I’m actively interested in your poisition on this matter.  Feel free to sound off inside *politely*.

My own struggles on this:
( Read the rest of this entry » )

In regards to my BIL moving back to South Dakota and leaving Michigan, there’s a sidenote; when they went to the landlord to tell him that they were going back, the landlord said something like:

1. oh, that’s good.
2. I’m broke, and the bank is foreclosing on it anyway next month, and I’m selling out and moving to Florida.
3. So the bank would have evicted ( Read more... )

A bit of complication to the picture; my brother-in-law’s family in Michigan is moving again, this time back to South Dakota.  They did *not* care for the poor suburb they were living in, the kids were having a rough time of it in a bunch of ways (especially recently), and I think the entire city scene really turned them off.  For some reason, they ( Read more... )