An artist’s rendering shows the design of an Amazon fulfillment center being built at Harlem Avenue and Vollmer Road in Matteson. (Village of Matteson)

Whether it has been a giant giveaway like the Obama Center defacing Jackson Park or the boondoggle of all boondoggles like O’Hare Airport expansion, Chicago always thinks big.

Big was installed in Chicago’s DNA when famed architect Daniel Burnham advised the city to “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

Except when it comes to the long proposed and doggedly squashed proposal to build a South Suburban Airport. For that, Chicago insiders and powers-that-be have a different slogan: “Make no big plans.”

They once again thundered their opposition when South Side and south suburban officials resurrected the airport idea after they were encouraged by the construction of a giant Amazon fulfillment center in Matteson and Markham.

It makes sense. The south suburbs and South Side are perfectly located at the nexus of highway and rail connections from the east, west and south. The very reason that Chicago grew from nothing to America’s second largest city practically overnight was its location, the same reason that O’Hare once (but no longer is) the nation’s busiest airport.

Location and access to the rest of the country is what makes the Southland prime property for warehousing and shipping. A cargo airport nearby would be and is an attractive, even necessary, ingredient for growth. Not just for the Southland but for the entire region and state.

Such growth is necessary for the betterment of the South Side and south suburbs, the region’s economic stepchild. If the media, vested interests and politicians really believed that black lives matter, they would be rushing to build the airport.

No need to go over all the reasons here for their opposition, because only one thing really mattered: The south suburban airport was seen as competition for the motherlode of patronage jobs and contracts at O’Hare.

One argument they used and still do is the assertion that no airline is interested in the airport. Baloney.  Two decades years ago, airport advocates had discovered two internationally recognized airport and public works developers who wanted to  plan, finance, build and operate the airport at no cost to taxpayers.

I get tired of repeating that, but I have to because that fact is completely ignored by the airport opponents. As part of the same argument, they insisted that the airport would never serve passengers. (As if cargo carriers weren’t enough.)

Such an argument is a slap in the face of the couple million people and business that lie within an easier commute to the airport. As if, you know, “those people” don’t fly.

I won’t argue here that the opposition is racist. Because it’s not. The opposition is a matter of raw power and greedy economic interests. It is a product of the fantasy that O’Hare Airport can be expanded and improved enough to strengthen Chicago as the airline and transportation hub that gave it such a leg up over other cities.

The joke’s on us. Chicago, the airlines that run O’Hare and the corporate establishment that benefits from the airport have been fruitlessly trying to improve it for 20 years at an uncounted cost billions of dollars. Still not  enough. More billions and decades, we’re told, are needed.

Opponents tell us that the south suburban airport will be a boondoggle. In fact, the biggest boondoggle in Chicago history is despised, overbuilt and obsolete O’Hare Airport. It’s time to stop pouring good money after bad and build a workable, logical facility that will give the Southland the economic boost it needs and deserves.

The good news is that the Chicago real estate market is getting less bad as people learn to just live with Covid-19 all around us. Last month I pointed out that, with significantly better contract activity, we would see improved closings in June. Well, we did, but not as dramatically as I had hoped. June sales were down 27.4% from last year, which still counts as a dramatic improvement from May’s 42.5% decline.

The graph below puts it all in historic perspective with all Junes flagged in red and a light blue 12 month moving average. You can see how this was still the worst June in 9 years, with only 2 of the last 24 years worse. And you can also see how the moving average is dying now that we’ve had 3 consecutive months with large, double digit contractions.

The Illinois Association of Realtors will come out in 2 weeks with their own set of numbers and report a 29.5% decline in June sales. They march to the beat of a different drummer.

Chicago home sales have been declining now for several years but the Coronavirus really tanked the market in May and June

Chicago Home Contract Activity

The really good news this month is that contract activity hit an all time high with a 14.4% increase over last year. That’s also the first increase in 4 months and the largest percentage increase in almost 5 years. I’ll probably do another post in a few days about what else is going on in the Chicago real estate market and what that will show is that this year’s home buying season has been pushed out, with a lot of pent up demand surfacing now.

Upon closer examination it appears that the bulk of the increase is happening with detached homes. The evidence is pretty consistent that this segment of the market is doing a lot better than attached homes.

Chicago home sale contract activity spiked to a record high for this time of year after plummeting to record lows because of Coronavirus issues.

