I took the Civic Literacy Quiz and got 48 out of 60 correct, or 80 percent. Thanks above the average of 73.9 percent.
civics,quizes

If you come to this site only to read news and insight on Peoria politics and the media, feel free to skip to the next post.
Seriously, you are NOT going to be interested in this post.
Still want to read it? Well, OK …

Consider:

I turned 44 yesterday.
I slept in a bad position two nights and my shoulder still hurts so bad I can’t move it.
I smell like Ben Gay.
I went to the store two times and returned without the item I went out to buy.
I am thisclose to yelling at the neighbor’s kids to get off my lawn.

Shoot [...]

Yep, that’s my Mom. Before she met Dad. Before three kids who gave her nothing but trouble. I think she was trying to do her Marilyn Monroe imitation. I don’t wanna hear any wolf whistles from any of you lowlifes.

An old family photograph showed up in my inbox an hour ago, courtesy of my Aunt Wanda, who lives in Rantoul:

God, this brings back memories of Averyville. From left, my brother Eric, me and our grandmother, O’Dean Lyons, taken with a Polaroid camera sometime in 1968-’69, I think. We called her “Momma Dean,” ’cause my [...]

From today, Dec. 3, though Dec. 11, I am on vacation.
I sure picked a swell time for some time off work, huh? It’s actually my first vacation in many years. Sure, there have been several extended period of … shall we say “time off,” it’s the first without any ‘how-am-I-going-to-make-the-rent-this-month” worries.
Sweet.
I’m gonna start the event [...]

No, Polly. I am not playing with my thingy.
I’m upgrading from WordPress 1.5.2 to WP 2.0.4.
It’s time. I can’t get tech support for the main installation or for plugins. The answer always seems to be: “Oh, that was solved with the upgrade.”
So. I’m upgrading.
If you logged into this site and aren’t seeing this message, [...]

Jerry Klein, in today’s Journal Star, bemoans the good-old-days when kids used to play in the streets. They are going to take away Jerry’s curmudgeon credentials for this. Usually, all you hear from the senior set are complaints about children running wild in the streets.
I pretty much ran wild as a kid, at least when [...]

I have several new posts up and running at The Blog Peoria Project homepage.

It’s (509) 479-3605.
That area code is correct. It’s not one of my famous typos.
Just in case anyone is wondering.

UPDATE: The people have spoken: There’s a video clip of my interview with Mike Dimmick for News 25 @ 9. Thanks news director Jim Garrott.
I got to WEEK studios early, by about a 30 minutes, and pretty much made a pest of myself. I lied about getting there early because I was worried I might [...]

You’ve probably noticed that I’m going by “Billy Dennis” instead of “Bill.”
I’m named after Dad, and the family calls me “Billy” to differentiate. I think I was in the third grade when I decided that “Billy” was a child’s name and I started signing all my paper’s “Bill.” It stuck as I got older. It [...]

… it’s your birthday, and all you really want is for the stupid dog to not wake you up so early that morning.
… you have to subtract the year you were born from the current year to figure out how old you’ve become, but you forget what year this is and you’ve been giving people [...]

His name is Ivan. He’s black. He drools. He eats off the floor.
My nephew Neil was supposed to be my roommate after I moved into the mobile home here in Kingspark Estates. No sooner than I signed the lease when the brakes went out on Neil’s still-unpaid-for Saturn. That kept him from being able [...]