Tama County now has a (one, singular) Starbucks. It’s not a standalone site, it’s inside the casino, but it still counts … right?
(Funny enough, it’s about equal distance from Traer to the casino as it is from Traer to the nearest Starbucks in Waterloo [Crossroads Mall], both about 24 miles.)
Four roundabouts are planned for central Dubuque on the University Avenue corridor. KCRG reports that drivers are using that street to get off US 20. (University is an ancient alignment of 20.) This plan would require buying houses at certain intersections for right of way. The city had a meeting Thursday night.
University Avenue is not a straight street, and the intersections where roundabouts are being proposed are not right-angle intersections. That means that I can kind of waggle my hand neutrally at them.
The roundabouts are part of a much larger plan to:
Thursday’s meeting was very early in the process. There is no dedicated funding or schedule.
There’s going to be something big moving on the highways in Washington County today and tomorrow. (Too bad I already have something in the works for Substack this week.)
About a month ago, Mediacom shut off its unencrypted cable signal. That means my favorite way to watch TV — on the computer — couldn’t work with cable anymore. Ironically, even as I write this now, the signal to my tube TV still works — but only for the networks, network subchannels, and C-SPANs.
A reader informed me that my school timeline page had the merger of Meservey-Thornton off by a year. I double-checked through the Mason City Globe Gazette archives, and the reader was right. M-T formed in 1962.
The thing is, the website for West Fork, the descendant of SCMT and Rockwell-Swaledale, also has the incorrect year, and doesn’t have any year for R-S. I hope, in a roundabout way, that wasn’t my fault.
R-S formed in 1959, based on articles also from the MCGG.
January 8, 1883, was the last Monday that residents of Cedar Rapids didn’t have a hard-copy newspaper sold at stores or delivered to their doorsteps.
Tuesday will be 600 days since I lost my job there.
Like I said, and say at the opening of the short-takes piece below, it’s been … yeah.
January 31, 2012: Downtown Phoenix is pictured minutes after takeoff from Sky Harbor International Airport. PHX was the layover for a Southwest Airlines flight from Omaha to Austin. To date, it’s the last time I was in Arizona, but it only sort of counts.
It’s possible that Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is the airport that I’ve been to the most. I have flown to Phoenix from three different Iowa airports and through Phoenix from two more non-Iowa airports. Phoenix was the destination of my first airplane trip, when I was 10 months old.
Yes, I am extremely aware that blog posts have been minimal so far in 2025. Unfortunately, my job requires me to pay attention to the news, and that portion of my life is like this, without finding the marble first.
In a very rare move, a construction project is beginning in February. Three bridges on US 30 between Calamus and Wheatland, all turning 70 years old, are going to be replaced this year. The DOT press release says work will start Monday and go into December!
These bridges are original to the 1955-56 relocation of US 30 between Clarence and Calamus. They supplanted the 1931 bridges to straighten US 30 through the Wapsipinicon River area that themselves replaced 1922 Lincoln Highway-era bridges.
One-lane traffic will be controlled by stoplights. Detouring to old 30 is not an option because the 1931 bridge over the main channel of the Wapsi has been closed for some time, not even safe enough for one-lane traffic.
When news of what Allen Media was planning to do to local weather desks across the nation got out, the reactions were all the same, and all bad. Even though the move had not been announced publicly, the rumble was enough that news stories were written about it.
A week later, Allen has reversed course, and publicly so. KWWL even carried a message meteorologist Mark Schnackenberg telling everyone he and the KWWL weather team weren’t going anywhere. What that means for meteorologists in other markets who already said their goodbyes, who knows.
As it happens, I was watching KWWL and recorded Schnack’s message, and it appears that’ll be the last thing I record on EyeTV from cable, as Mediacom is switching things off. But that’s another story to come.