Pending Home Sales

Part of the reason that the spike in contracts is not having a bigger impact on closings is that it’s a bit too soon for those to flow through the process. Consequently we’re seeing an increase in pending home sales, contrary to what has been the long term trend. Pending home sales were up by 203 units in June over last year after some pretty big decreases in previous months.

The backlog of homes likely to close in the next 1 – 2 months has spiked back up after hitting historic lows.

Distressed Home Sales

Distressed home sales as a percentage of the total was essentially flat relative to last year – up only slightly from 4.1% to 4.2%. That’s a pretty low number so there’s not that much room to go lower. As I suggested last month, it’s possible that there is slight upward pressure on this number from the pandemic as regular home sellers are holding back from listing their homes.

Since the housing crisis the percentage of home sales that are distressed has steadily declined.

Chicago Home Inventory

The inventory situation is getting interesting with fewer new listings and higher contract activity. This is very good for home sellers but a real challenge for buyers. Detached inventory hit an all time low of a 1.9 month supply of homes based on contract activity. Attached inventory also dropped significantly to a 2.9 month supply, which is the lowest level since March of 2018.

After a big Coronavirus induced spike in April the inventory of homes for sale dropped back down in May and June. Detached inventory hit a record low.

Chicago Home Sale Market Times

How long it takes to sell a home in Chicago right now is a bit surprising. You would think that with the low inventory situation market times would be shrinking pretty dramatically but it’s just the opposite. Detached homes that sold in June took 81 days to go under contract and that’s up from 72 days last year while attached homes took 86 days compared to 65 days last year. The increase in market time for attached homes (condos and townhomes) is significant. Frankly this just doesn’t make sense.

The Chicago real estate market impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has recently started to manifest in longer market times for both detached and attached homes

You can also find more Chicago real estate market information on our Web site.

#RealEstate #ChicagoRealEstate #Coronavirus

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

If you are craving a “Taste of Chicago,” don’t despair. The city has put together an impressive series of virtual events along with an awesome line-up of food vendors for “Taste of Chicago To Go” from July 8 through July 12.

Photo: Carole Kuhrt-Brewer

The Taste of Chicago, pandemic style, kicks off at noon  tomorrow (July 8) with a food demonstration by Chef Carlos Gaytan of Tzuco (formerly chef at Mexique) on Youtube. The Michelin-starred chef cooks up what’s arguably the best Mexican fare in the city (sorry, Rick).

Tomorrow, Gaytan will be demonstrating how to make Avocado Flatbread–so get your avacodos ready.

Later in the day, you can dance your calories away when SummerDance brings Bollywood to Chicago at SummerDance in Place.The evening, Bollywood & Bhangra with Bollywood Groove and DJ iLLEST promises to get you movin’ from 5:30 to 7:00.

Taste of Chicago to Go Restaurants

Inside Monteverde’s at the 2019 Taste Preview.Photo: Carole Kuhrt=Brewer

The Taste of Chicago To Go has a menu featuring “tastes” from more than 40 would-be Taste vendors from neighborhoods across the city including Arun’s, Eli’s, Billy Goat, Monteverde and Robinson’s No.1 Ribs.

The dining guide includes all the information you need to know to order, along with a few suggested must-try items — similar to the classic Taste of Chicago set up that lets you try bites of restaurant’s signature dishes.

Taste of Chicago Virtual Events

COOKING DEMOS

• Wednesday, July 8: Chef Carlos Gaytan of Tzuco prepares Avocado Flatbread
• Thursday, July 9: Chef Maya-Camille Broussard of Justice of the Pies prepares Lemon Lime Cake
• Friday, July 10: Chef Jessica Romanowski of Care Kitchen Chicago prepares Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread Cookies
• Saturday, July 11: Chef Darnell Reed of Luella’s Southern Kitchen prepares Salsa Con Queso
• Sunday, July 12: Chef Sarah Grueneberg of Monteverde prepares Pasta Fredda with Summer Herb Pesto

Online music and dance performances

• Wednesday, July 8, 5:30 – 7 p.m.: SummerDance in Place — Bollywood & Bhangra with Bollywood Groove and DJ iLLEST
• Thursday, July 9, 6 – 7:30 p.m.: Millennium Park at Home Music Series with The Braided Janes and Jon Langford

Subscribe to Show Me Chicago by email

If you would like to keep in touch with what’s happening in Chicago, like us on Facebook or subscribe to Show Me Chicago by email. To subscribe, type your email address in the box below and click the “create subscription” button. Our list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

How wonderful that we can gather to celebrate the life of our father, this husband, this grandfather, this great grandfather, this father-in-law.

