One headline I saw recently was that "Dark Knight" has a chance to beat the "Titanic" 's $601 million box office record. Funny, two movies I had no intention of ever seeing are huge mega hits. I don't really see what the big deal is with this Batman movie. How many people are going to this movie because they say it killed Heath Ledger? And why so much interest in a movie that's deemed really dark and warped? And how come in a time where people are scaling back in creative ways on their gasoline intake, suddenly a wallet eating movie ticket becomes the "gots to has it" thing? And there's nothing anything good about the Joker. He's just another version of a clown, and a very evil one at that, and that ain't cool.

Man it is hot. They've been forecasting 80s and 90s for the past week and the next week as well. It's the norm but I still don't like it. I'm trying to keep cool as best as I can with cool showers and soakings. At least there's no bugs.

Yesterday Arby's had a sale: .99 cent Regular Roast Beefs, all day Thursday - no limit. I was quite shocked; I've never seen Arby's run a promotion like this before. Picked myself up a couple of them. A little Arby's sauce to go with it. Mmmm.

Recently I have been researching Naperville's past through the web, and finding some really weird results. Apparently in the early 1970s they were going to build a Western Electric plant near me on what is now the Springbrook Prairie. Also been finding out the history of schools and the districts, and how local farmers allowed a $2 per acre tax on their land so they could raise funds to expand my old Elementary school to keep the school there, and in the late 60s & early 70s, the wheat & corn farmers actually helped build the additions to keep costs down.

Of course back in those days, this area was nothing but vast corn, soy and wheat fields, and roads were few and narrow. Today, it's built up solid with multi-lane roads, 10,000's of houses, schools, retail. It is nothing like it was even 20 years ago. The city experienced a growth spurt of biblical proportions. Some population numbers: 1980: 40,000. 1990: 80,000. 2000: 125,000. 2008: 150,000+.

In my quest for historical information, I ran across an older former resident on Flickr, and we started rehashing a bunch of fuzzy memories of former stores, places, road configurations of a very different town from the 1970s & 80s, a brown building I remember at a busy intersection that I had not seen or thought about since the early 1980s long gone, turned to be the original Francis Granger Middle School, which there is very limited info on the web. I'll probably be making a few trips to the library until I figure this all this out. If you left this town 20-30 years and came back, you would have no idea where you were because it has changed so much. And I at least take comfort, that when I'm on the road, if people are blocking me or slowing me down, I can yell with confidence that "Hey! You don't belong here! I was here before you all were! Go home! Get back!"