Friends and clients of Laureen Thornton miss dropping in on her during working hours. Now they have to travel all the way to the south end of town to have tax work done. In the meantime, Laureen’s old office space on Beloit has been replaced by a Maywood newspaper, The West Suburban Journal, edited by L. Nicole Trottie. Maywood has needed its own paper for a long time and I wish Ms. Trottie luck. She’ll need it.

This year, Bob Crane will begin his 37th year as custodian and all around man-to-see-about-trouble at Garfield school. Bob, his wife, Elaine, and their family, recently returned from daughter Tracie‘s wedding to Nick Bedsole in Cancun, Mexico. Tracie is working for Qualis Corporation, a subcontractor to NASA, and she was able to watch the shuttle launch in October.

Congratulations to The Old School Records store on Madison, which celebrates its sixth anniversary this month. Fellow businessmen Bill Todd (Todd and Holland) and Rich Shauer were having a serious business talk (yeah) at the record store’s party. Rich was seen doing some wild dancing with a very pretty young lady named Olivia.

Meanwhile at the party, Tracy Aleksy held a small audience captive as she told how her mother, Sheila Reynolds, was run over by a train recently – and lived. Sheila simply squeezed down between the tracks and waited until the train passed over her. An ambulance, crowds and the fire department all had gathered to see what had happened to the lady. She had a few bruised ribs, but that was all. Later, at the hospital, she told her story to a nurse who then took a dollar out of her pocket and told Sheila to buy her a lottery ticket.

Celebrating birthdays this week are Leslie Kelley, Wilma Haley, Hazel Anne Rossi, Colleen Cassiani, Tiffany Cassiani, Rosalie Koldan, Donna Chan, Len Gappa, Milady Gerger, Bethany Hawkins, Brandi Mintz, Matt DeCosola, Paul Richards, Michelle Becker Baum, Aaron Scheiwe, Zachary Drane, John Connor Trage, Jessica Huebner, Al Lussow and Pat Petrey.

Happy anniversary this week to Sam and Jamie Alonzo, and Melissa and Anthony Turek, and Hafid and Siham Hamadene.

Loving thoughts and wishes to ailing Phil Blum.