We thank family and friends who have expressed love and support during this difficult time.

As a family, we face a situation none of us imagined. We all knew this day would come. But not during these difficult times. And we have a right to feel angry, and sad, and resentful, or simply feel lost about how it is we are supposed to feel. We’re likely left wondering, “How do we face the unexpected?”

As a family, however, I hope we can find some answers about dealing with the unexpected—not by thinking only about the last four weeks when our father was sick but by reflecting on the life and legacy of Raymundo Salazar.

The earliest memory I have of our father is of him taking me to the Adler Planetarium. We were hanging out as a family with friends by 12th Street Beach, our usual spot, when he remembered the sky show at the planetarium. He took only me; I was a little kid. I remember sitting back in the big chair and staring at the dome as this unexpected trip with my father opened my eyes to the universe.

In our 26th Street home, our father loved to sit in the backyard on summer nights and look up at the sky. Still in his mechanic’s work clothes, a beer at his side on the wooden bench, our father sat in silence, crossed his arms, and looked at the stars. One night, when I was a little, I quietly walked outside and sat next to him. After working another long day as a mechanic, he still smelled like cars. He talked to me about the constellations and told me their names.

I look back and realize: talking about the universe was our father’s way of teaching us to look beyond our circumstances.

Based on our father’s life, that’s the answer to how we should face the unexpected: to look beyond our circumstances.

This understanding guided our father when he came to this country at twenty-one to work as a Bracero, as an agricultural guest worker. He later found his way to Illinois, worked as a landscaper, worked in factories. He attended evening school and became a mechanic.

Our father was wise. Even though he only had three years of formal education in Mexico, our father read. He recited poetry. He had these old records that he played on Mother’s Day, records with old poems he recited when he was in school. Our father admired intelligent people that he described to us as “sharp.” He would tell me when I was a kid, “Mijo, joo godda be charp.”

Our father wasn’t the type of father who had long conversations with his children. He shared his wisdom in brief but meaningful moments.

He taught us how to introduce ourselves with pride and with a strong handshake. He challenged us to sign our names as elegantly as he signed his. He said, “Navy blue is the most elegant color a man can wear.” When I was in college, he reminded me to recognize the value of people who worked with their hands.

Our father established himself as a well-respected mechanic who always did high-quality, honest work. Where he worked in a machine shop, our father posted a sign at the cash register: “Si ud. no habla inglés, pregunte por Raymundo. Él le ayudará.” If someone didn’t speak English, my father would assist them. Our father always used his intellect to help people.

No matter what happened in his life, our father never lost his passion for work. He took us to work with him. He taught us how to turn a wrench. He taught us to get out of bed every morning, no matter what happened the day before.

But he struggled sometimes, too. At one point in his life, he faced an incredible sadness that I, as a teen-aged son did not understand, could not understand. But now, as a grown man, as a father, now, I understand.

Despite that low moment in a long life of eighty-three years, our father never turned his back on us. And, for as long as he could, he worked for us. As a father, Raymundo Salazar never failed.

We cannot remember our father’s life without remembering the most important person in his: his wife, our mother.

Together with Maria Concepcion Salazar, his partner in life for almost fifty four years of marriage, our parents created a home filled with love.

My mom wrote about their first New Year’s Eve after they got married in 1967. She said our father invited her out to go dancing, to the Aragon Ballroom where all the best groups played. She writes that she went to the beauty salon. She bought a pretty pink dress and new shoes. She was freezing as they walked to the Aragon from the car. And her new shoes made her slip and slide on the icy sidewalks, but they arrived at the ballroom, and they danced.

It’s easy to freeze our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents in our minds and hearts as elderly people. But, once upon a time, they were our age, too. Like us, they had dreams. They still do.

Our father would have worked his whole life if he could have. And when his body didn’t let him anymore, our mother helped him look beyond his circumstances. With the greatest amount of love I have every witnessed, our mother cared for our father until his last day on Earth.

A couple of years ago, I watched my mother as she shaved my father’s face. He sat in his chair looking up at her without uttering a word. She held his face in her beautiful hands.

I sat mesmerized by how delicately she caressed his face as she took care of him. Our father, our old man, came to accept that to survive, he needed our mother’s help. And our mother, with all the love in her soul, never let him down.

