michaeldthomas

I think Deadspin's title says it all:
"High School Basketball Team's Season Canceled Over Pee-Soaked Locker Room Incident".

As 1crowdedhour said, "It has been a long winter, hasn't it?"

As a family, we’re pretty bad at relaxing. Our plates are extremely full, and we invariably say yes when people ask us for more. This weekend we finally stopped and relaxed. It has been lovely. We read, ate, watched fluffy movies and TV shows, and pretty much avoided any serious household tasks.

The weather today was beautiful, so we took a walk to Downtown DeKalb. This is the weekend of the annual maize orgy that it CornFest. It’s the usual village fest of funnel cakes, unsafe carnival rides, and has-been musical acts (this year: Travis Tritt). And corn. Lots and lots of corn. Due to construction concerns, this year they moved CornFest from Downtown to the airport. To make up for the move, the local merchants decided to have a sidewalk sale. We chose the shopping.

Downtown DeKalb isn’t much, but there are a few nifty gift shops and clothing boutiques. Lynne bought a silver heart pendant necklace, and Caitlin got a Yellow Submarine t-shirt. I drank a lot of free coffee.

We finished at The House coffeehouse where they had a Dixieland jazz band playing. The audience was older than the songs, though there were a couple of couples our age. They even danced, because damn it, they paid good money for those swing lessons ten years ago. Caitlin loved the music.

I suppose that I better come up with some ideas for dinner. We’ll probably finish the evening by watching The Dark Crystal.

Just finished reading: Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Currently reading: War for the Oaks by Emma Bull

Sweet Zombie Jesus!!! It’s snowing again!!!

At least I finally have my frickin’ gutters and softit installed.

In other DeKalb news, it’s always fun when you assure your spouse that the loud noise outside was nothing and then find out that it was actually a couple of small explosive devices going off in your neighborhood.

Hooray for safe rural living!

And so ends another winter week in the Barb City (they invented barbwire in DeKalb dontcha know).

This week featured my City of DeKalb Advisory Commission on Disabilities meeting. It was a bit of a bummer. The city is having financial problems. This is not a shocker. You see, like many cities, DeKalb has had years of growth by giving developers and businesses big tax breaks and no impact fees. As my friend Sarah pointed out, if you play Sim City enough, it should be obvious to you that eventually you will pay the price. We are there. The infrastructure isn’t in place to support a city our size. The general fund was $500,000 short last year, and the city manager is eliminating 20 jobs to compensate.

This is a bad thing. It seems that one of the commission’s biggest allies might be part of the forced retirements. This person was instrumental in us getting anything done for people with disabilities. These financial problems also make the future existence of our commission a bit cloudy. I am not happy about this.

We’ve done some good things while I’ve been a member. The commission was able to get most of the city to change the accessible parking sign fine amounts to reflect the changed state law. Businesses had been ignoring it until we started going business to business. We’ve also been able to make sure that new building plans comply with ADA. Additionally, we started working with the Park District in order to bring more accessibility to the parks and playgrounds. My daughter can now swing during recess because of this.

Hopefully, the commission will evolve and continue to do good works. It would be a real shame if couldn’t because of poor planning. People with disabilities need a voice. My daughter and everybody like her deserve a city that complies with federal, state, and local law.