Trip to Rockford, or deb discovers iPhone pictures

I spent the morning in Rockford IL on Saturday, part of the time sitting in a Starbucks on the rainiest day of the year, freezing - I think all Starbuckses keep their thermostats low to encourage people to buy hot coffee.

I had to come down here because my foster daughter is taking the ACTs. The test is not offered in WI until October, so we decided to come down to Rockford so she could take it sooner. Unfortunately that meant both of use getting up at 5:00 a.m. - me tired after cooking dinner for the vegans last night, she with any normal teenager's inability to get up.

We pulled into town at about 7:20 a.m., and entered the strip mall hell of business US 20 W/East State Street in Rockford, and I had that kind of reality check - that so many Americans live in places like this, and how lucky I am that I don't have to.

I think the seductive thing about it is that it seems almost OK - even if you can't walk anywhere, you can get a decent cup of coffee, at least now that the espresso boom has hit the suburbs. It wasn't like this in the early '90s, when I had my first librarian job at a community college in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, and there wasn't any good coffee for miles, and the "food service" at the college was MacDonald's, and vending machines.

And everyone is sealed up in their cars.

There were some really good signs along the roadway, though, Carnival of Shoes, and my favorite: House of Buffet (and I don't think it means Warren). I also tried out taking pictures with my iPhone out the car window -

click House of Buffet for more iPhone pictures