Eye on Veterans

When the news broke last month that Dollar Tree, owner of Family Dollar stores, would be closing up to 1,000 Family Dollar locations, they didn't say which stores would be in line for permanent shuttering. Now, that information is starting to trickle out, including the announcement of the first Family Dollar stores in Illinois set for closure.

By now, you've probably heard quite a bit about the billions and billions of cicadas that will be emerging from the ground here in Illinois in a little over a month--but have you heard about the cicada killer wasps that will be showing up to feast on the cicadas? They're really, really big.

It took 12 years for someone to do it, but Naperville's strange world record for the amount of people willing to show up and completely reverse the order of how a normal person gets dressed has finally fallen to an out-of-state competitor.

If you're hoping to get a look at the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, you normally have to get yourself far north of where we live in Illinois. However, once in a while atmospheric conditions are just right for those of us living south of Canada to get a rare look at one of the coolest things you can see in nature, and it looks like this month's conditions will be right.

A major player in discount stores with over 108 Illinois locations is planning on closing 1,000 stores across the country, and 600 of those locations should be closed by summer.

The new I-Pass stickers are available, and there are several ways for you to get some for you and your vehicle(s), whether it's an in-person pickup or an online order. Keep in mind that you don't have to get the stickers at all right now as long as your plastic transponder hasn't hit its expiration date.

When you think about pet ownership, do you attach a limit to what you think is a reasonable number of pets that a household should be allowed to have? For the non-pet lover, any number, including 1, would be too many, but what is reasonable for the pet loving families here Illinois? A Rockford alderman has introduced an ordinance that puts a limit on the number of dogs a Rockford resident can have.

By now, you've probably heard about this once-every-200-years emergence of cicadas we're about to experience this spring here in Illinois and some other places. There are going to be billions, if not a trillion of these bugs surfacing throughout Illinois, but the one thing not many are discussing is the problem with cicada urine.

Many things just scream St. Patrick's Day; lots of green clothing, lots and lots of green beer, shamrocks, parades, corned beef and cabbage, and of course, the traditional dyeing of the Chicago River. Here's when and how Chicago authorities plan to make the river turn green.

Since our elected officials can't seem to get off of their butts and dump this twice-yearly habit of springing forward and falling back (even though over 75% of people want it gone), we're going to have to do it again this weekend. But, as an added bonus, at least you get to lose an hour's worth of sleep.