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Don't let this photo scare you off from a trip to Granite City, it's a small, pleasant town, with more churches than bars, and it seems pretty nice people.

I woke up far too early. That happens to me sometimes. It is quiet here in this hotel. Not a huge lot of business here, and that's o.k. I had to take a smoking room in order to get ground floor. That's fine, I am not bothered by the slight smell of tobacco in my room. I can always burn a small amount of incense if it does get to me.
I am enjoying that it is possible to cool this room. We went to a quaint eatery called 'The Hen House' for typical Midwestern fare. The place is decorated with antique farm implements, which included a rusty scythe! :) It was the less elegant, less efficient Anglo-Celtic-American model. The food was decent, prices are reasonable and the service was good, unobtrusive but they made sure you had what you needed.

After eating, we all went to the Big Lot store, a discount place, for sodas for me so I don't get ripped off drinking machine sodas, and some candies and stuff like that to share while hanging out watching films. We plan to watch Borat together. All of us are huge Borat, Ali G, and Bruno fans. I turned Kat on to Brega, Ceca, Seva, Nervozni Postar, and other Balkans music types. There was something crazy over at Radmila's 'My2Second Shelflife' the crazed mash-up of Serbian narodni muzika with breakdancing bit, she ADORED it.

I guess they had gone to hear Gov. Blagojevic speak at Kat's college too. He's rare in being both Serbian-American and a Democrat. It seems like a lot of Serbian-Americans are Republicans.

I have largely reserved for my forward journey. I need to arrange lodging in Florida, mostly the problem is not knowing if the two hotels for the area I'm going have complementary van service from the airport or not. This one was too far away for that. It cost to get here as a result, and this town doesn't have adequate taxi service, in fact this town doesn't have ANY if the phone book is any clue!
I think I'll have the kids get me to a hotel with complementary van service the night before my flight, and I'll avail myself of the wake up call and the van. Getting me to a hotel with the service is probably easier than actually being dropped at the airport at the un-Godly hour going to Florida at 7 am is going to result in. On the up-side, it was a very cheap fare, and there's only one plane change, and that plane change has a nice long break between. I can stay in the secured area, have a nice lunch, catch up on phone calls e.t.c.

I need to get these people to put a new light in the bathroom, the one they have has burned out. B.T.W, I haven't changed my computer from Yakima Gulag time, so it's wierd, I woke up too early for here, tried to stay down, couldn't so I got up and now I am going to do my hair.
The water here is a little brackish tasting to me. I asked my son to bring either club soda or fizzy plain water. He brought a brand called 'Mendota Sparkling' which comes in cans. Not bad at all. If water is going to be paid for, I want some fizz, and if it's going to be brackish, I want fizz and bi-carb both! :) It's a quirk, work with me here.
Nature notes, there is a lovely Rose of Sharon near the Hen House, and coming back to the hotel yesterday morning, I saw a cicada! We don't get cicadas in the Yakima Gulag.