For the first time in like, forever, there is good weather for Memorial Day and we can't be in our woods? Bill is missing musky fishing something fierce. We were going to be heading to Webster Lake in Indiana Monday night and staying a few days at a campground that had boat rental. Well that got shot down as 1) the big generator is acting up and sounds like a very, very loud scream when you turn it on and 2) Bill needs to get a physical before July 31 in order to keep his Badgercare and 3) Prime now decided to send us to Ohio instead of finishing up in Chicago (not that we have a problem with NOT being in Chicago!).
We are in Joliet IL right now at the Empress Casino campground which is only for over 21 so no screaming kids running around on ATVs or golf carts like we normally have to put up with on Memorial Day! It is so very strange to just turn on the coffee maker in the morning without first going outside and having to get the generator out. Also strange to be able to use water and not have to worry we might run out or fill the tanks too soon. We have basically been boondocking for 6 months except for the two nights we were in Pickerel. We also are able to turn on the air and leave Dozey in the rig when we leave instead of dragging him along with us all the time. So except for the issue that I will mention later in this post, everything is going well. It is amazing how something so common such as automatic electricity and water which everyone takes for granted can make life so much easier!
We received the letter from Badgercare saying that Bill needed a physical to keep his insurance after we had left Wisconsin in April...thanks so much State of Wisconsin. So last week I began calling around to doctors near the Illinois border. No one wanted to schedule an appointment if he was not going to be a permanent patient. I then tried hospital clinics, walk in clinics, occupational clinics you name it and no one would do a physical. Aurora in Kenosha even said that they were scheduling physicals for next JANUARY right now! Finally one of the places recommended the Community Clinic in Kenosha. So I called them. Yes, they could get him in next week but not at the first appointment.....you need to go TWICE to get a physical. What a bunch of bull....that way they can charge the insurance more. But at this point I really had no other option but to schedule with them.
In order to get everything done and get to Hamilton OH by June 4th we are leaving here Monday night and heading up to the Cummins repair shop in La Grange IL. We will stay there overnight and they will work on the generator right away at 7am on Tuesday. We then have to drive up to Kenosha as Bill has his first appointment at 2pm. We are planning on boondocking in the Walmart parking lot so he can go to his physical the next morning at 11:30am and I can have an eye exam right there at the Walmart at the same time. We then have to head south to Hammond IN so Dozey can have his blood work done to make sure that the phenobarbital is doing what it's supposed to at 4pm. And people wonder why I am such a strong proponent for health insurance? We shouldn't have to jump through hoops and have to get everything done in Wisconsin if we can't be there due to employment! If we could get affordable insurance we could have this done anywhere in the country with no problems. I haven't yet posted on my narcotic/USPS issue but will in a few days which is another ridiculous issue that we have to put up with until 2014.
So unfortunately Bill will not be able to get a few days of fishing in as we have no choice but to get his physical now in case we are not anywhere near Wisconsin before July 31. He is now scheduled through June 18, hopefully with a good crew. He worked with a couple in the last month that normally do the Petsmart job and they are scheduled through December. He spoke with the Project Manager at Prime who said that he will probably be sent to either the Petsmart project or a JC Penney project after that. Of course we just don't know where.
That is the hardest part for me to schedule work when I don't know where we will be. You probably have noticed that there have been more posts in the last couple of weeks. That is because I was not able to do much work in inner city Chicago as neighborhoods that looked "normal" to me were said to be dangerous and I just didn't want to take any chances. The one Target that we were at that everyone said was in the worst area looked exactly like the other areas! But everyone from security guards to Target employees to the temps that Bill had said it was really bad. Now that we will be in the suburbs of Cincinnati and Columbus as well as smaller towns I will be able to get some work done too.