They didn’t always get along. No one is going to get along all the time when they love each other for over fifty years. A few years ago, when our father was being difficult, I took him out for a drive. We didn’t say much. I played norteñas as we silently drove down Lakeshore Drive. After some time with a little bit a talking, I figured out why he was angry. It was tough for him to accept: he was old. I said, “Ok, Pa. But you gotta be nice to mom.”

He nodded, and he said, “She’s my best friend.”

As husband and wife who together faced some incredibly difficult circumstances caused by situations out of their control, they taught us that in those difficult moments, we do what we can to help ourselves and to help others get beyond those circumstances.

Maybe that’s what made our father be as generous as he was with the little he had. One time when my siblings and I were in the kitchen in our 26th Street house complaining about not getting something we wanted, my father explained the financial limitations by saying, “Yo estiro la sábana hasta donde me alcanse.”

He made us understand that he could only use the resources he had—and he used them as generously as he could. But we still were not going to get everything we asked for.

So we grew up appreciating simple things: Sunday rides to flea markets hours away, to lakes, to picnics, to amusement parks, to museums, to so many tourist attractions in Chicago, McDonald’s pancakes on Saturday mornings—our father always driving.

And, every so often on a Sunday night, our father took us out and taught us that the best dinner in the world was a steak with a baked potato.

When his grandchildren came into his life, he loved them with all his heart. He helped raise some of them and contributed to all their lives. He picked up some of them from school. He watched others play baseball, others dance. Some of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren helped watch over him. He always welcomed them in his home with a smile; they all loved their Grandpa.

Over these past few days, many family and friends have shared with us how they remember our father as being joyful, always smiling. And so many have mentioned the music he listened to. Our cousins in California and Mexico talked about how they were listening to norteñas in memory of our father.

Lots of them heard that music in the van he owned for the longest, the green Dodge. That van packed with family and friends on trips here, in Texas, in Mexico, created so many good memories for so many people.

On trips home from wherever our father took us, we could look out the windows of that van and stare up at the sky as he found the way home. That’s how our father showed us the world.

In one of the poems my father sometimes recited, there’s a line that reads, “Con un sabio consejo, me enseñó a ver el cielo.”

“With some sage advice, you taught me to look to the sky.”

When I said goodbye to my father on Friday night, I talked to him about our trip to the planetarium. I told him that I’d look for him in the sky as I carried out his legacy on Earth.

Each one of us is his legacy. And we will carry out this legacy in our own way.

I’m not going to talk about losing my father—because I didn’t lose him. I carry his memory with me. Each one of you will carry his memory with you.

One of the most valuable memories we have as a family is celebrating our dad’s 80th birthday with a group of talented norteño musicians. That party filled our father’s soul with happiness. Our father celebrated life with norteñas. So today, we can think back on Raymundo Salazar’s life with his music.

We’re grateful to have a group of talented musicians join us today to celebrate our father’s life.

This is my father’s music.

Follow me on Twitter @whiterhinoray.

To subscribe to the White Rhino Blog, scroll down on your phone or go to the right side of this page on your computer.  

You get one email when I post.  This subscription is spam free and you can opt out any time.

I’d like to get to the point where Medium Rare never has a week off. Even when I’m on a little writer’s vacation, be able to share the work of guest authors. This week I’m excited to pass the keyboard over to my older brother, Tom, for his thoughts on automation, pet peeves, and what we really think about during those ice breakers at work.

By: Tom O’Brien

The other day at work, we had a meet and greet for the new hires. It was all the typical introduction stuff. We went around the virtual room and told a little bit about ourselves; where we went to school, where we live, hobbies, etc. We each had a list of about 10 topics to hit, but the most interesting one, to me, was “pet peeves.”

Fundamentally these ice breakers never work because I spend the whole time thinking about how I’ll answer my questions and ignore everyone else. So, I was thinking about all the things that bother me and my mind went to my car. I’m basically a 4-year-old boy at heart so my mind goes to cars for any question. Example: “What’s your favorite color?” I like red and blue, but we should also factor in type of car. For example, I don’t like the colors yellow or orange, but should I ever own a Lamborghini, I’m picking yellow all day long. So, naturally, a question about pet-peeves went to the features in my new car that I’m still adjusting to.

