Lots of stuff, 4-21-2014

Interests and obligations, some family related and some not, have been keeping me busy for the past few weeks and as a result I have not been spending much time on this blog. Last week I was out of town for a few days and missed both the city council meeting and the county council meeting--both looked interesting. When I got back to town I noticed that the outer shell of the Dollar General store was up.

The new store will have an entrance from Monroe Street as well as from Clark Street.

SR 114 is scheduled to be closed at Brookside Park this week and I see that at least one of the side streets now has a sign with a weight limit on it. If a truck goes past Airport Road heading east, there may be no good way to get around the blockage. I hope that the Interstate does not get blocked during construction. Traffic detouring through Rensselaer is not uncommon whenever there are problems on I-65, and those problems are not infrequent. (I-65 should be three lanes from Gary to Indianapolis.)

I hope that when they do the new culvert they put a generous shoulder on the road, one big enough to allow sidewalks. Right now the culvert is a pinch point for the road.

All the solar panels seem to be in place for the solar farm. The latest issue of the Municipal Power News said that this is one of three plants under construction this year, the others being at Frankfort and Richmond. The capacity of each will be one megawatt.

 I noticed that a new house is being constructed at the corner of LeAnn and Franklin. The slab for this house was in place last year. The house next to it, which was being built last year, is still for sale.

 Larry's Shoes celebrated fifty years in business with an Open House on Saturday. It was well attended.

The nice weather has had a lot of people out, many to the parks. The weather cooperated for Saturday's Easter Egg hunt at Brookside Park. Lots of kids were there.

I need to spend more time working on my garden. I am behind--I still have not planted stuff that should have been planted a week or two ago.

I had stopped watching the ice on the Great Lakes a few weeks ago when it started receding, but then I noticed that it was still in the news. I was surprised to see that even with all the warm weather we have had, the Great Lakes still have an ice cover of 35.8% for April 20. There have been some recent winters that have not had that much ice anytime during the winter.

I did not check the Walmart ice last week--I assume it is gone--but I did see the remnants of an ice pile in Schererville on Thursday.