I may have to make a trip back to Wisconsin to get things out of the Oshkosh house as it has been placed in pre-foreclosure. Supposedly Chase feels that they can sell it and get their money out of it so they may not give us a loan modification. It doesn't help that my brother has only paid us $600 this calendar year. He is running a bar in Green Bay and "has not been paid yet". Besides trashing Bill's credit rating there will now be the expense of me having to possibly go back and take care of his mess. Well, he will be losing more than just a place to live as I have told him to leave the keys for the truck and his cell phone as well. I am so tired of being walked over by family....never again.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wrong Schedule
It seems that the Georgia office sent us the wrong schedule yesterday. Good thing I didn't schedule any work or other appointments in the Detroit area! Here is the new schedule. The only thing that may change is that we may have to stay in Chicago and do the store set for June 3rd and 4th and then head over to Ohio and be there for the store on June 6th.
June 1 & 2 Dublin OH
June 3 & 4 Hilliard OH
June 6 & 7 Columbus OH
June 8 & 9 Mansfield OH
June 10 & 11 Massilon OH
June 13 & 14 North Canton OH
June 15 & 16 Akron OH
June 17 & 18 Wadsworth OH
June 1 & 2 Dublin OH
June 3 & 4 Hilliard OH
June 6 & 7 Columbus OH
June 8 & 9 Mansfield OH
June 10 & 11 Massilon OH
June 13 & 14 North Canton OH
June 15 & 16 Akron OH
June 17 & 18 Wadsworth OH
Dairy Cow Abuse
I had thought that I was updating a post that I had put here on the blog but I realized I had put in on my Facebook page and not here yesterday. Even so, this is an important case due to all the dairy farms we have in Wisconsin. In my opinion the bastard should have been charged with felonies but we will take what we can get!
Ohio dairy farm worker charged with animal cruelty
By MEGHAN BARR (AP) – 15 hours ago
CLEVELAND — A dairy farm worker was charged Wednesday with 12 counts of cruelty to animals after a welfare group released a video it says shows him and others beating cows with crowbars and poking them with pitchforks.
The video was recorded in an undercover investigation at Conklin Dairy Farms Inc., said Mercy For Animals, a not-for-profit group that publicizes what it calls cruel practices in the dairy, meat and egg industries and promotes a vegan diet.
The video shows workers holding down newborn calves and stomping on their heads. It shows one worker wiring a cow's nose to a metal bar near the ground and repeatedly beating it with another bar while it bleeds.
The charged worker, Billy Joe Gregg Jr., 25, was jailed in Mechanicsburg and was to be arraigned Thursday, Marysville prosecutor Tim Aslaner said. The Delaware, Ohio, resident didn't have a lawyer, the Marysville Municipal Court said. A telephone number listed under his name was disconnected.
Each cruelty to animals count he faces has a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $750 fine. Conklin Dairy Farms, a fourth-generation family operation based in Plain City, condemned the video footage and said Gregg was fired on Wednesday. It said it was cooperating with authorities. "We will not condone animal abuse on our farm," the dairy said in a statement released Wednesday. "We have launched our own internal investigation into this matter and will be conducting interviews with everyone on our farm who works with our animals."
The sheriff's office said the investigation was ongoing and may result in further charges.
Investigators are reviewing about 20 hours of raw video footage the animal welfare group says it secretly recorded at the farm between April 28 and Sunday. Sheriff's deputies were called to the dairy to provide security while Gregg was fired. When deputies asked why Gregg was being fired, they learned about the video, which had been presented to the Marysville prosecutor's office on Monday. "We hadn't even seen the YouTube video," Chief Deputy Tom Morgan said.
Morgan said there are three to four people featured in the video. He said the footage shows Gregg punching and striking cattle in the face and various parts of their bodies with metal pipes and pitchforks. "We've got a lot of video that has to be reviewed," he said. "And we have to identify who all is involved."
Last year, Mercy For Animals, which is based in Chicago, released a video showing workers at an Iowa egg hatchery tossing male chicks into a grinder. Industry groups said such instantaneous euthanasia was a common practice because male chicks can't lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be sold for meat.
