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Very inviting home. I think my favorite part is the barn! My idea of the ideal living space.
And of course the gardens.
I've always wanted a summerhouse/gazebo. I guess a gazebo is the open style?
I actually looked into building one from this company that we first encountered up in Wisconsin. One of the enclosed ones rather than the open style. Octagonal is sweet but rectangular is easier to furnish. 
State trooper saves kitten.
Our adopt a stray story...this was decades ago...
We thought we heard something in our garage but it was a week before we saw a young cat flash by and jump up into the soffit. I suited up with long sleeves and gloves and retrieved him. He was scruffy, skinny, and a little beat up; he must have tusseled with one of the neighborhood outdoor cats. And he was terrified, though he seemed to trust me, and even moreso, Mr wtg. We ended up keeping him and named him Moose. He lived a long and happy life with us and his canine buddies.
The traffic is one reason we're not keen to see them move here; we live in the burbs because we aren't fans of crowds. And the disruption in terms of infrastructure improvements will be a nightmare.
Mostly, though, we don't want our taxes to go up just to make the Halases and the McCaskeys richer.
You may very well be right @rontuner
But hope springs eternal here in beautiful Arlington Heights!
All's quiet on the western front.
Last night. Five people looking at the person in the hole, who apparently drew the short straw:
Photo gallery of Sagrada Familia from AP.
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/sagrada-familia-gaudi-barcelona-aae21510cd85f7a79df324a2e8cb8eae
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran âSchrödingerâs ceasefire.â This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of âsuperpositionalityâ in quantum physics.
A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles arenât any one thing, but a âcloud of probabilities.â
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of Donald Trumpâs own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isnât a war. We have a deal, but we donât have a deal, but weâre about to have a deal. We destroyed Iranâs military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No, we donât. We already accomplished it. We âobliteratedâ Iranâs nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in between. No deal without âunconditional surrender.â Letâs make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didnât have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. Trump didnât prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iranâs supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iranâs senior leadership on the first day of the war. To âthe great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,â Trump announced on February 28. âWhen we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.â
https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-iran-strait-of-hormuz-boxed-in/
THEY'RE MOVING TO HAMMOND!!!!
The Bearsâ Board of Directors voted Thursday to advance the stadium development in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact to be selected. This is this first time that the Bearsâ board has voted on any stadium site.
As one source said, âThere is more work to do but barring anything very strange, itâs a done deal.â
Much rejoicing and happy dancing in the wtg house....
I went out in the screen room this afternoon and caught the smell of natural gas. Turns out a construction crew working on a village project to replace water mains managed to hit a gas line around 2 pm. Took Nicor (gas utility) almost two hours to get here and as far as I can tell they still haven't figured out how to turn off the gas. A consulting engineer who is on the water main project said that a) the gas line was unmarked and b) the fact that it was pretty windy is working in our favor, dissipating the gas.
Looks like they won't be shutting off our gas (the break is apparently on the other side of the still-to-be-located shutoff valve) so they won't be pounding on our door in the middle of the night to come and re-light the pilot in our water heater. At least that's what the Nicor guy said. I hope he knows what he's talking about. Given that they can't figure out where the valve is, my level of confidence in their abilities is not real high right now.
(tried to post some pics but postimages is misbehaving right now)
What would Jesus drink? Welcome to the age of Christian energy beverages
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/04/jesus-christian-energy-drink
@chas I pinged my eye researcher friend Dr Mary (PhD, not MD, but she regularly saw patients in the eye clinics at the universities where she worked). Hopefully she'll get back to me soon!
Steve Kroft weighs in:
Former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft calls the changes under Bari Weiss "disastrous." He adds: "This is journalistic interference. It makes no business sense whatsoever. It's the highest rated news program on television, and it has been that way for more than 50 years. The audience was up about 9% last year. Why would you mess with that?" Our conversation airs tonight on the
@newshour
The exchange between Pelley and Bilton:
One hundred years ago, on June 10, 1926, Catalan architect Antoni GaudĂ tragically died in a tram accident in Barcelona. In his 73 years of life, the designer left his mark on the Spanish city, from his emblematic basilica, the Sagrada Familia, to Casa BatllĂł, Casa Vicens, Park GĂŒell and numerous other sites.
Has anyone visited any of his buildings?
Researchers at Eurac Research have obtained a detailed picture of the microbial community associated with Ătzi, Europe's oldest known natural human mummy. The study provides insights into a complex microbiome, ranging from the gut flora of a Copper Age human to cold-adapted yeasts.
Using a variety of samples and methods, the researchers were able to differentiate which microorganisms were already present in the body during his lifetime and which only colonized it after his deathâboth during the time in the glacier and over three decades of preservation. In samples of internal tissue, the team was able to detect genetic material from bacteria belonging to Ătzi's original gut flora.
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-tzi-iceman-microbiome-year-relationship.html
That's quite an assortment!
I feel your pain on the critter front. It's a never-ending battle.
Potatoes are really easy to grow in pots. Critters seem to pretty much leave them alone, though a couple of years ago my neighbor found a bunch of his potatoes harvested by some enterprising chipmunk and hidden in its den under the front porch, quite a distance away from the pots in the backyard where they had been growing.
