The Other Sandy

I woke up to the tail end of a thunderstorm this morning. I get up pretty early, so the traffic report was pretty non-eventful at that point. Then I left for work. Rt. 53 was a parking lot, but the traffic and news reports were so busy talking about the Edens being closed due to flooding that nobody was talking about where I was or what the roads were like so I could pick an alternate route. I'm assuming the problem was caused by flooding up around Lake-Cook Rd., but I get off before then so I'm not really sure, but I did see flooding on both sides of 53 starting around Arlington Hts. In any event, it took me an hour and 40 minutes to make my 25 minute commute this morning.

It could have been worse. One of my coworkers was stuck on the Edens. It took her 5 hours to drive in. In fact, she had just arrived and was telling us all about it when the power went out to our building. We don't know why. It had stopped raining about two hours before and we'd been fine all morning. ComEd told us that they had 300,000 customers without power and that we were at the bottom of their priority list since we're "just" a library (not that I'm begrudging them putting hospitals and nursing homes at the top of the list). Anyway, I spent about 45 minutes going through the pile of papers on my desk and tossing or filing them as appropriate before the president of the library board declared us closed for the day. Fortunately for me, the drive home was a lot faster than the drive in and my power is still on.

I just feel bad for my coworker. After the horrible 5 hour drive in, she was back in her car and headed home less than an hour after she arrived.

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Oh, and the other item on the news this morning was that a small plane crashed near the municipal airport just down the street from the library last night. It came down just off the road I take to and from work, only about a mile farther east than I normally go. That's the third plane crash at that airport since I started working at the library.

I've been wondering why Creation has been all "Check out our awesome new con hotel for 2010!" for the Chicago Stargate and Supernatural cons. There was an article in the newspaper today about the Wyndham O'Hare going out of business. They'll be closing their doors for good by January 1st.

I've been to at least 5 cons at that hotel.

From the editors:

"After 33 years, and considering the present state of the economy, we feel its time for a major revamp and will be temporarily discontinuing publication while the model and redesign of the magazine are contemplated and executed.

The last print issue available for the time being is #374, while issue #375 will be available exclusively as a digital edition on the network in the very near future."