Quite a storm today- I don’t know if it reached OH, but it did move fast.  The sky went dark around 4PM and pouring rain followed.  Hovever, as I mentioned the storm moved fast, so within an hour it was pretty much over.  I was actually in Waukegan at the time.  We started to walk the lot when Rene took one look at the sky and decided we were done.  Good thing, because two minutes later the rain came down.  I headed home, no incidents praise God, and stopped at a local electronics store to wait out west-bound rush-hour traffic which was much worse than usual.  I actually had to turn left off of the expressway because the right-turn lanes were backed up beyond the exit toll!  One main street further south, the traffic was no better, so I turned south on 21 and went to Abt Electronics where I bought a needed new dehumidifier and played a couple games of Ms. Pac-man and Galaga which were set on free play.

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Once home, I learned that a local resale shop was struck by lightning and burned to the ground- yikes.  The lightning strike was actually witnessed by one of the pastors at my church across the street, the one who oversees all of youth and children’s ministries.  There was no mention of injuries or deaths in the article I read, praise God, though at the time of the ABC news segment they didn’t know.  The article mentioned insurance, but only for the building as the goods inside were all donated.  I know the Lord will use this as a ministry opportunity, especially with the church being right by the store, but it will obviously be awhile before the store is up and running again.  Just take a look at the news segment at ABC News Chicago:

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ABC News:  Fire destroys Palatine retail store

Winter I’m told is the hardest part about this car job, but after this last month I’m really starting to wonder.  Was there this much rain last year?  I man, day after day for the last five weeks with only a few days rest from it.  I can only hope that this gets the precipitation over with so I don’t have to brush off cars so much this winter, but I know that’s just a pipe dream.  Some more days like yesterday would be nice, but unfortunately the forecast for the next few days calls for more of you-know-what.  Sigh.  Fortunately by evening the chance currently shows about 30% so just maybe our haunted house hopping event won’t be too soggy.

Today just really got me down.  First was the slow trip east toward the city to a dealer where I had a whole two cars for my 40-min. trip.  Took me two hours too due to having to drive the cars to the warehouse- something only this dealer requires, along with the garage where some of the lights don’t work so I have to take more pictures just to get good ones.  Additionally I had to wipe down the wet cars before I could take pictures of them.  $7 an hour- isn’t that below minimum wage?  Next stop, two cars again but at least it went much quicker.  As I approached my final destination, the rain decided to fall without a break until after dark so I ended up taking pictures with an umbrella in the other hand (this place doesn’t mind the cars being wet in the photos).  I only got to three of the cars before I had to quit.  Actually, I did the other half of the job with entering the car data and making stickers for all seven I had to do while waiting in vain for a break in the rain, but since I didn’t do the photos yet I couldn’t charge them yet.  I may be able to get to them Monday when I’m there next, but only if they don’t sell them.

Oh yes, to top it all off, I forgot to return a key to one of the other dealers so I had to stop back there on the way home.  At least it was the closer one, not the further heavy-traffic one.  I don’t think I would generally use this outdated phrase, but it’s starting to look like this job is all wet, pun intended.

Yes, hate- a stong word for someone such as myself.  Here’s the new thing in IL- mess up and forget to register your plates on time and you have to jump through bureaucratic hoops.  I noticed yesterday my plates were expired.  Oops- they sent me notice two months ago but it got buried and forgotten.  No problem, I’ll just go to the currency exchange to reregister as I always do.  Nothing doing apparently- now they require an emissions test first.  What?  Of course, with expired plates it’s illegal to drive there.  So what do they do?  Make available temporary registration that I’m told will only allow me to legally drive to the test facility, nowhere else.  Are they convenient to obtain?  This is government we’re talking about, so what do you think?  I drove to the local DMV which I thought was full service.  Nope.  They gave me the addresses of the three closest places- all over 20 miles away (in Chicago traffic remember!).  So I’m left with a choice- knowingly drive illegally to the test station and hope they don’t check the registration, or jump through this latest hoop and hope I can still get registered before the price-increase deadline.  Nanny states- why many people love them I will never know.  Conservativism clearly rules the day here.

There are some really busy railroad tracks that run along the north border of the town where I live.  There are basically 3 roads that go out of town to the north; only one of which has an overpass for the tracks so cars don’t have to stop for every train that passes by.  This morning on our way back into town, we got stuck by a train.  Taking the route with the overpass is not an option right now because the other road we would need for that route is currently under construction and closed.  So we were stuck by the train, and it was a lengthy freighter (aren’t they all when you live in the country?), and it decided to stop – it was at a standstill on the tracks.  Not knowing how long the train was going to be stopped and because we were running low on gas, our only option was to turn around and try the third route.  Thank goodness it wasn’t being blocked by the stopped train also, which could have very well happened given the way these roads are laid out.  And talk about timing – right as we were going over the tracks, the bells and whistles on the gates sounded because yet another train was coming!  So if we had waited just a few more seconds to turn around, we would have gotten stuck by another train and probably run out of gas.  I didn’t realize we were so low on gas – I think there’s something wrong with our gas gauge because it fluctuates a lot.  But anyway, the point of this story is not to keep a full tank of gas – at today’s gas prices, who could afford that?  But I really hope they finish the construction soon so we can go back to taking the route where you don’t have to bother with the train crossings – I’m so not used to sitting in traffic, even if it is just waiting for a train to pass!

*UPDATE* – This afternoon as I traveled toward the north edge of town, the construction seemed to have been completed, thus opening the route that goes under the railroad tracks!  Maybe ODOT read my blog…