Top of the list are selectable driving modes. When you hear “driving modes”, you might be thinking of when Dom Toretto presses the NAS button, and the car blasts off. Tesla’s Ludicrous mode is like that (or supposed to be, I wouldn’t know) but that’s not the case for most cars. Most cars will have a few modes with names like “Sport”, “Comfort”, and “Eco” where “Sport” is the car you bought and every other mode is something less. The modes adjust the shifting dynamics, the throttle response, and softens or tightens the suspension. But it’s not the “feature” itself that irritates me; it’s that every time the car turns on it defaults to “comfort” and I have to change it back to “sport.” Why can’t it just stay where I left it? There’s also the engine stop/start feature, the way the mirrors automatically point down when in reverse, and the way the car beeps when I’m backing up also turns down the radio to hear the beeping…

The more I thought about it the more I realized it wasn’t just car features that bothered me; it was having to use three remotes to watch cable, it was automated calls and voice recognition services, it was self-checkout, the list goes on and on. So, I settled on my pet-peeve being automation. This is when I tuned back in to hear what others were saying and realized it was my turn to talk. I said “automation” and we had some discussion about “but what if it’s really good and done right?” Turns out “anti-automation” is not a popular opinion amongst engineers.

Well, I dwell on things, so I’ve been thinking about automation and what “good automation” would be for a few days and decided automation is good when it reduces the time I spend on something I don’t like. So what are some things I don’t like doing that I inevitably have to do? I don’t like shopping for groceries, so maybe automate that. Well, on second thought; I’m a picky eater so let me pick everything out, but you can automate the delivery. Well, on third thought; I enjoy the driving part to the grocery store, so just leave grocery shopping alone. How about laundry? I hate doing that. I’m so glad to have a washer and dryer. Imagine if the dryer could fold your closes too, that would be even better!

So maybe not all automation is bad. I started pulling the thread on laundry a little more. On very rare occasions I’ve washed something by hand, it must have been so terrible for my great grandparents to have to wash everything that way. Imagine how great they must have thought it was when they got their first washing machine. But pulling the thread a bit more, back then the average person only had about 5-10 articles of clothing. A person then would probably spend an hour a week washing their clothes. Now I must have 100 articles of clothing, it takes two weeks to fill up my laundry basket. I do a load of wash and a load of dry and it takes 2 hours. Then I have a mountain of clothes to put away. So, after 80 years of laundry automation, I spend the same 4 hours a month doing laundry that my great grandparents did, and I have many times more clothes to fold and put away. But my automated laundry is labor-free, so that is definitely worth it… right?

Well, is it? What do I pay to have labor-free laundry? Well, the cost of convenience is space. My washer and dryer take up about 24 square ft of my kitchen. Because everyone has so many clothes every room has a closet, we have three closets at about 25 ft2 each, so 100 ft2 of my 1000 ft2 condo is devoted to clothes and laundry which is quite a bit more than the trunk or dresser my great grandparents would have had. Where I live the housing cost is about $500/ft2, so that means $50k to support automated laundry.

But it doesn’t stop there, we financed the house so $50k is really $100k over 30 years. The washing machine and dryer weren’t free either, if you figure $5k for the set every 10 years for 60 years there’s another $30k. The clothes weren’t free either; another $30k for 60 years of clothing seems conservative. So now we’re up to $160k. If you make $160k in a year, congratulations, you’re a top 5-percenter. Put another way, $160k could be that yellow Lamborghini, or put more practically it could be 8+ years of maximum pretax 401k retirement savings. All of that money to not do laundry by hand. I don’t think my great grandparents would be as impressed by their washing machine if they knew that.

So maybe there is no good automation. Or maybe the problem is how we fill the time saved by automation. Laundry doesn’t cost a fortune if we all kept to 5-10 articles of clothing. Our washing machines could be the size of microwaves. The laundry room could just be another room.

Which leads me to the two key questions with any new piece of tech:

1. Do I really need this?
2. What is this freeing me up to do?

And with that, the ice breaker round was over.

Next week’s Medium Rare will return to the local restaurant and local business profiles. I’ll be writing about All Grass Farms in Dundee Township, the awesome milk they make there, and a pretty significant detour

I’ll be back next week with a new post on Monday morning. Also have a new newsletter going up tomorrow on Long Overdue. If you’d like to subscribe to the blog, just enter your email in the box below. Thanks for stopping by and see you next week!

