Mousie --

Actually, that area used to be a very large sod farm about 20 years ago. The corn was down south of me in the area between the development I bought in and US 30. Do you still see a lot of deer around you? There used to be a lot of them in the forrest preserves south of 80 to the east of the Tweeter Center. If you ever get involved in local politics, say hi to Mayor Ed Zabrocki and Trustee Patrick Rea for me. Both are good friends. Man, you have me missing Tinley Park big time. Only problem is that after being away from the winters so long, I couldn't take winters up there anymore. But, if you have to have winter, I think Tinley Park is just about the nicest little town to live in. Have you ever gone to the Beer Stube in Frankfort? Great place to have a few beers and eat! Chef Klaus puts out some great meals there (unless he has retired by now). If you ever get the chance, visit Tinley's sister city, Büdingen, in Germany. I have been there twice and loved it. Büdingen's web site is url=http://www.buedingen.net/inhalt/index_main.asp]here[/url]. When the partnership between the two cities began about 1989, we had a couple of the largest cultural exchanges between sister cities in history with between 200 and 300 people visiting in each direction! The Germans came one year during Tinley Park's Oktoberfest (I hope it has been revived by now -- it got to be too much at one point and there weren't enough people volunteering to run it anymore). Well, enough about Tinley Park.

Who is going to be the 200th member of MyOnlineTeam?

Your friend,

vaio --

Acres and acres of lawn! That sod farm was probably at least 5 to 600 acres in size! That area is blessed with very deep topsoil, so skimming off an inch or two each time they havested the sod didn't make much of a dent in the topsoil. I think that the area was very wet before it was settled as America spread into the midwest and the first farmers drained the land to farm it. I think the Tweeter Center (a very large outdoor music theater) is just to the north and east of the land that was the sod farm. Then, most everything else was cornfields as mousie said (with some rotation to soy beans on occasion).

vaio --

No cliffs around Chicago -- the glaciers saw to that. The land is about as flat as you will find anywhere. Urban growth is everywhere. In my 62 years, the population of the US has slightly more than doubled. The world population today is almost 3 times what it was when I was born. I miss the wide open areas as you do, but all those extra people have to have a place to live.

Cheer from Florida - some of us are on holiday for sure. I'm looking at the beach while communicating thru a 56K dial up - forgot how slow it is. Feel like I'm in England since everyone seems to talk with these strange accents. Thunderstorm rolled through my home state and knocked all my machines offline (I guess since I haven't seen a result from my machines in 4 days). The phone still rings so the house must not have burned down. Need to teach those cats how to restart the machines Time to go get burned some more on the beach

Accent? What accent?