Ohio dairy farm worker charged with animal cruelty
By MEGHAN BARR (AP) – 15 hours ago
CLEVELAND — A dairy farm worker was charged Wednesday with 12 counts of cruelty to animals after a welfare group released a video it says shows him and others beating cows with crowbars and poking them with pitchforks.
The video was recorded in an undercover investigation at Conklin Dairy Farms Inc., said Mercy For Animals, a not-for-profit group that publicizes what it calls cruel practices in the dairy, meat and egg industries and promotes a vegan diet.
The video shows workers holding down newborn calves and stomping on their heads. It shows one worker wiring a cow's nose to a metal bar near the ground and repeatedly beating it with another bar while it bleeds.
The charged worker, Billy Joe Gregg Jr., 25, was jailed in Mechanicsburg and was to be arraigned Thursday, Marysville prosecutor Tim Aslaner said. The Delaware, Ohio, resident didn't have a lawyer, the Marysville Municipal Court said. A telephone number listed under his name was disconnected.
Each cruelty to animals count he faces has a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $750 fine. Conklin Dairy Farms, a fourth-generation family operation based in Plain City, condemned the video footage and said Gregg was fired on Wednesday. It said it was cooperating with authorities. "We will not condone animal abuse on our farm," the dairy said in a statement released Wednesday. "We have launched our own internal investigation into this matter and will be conducting interviews with everyone on our farm who works with our animals."
The sheriff's office said the investigation was ongoing and may result in further charges.
Investigators are reviewing about 20 hours of raw video footage the animal welfare group says it secretly recorded at the farm between April 28 and Sunday. Sheriff's deputies were called to the dairy to provide security while Gregg was fired. When deputies asked why Gregg was being fired, they learned about the video, which had been presented to the Marysville prosecutor's office on Monday. "We hadn't even seen the YouTube video," Chief Deputy Tom Morgan said.
Morgan said there are three to four people featured in the video. He said the footage shows Gregg punching and striking cattle in the face and various parts of their bodies with metal pipes and pitchforks. "We've got a lot of video that has to be reviewed," he said. "And we have to identify who all is involved."
Last year, Mercy For Animals, which is based in Chicago, released a video showing workers at an Iowa egg hatchery tossing male chicks into a grinder. Industry groups said such instantaneous euthanasia was a common practice because male chicks can't lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be sold for meat.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Yes, We Hate Chicago
Granted we are rednecks from the northwoods but if you have tons of people standing on the street doing absolutely nothing why in the world can said people not pick up the garbage that they are walking through and standing in? Parts of this city make me embarassed to say I am an American as such trash and filth is something that Bill and I have always associated with the Third World countries we have been in such as the Dominican Republic and Honduras. They say Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and there is pride to be from a certain neighborhood but it sure doesn't look that way to us if you can't even pick up the trash that is lying around!
And we thought beggars on the off ramps in Phoenix were a rarity but I guess it was just our naivety showing. The beggars here don't stay on the side of the road but walk right through traffic and up to your car window with a cup in their hands. We even saw one guy in a wheelchair that was positioned in the middle of two straight lanes of traffic with a sign and a bucket. We then shopped the McDonald's on the corner where he was sitting and he even came inside the restaurant and went from table to table! That is a bit much in my opinion. Granted there are many, many people that need help in this recession but how do you know that they don't get into a better car than you that is parked on the other street and drive home to a better house than you in a better suburb? There have been exposés done on the very practice. At least some of them try to do something for the cash and sell bottles of water for $1. I bet that doesn't fly very well in January here.
So all in all I have no answers for the problems that plague Chicago and this country obviously. But just because you are poor does not give you the excuse to live like slobs. In that atmosphere it is no wonder people never do better in life. I look at some of these neighborhoods and know that if I personally lived there I would not have any dreams, hopes or aspirations. I would feel an all encompassing sense of hopelessness and wouldn't care about anything no doubt. The first step should be to clean the place up! We will not be sad to leave here and go to the Detroit area although that is probably not much better at least we will be in the suburbs and not the city center.
