At 4:45 a.m. a train horn so loud that I could hear it over the air conditioner in the bedroom.

The big news of the day is my toaster is broken. One side of one of the slices turns out soggy, not toasted. I don’t plan to fix it, I plan to pitch it. There have been great advances in toaster technology in the past 20 years.

  • Sound Off features more people who object to the unceasing train horns. Does Alderman Cummings still think we’ll “get used to it”?
  • What we have here is like the sewage dumping into Lake Michigan. No one in the Milwaukee sewer administration is held accountable. All we hear is, “the forms didn’t get filed on time.” Well, whose responsibility was it to file the papers? I want names and I want some accountability. A Freeman letter writer agrees.
  • The British Open is on TV this morning and the weather out there is frightful. The worst of a gloomy March-looking Wisconsin day. Here it will sunny, humid and hot. It just goes to show, it could always be worse.
  • Natural gas price increases mean a long, cold winter for you but I get a new boiler next week. My heating costs should be lower. Do I get a tax rebate from anybody?
  • Our high school cheer: “PBR, that’s for me! We’re the Class of Seventy!” Who knew that Pabst would end up as the number one American owned brewery?
  • Here’s the difference between Journal “Waukesha” columnist Laurel Walker and the rest of Waukesha County. Note how regretful and envious she sounds of Milwaukee County’s plan to raise taxes:

Shades of Waukesha County nearly 20 years ago – night-and-day shades – come to mind with the debates in Milwaukee about a county sales tax increase and a $20 wheel tax for street work. Milwaukee County supervisors want voters’ opinions on a 1-cent boost in the half-cent-per-dollar county sales tax, but County Exec Scott Walker vetoed it Wednesday. A committee of Milwaukee aldermen Wednesday endorsed a $20 wheel tax, though Mayor Tom Barrett promises a veto. Back in 1989 and 1990, the Waukesha County Board considered both a $20-per-car wheel tax and a new, half-cent county sales tax to ease property taxes and support transportation. The fights were futile. We still have neither.