I’m a procrastinator! When I need to make a sorta big money purchase, it takes me months to pull the trigger. When I bought my last laptop, I had it down to two models. Then the procrastination began. I did the online research. I went to my local Best Buy. I went to my not so local Best Buy. I lost track of the amount of stores I visited trying to make a decision. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if the stores had different items. Same thing, different location. The salespeople at one store knew me well enough that we were having conversations about other life events besides computers.

One day, I finally decided it was go-time. I was going to buy a Mac. I went to Best Buy, but by the time I arrived the store was closed. I took it as a sign. A sign of what, no one really knows. The procrastination went on for another couple of months. Finally, one day while I was in the store for what seemed like the thousandth time,  I saw an open box model of one of my choices.  I talked them down another fifty bucks and bought the laptop.

This process started in March and ended in October. Seven months! Finally! I told you I was a procrastinator!

With that as a backdrop as to how I make decisions, I’m now in the market for a new cell phone. Let me rephrase that…..I’ve been in the market for a new cell phone. OY!!!

My current phone is more than three years old. It’s an original Apple SE. Rose Gold! It was my first Apple phone and I loved it. But after three years, it’s slowed down, the battery runs down faster and takes longer to charge. They’re all signs that it’s time is coming to an end. Out with the old, in with the new.

I’ve been wanting to do this since April, but as you can tell from the story at the top, I don’t make doing this kind of decision easy. Plus, when you add in a pandemic where everything was shut down, it became tougher, if not impossible…at least for me.

Like the laptop, I had it down to two different models, both made by Apple. This should be easy, right…just go to an Apple store. BUZZ!! Those stores were closed. Apparently they weren’t classified as an essential business. Damn! But, apparently cell phones companies are essential, so I could check them out there. SCORE….sort of. OY!

I head to the store, play with both models and kind of make a decision….kind of. But there are a couple of problems:

Problem #1: This store doesn’t sell phones outright. You can only put them on their payment plan and pay them off monthly along with your phone bill. SIGH!
Problem #2: Because of the plan I’m on (which is really great), you can’t buy a phone through their payment plan. SIGH!

Naturally, I took this as a sign. BTW, I take almost everything as a sign….just sayin’.

A normal person would have ordered the phone through the Apple website, had it delivered, activated it and been done with it. Because of the pandemic, procrastination and that ridiculous sign thing, I’m not your normal person. Go figure, right.

I decided to wait until the Apple stores opened for business. That happened in the last couple of weeks. YEAH!!! I decided to wait until the novelty wore off a little before going there. Yesterday was the day. Look out world, Howie is getting a new phone!

The store opens at eleven. I get to the mall at noon. Ehhh…one little hour. Should be no biggie, right? It was a biggie!!

I find the Apple store, take a look inside and it’s packed with people. There’s also a line to get in the store. Plus, they want to take your temperature before letting you inside. Sheesh. We start with the temperature taking. I’m good to go. I ask the guy what it showed since I’m kind of neurotic about feeling my head fifty to one hundred times a day. He shows me the thermometer. It says 90 degrees. Seriously…NINETY!! I’m pretty sure it was wrong or I’d be dead. He said it was only a couple of degrees one way or the other. Ehhh….what’s a few degrees among friends in a pandemic that has killed 130,000 people? Pffft!

Next step is to talk to one of their sales folks while I’m still outside the store. I tell her about the two models I’m looking for. They have both. Cool, but that doesn’t help. I asked if they would do the activation and transfer my apps to the new phone. “Sorry. Not during the pandemic. You can go to our YouTube site and they’ll walk you through it, or go to your carrier and they’ll do it for you.”

OMFG!!! C’mon!!!!

So….I can walk into an overcrowded store, buy a phone and still have to make another trip or two to get it to work? Uh uh!! Nope. Not today (yesterday actually by the time this publishes)!

But, here’s what she told me…..if I get to the store when it opens….that’s eleven (shaking my head), it’s fairly empty. I can walk in and out of the store safely in a few minutes with a brand new phone. So kids….that’s the plan…at least as of time that I write this.

The Apple store opens in just a few hours. This event that started in April should end today. It took only three months…way less time than my laptop. The procrastination should be over….unless out of nowhere comes a sign. Oh please God, no more signs!

“President Trump Outrageously Demands Apology from Bubba Calls Noose a ‘Hoax'”

TMZ Sports headline

Trump never makes an apology:

Yet he’ll demand one from you and me

Even from Bubba Wallace!

How blatant his gall is!

How hideous his  hypocrisy!