And we thought beggars on the off ramps in Phoenix were a rarity but I guess it was just our naivety showing. The beggars here don't stay on the side of the road but walk right through traffic and up to your car window with a cup in their hands. We even saw one guy in a wheelchair that was positioned in the middle of two straight lanes of traffic with a sign and a bucket. We then shopped the McDonald's on the corner where he was sitting and he even came inside the restaurant and went from table to table! That is a bit much in my opinion. Granted there are many, many people that need help in this recession but how do you know that they don't get into a better car than you that is parked on the other street and drive home to a better house than you in a better suburb? There have been exposés done on the very practice. At least some of them try to do something for the cash and sell bottles of water for $1. I bet that doesn't fly very well in January here.
So all in all I have no answers for the problems that plague Chicago and this country obviously. But just because you are poor does not give you the excuse to live like slobs. In that atmosphere it is no wonder people never do better in life. I look at some of these neighborhoods and know that if I personally lived there I would not have any dreams, hopes or aspirations. I would feel an all encompassing sense of hopelessness and wouldn't care about anything no doubt. The first step should be to clean the place up! We will not be sad to leave here and go to the Detroit area although that is probably not much better at least we will be in the suburbs and not the city center.
Domestic Violence and Pets
Domestic violence is bad enough but when a woman (or a man) can't leave a situation because the family pets will be the next in the line of fire it is that much worse. Please vote for the PAWS (Pets and Women's Shelters) project which is in the running for a $250,000 grant from Pepsi. The PAWS project through American Humane gives shelters grants that allow them to take in both victims and the victim's pets.
http://www.refresheverything.com/petsandwomensshelters
http://www.refresheverything.com/petsandwomensshelters
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Heatwave in Chicago
The last two days have been killer as far as heat and humidity go. We had planned on getting an RV Park when the heat got too bad not only for us but also for Dozey and the Monsters as it is not good for Doze to get too hot as that can bring on seizures. Well, there simply are NO campgrounds within 40 miles of Chicago. I searched all over and we even considered getting a hotel room but as we are near Midway they want $89 or more a night and don't allow pets so that kind of defeats the purpose. So we run the big generator with the AC to cool things down a bit and then run the little generator most of the time with a small fan. We take cold water and dumped it on Dozer and just are hoping that the weather will break. Today is somewhat cooler and hopefully it will stay that way. We have 2 more nights until we go to Joliet and the campground at the Empress Casino. By then the weather is supposed to be back in the 70s like normal.
Bill lost his crew again! First he gets a call that one of them got a new job and wouldn't be in on Sunday night. So he calls his boss who says that he can't get temp help on a Sunday. So he worked with only 2 crew and himself Sunday night which for a store the size of Oak Lawn should have had probably 5 or so. Then on Monday another member calls and says he was offered a full time job and has to be back in Michigan by Tuesday so neither he nor his brother will be in. As Bill was sleeping I right away call his boss and the decide he will run with temps to finish the project as there are only 4 stores left. It's great to have 4 temps but when they don't know what they are doing it makes it all the harder on Bill as he has to tell them everything. When he came in at 7am this morning he said that he will give them tonight to show they have some initiative as there was a lot of standing and SITTING around last night. No way would I be letting them SIT while I am running around working for the entire 8 hours! But Bill doesn't like to make waves that way so hopefully tonight they shape up. This project that Bill is on is very physically demanding on him so this job is nothing that he will be able to do for the next 20 years. He goes through 4 or more bottles of water a night and never even has to pee! He has lost weight again and has to use his belt in his pants to keep them up. Or he could just wear them that way and fit in fine down here.
Speaking of Targets, this one is the strangest we have every seen building wise. When we first drove up we couldn't figure out where the store was as it all looked like a parking garage. It is a two story Target with a parking garage underneath. There are escalators to take customers up and down and there is a down escalator that you hook your cart into to take purchase to your vehicle.
We must be on a roll as far as security goes as yesterday we had an Oak Lawn police officer stop by to see what we were doing in the parking lot as they had a complaint of an RV in the lot with garbage all around it! The cop looks around and doesn't see the garbage and just tells me that people have nothing better to do. Bill thinks it's incredible as the whole CITY has garbage all over it and someone is worried about us having a bag of garbage next to the rig? Incredible!
Bill lost his crew again! First he gets a call that one of them got a new job and wouldn't be in on Sunday night. So he calls his boss who says that he can't get temp help on a Sunday. So he worked with only 2 crew and himself Sunday night which for a store the size of Oak Lawn should have had probably 5 or so. Then on Monday another member calls and says he was offered a full time job and has to be back in Michigan by Tuesday so neither he nor his brother will be in. As Bill was sleeping I right away call his boss and the decide he will run with temps to finish the project as there are only 4 stores left. It's great to have 4 temps but when they don't know what they are doing it makes it all the harder on Bill as he has to tell them everything. When he came in at 7am this morning he said that he will give them tonight to show they have some initiative as there was a lot of standing and SITTING around last night. No way would I be letting them SIT while I am running around working for the entire 8 hours! But Bill doesn't like to make waves that way so hopefully tonight they shape up. This project that Bill is on is very physically demanding on him so this job is nothing that he will be able to do for the next 20 years. He goes through 4 or more bottles of water a night and never even has to pee! He has lost weight again and has to use his belt in his pants to keep them up. Or he could just wear them that way and fit in fine down here.
Speaking of Targets, this one is the strangest we have every seen building wise. When we first drove up we couldn't figure out where the store was as it all looked like a parking garage. It is a two story Target with a parking garage underneath. There are escalators to take customers up and down and there is a down escalator that you hook your cart into to take purchase to your vehicle.
We must be on a roll as far as security goes as yesterday we had an Oak Lawn police officer stop by to see what we were doing in the parking lot as they had a complaint of an RV in the lot with garbage all around it! The cop looks around and doesn't see the garbage and just tells me that people have nothing better to do. Bill thinks it's incredible as the whole CITY has garbage all over it and someone is worried about us having a bag of garbage next to the rig? Incredible!
Monday, May 24, 2010
Navy Pier
Yesterday we took a drive into downtown to Navy Pier as the Green Festival was going on and I have wanted to check that out for three years now. We are located south of Midway Airport right now so we passed by it on Cicero Street. When a plane is coming in from the south it is definitely right above the street and not very high up either. It rather looks like the plane is going to land right on top of you. The drive in was rather quick and easy but of course on the way back we hit stop and go traffic all the way.
Navy Pier itself is neat in a touristy kind of way and is the Number 1 tourist attraction in Chicago. Parking in the ramp was a flat rate of $24 no matter how long you stayed and they must have made out like bandits yesterday as one ramp was already full by noon and we had to go to the 5th floor to find a spot in the other. They have a nice set up though, with pay kiosks on the ground floor where you can pay for the parking. Then when you leave you just put the ticket into the slot, the gate opens and off you go. That, of course, was the only fast and efficient thing in the whole area. You are able to rent bikes and 4 person bikes on the pier but I think it is a disaster waiting to happen. The bikes are weaving in and around the pedestrians and someday somebody is going to lose control and smack into someone and hurt them badly.
We decided to take one of the boat tours that you can find on the pier and Bill wanted to go up the Chicago River into the city rather than out on the lake. Tickets were $28.50 a piece which I found to be a bit steep for an hour boat ride but after all it's Chicago. The bad part was the tour guide blabbling the entire time about architects and architectual eras. The good part was seeing the skyscapers up close. We don't care how high you live in your glass enclosed penthouse, we still wouldn't want to have to deal with your traffic and congestion as well as the weather off of Lake Michigan in January!
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