Project Insomnia

You could eat all day at Ikea, and you may need to. The shortest path through the 290,000-square-foot store opening today in East Palo Alto runs more than half a mile. On average, customers spend more than two hours in Ikea stores, which means many people stay a lot longer.

Wait a month and you can eat at Ikea 30 minutes before the store even opens for the day. On Oct. 1 the ground-floor bistro will begin serving breakfast starting at 9:30 a.m. every day but Friday and Saturday, when the gates to coffee and cinnamon buns open at 8:30 a.m.

• SPEWS
• relays.osirusoft.com
• inputs.relays.osirusoft.com

The opening of Ikea's second Bay Area megastore will draw shoppers from as far away as South San Francisco, San Jose and Fremont, transforming East Palo Alto into a destination. But beyond the dread, anticipation and ballyhoo, Ikea's arrival signals change not only for East Palo Alto, but also for many others who live and drive on the Peninsula as well.

Also accessible from the lobby is the Marketplace, where a wise early bird I'd met outside advised I go first. Good thing he told me. Out of all those helpful signs in the lobby, I saw none pointing me to this shopping option, which is effectively screened from direct view.

Ikea prefers to funnel shoppers upstairs on an escalator to room displays. Here, the decorating-challenged can see those flat-packed cardboard boxes all put together, just like in real life. Well, at least Ikea's version of it.

A similar case that often raises questions is "disgruntled," meaning "angry or aggrieved." Many folks go looking for the term "gruntled," which they feel must logically mean "happy." Well, "gruntled" did exist at one point, but it meant "angry or cranky," not "happy." The "dis" in "disgruntled is really another intensifier, making "disgruntled" mean "very gruntled."

The Atlanta Braves are the best team in the National League. They have been for more than a decade, which is why the Giants had not swept them in a three-game series since 1990. They were three outs away from ending that run when the Braves popped closer Tim Worrell for three runs in the ninth to wipe out a 3-0 Giants lead.

And then, Barry Bonds reminded everyone why he's the best. With one out in the 10th inning, he launched Trey Hodges' first pitch into the center-field bleachers for his 39th home run of the year, the 652nd of his career and, most important, a 4-3 Giants victory.

1. Open the Ad Muncher configuration dialog. In the "Recent Items" listbox, find an entry containing googlesyndication.com.
2. Click the "Add" button.
3. Under "Category", leave the default selection "Exclude filtering on site".
4. Under "Formatting", select "Site domain" and remove everything in that text box except googlesyndication.com.
5. Click "Add" and the new entry will appear in your Custom Filter List.

Now Playing
Talking Heads - Our House In The Middle of the Street (XtraRadio playing Nite and Day! Coming from Amsterdam.)

But Californians do not limit themselves to electing, recalling, indicting, and (sometimes) lynching their swarms of officials; they also legislate directly. Every election has on the ballot more proposed laws than candidates. The provincial and national representatives show some restraint - I have been assured that the typical California legislator will withdraw a bill if you can prove to her that pi can't equal three no matter how many vote to make it so. But the grassroots legislation ("the initiative") has no such limitation. ... In many cases an official has not yet been sworn in when the first recall petition is being circulated.

Thank you for your interest in Trustic. We regret to inform you that we are no longer taking registrations and will soon be closing the service. We have determined that the system as it currently is designed will not achieve the level of accuracy that we require, and an inaccurate system is worse than no system.

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• Room last renovated in 1956, apparently


• Shower head at appropriate height for an eight-year-old or possibly a jockey


• Bed achieved a Mohs scale score of approximately 6.5


• And finally, when we checked out, the desk clerk tried to charge us for a pay-per-view movie we'd apparently watched the night before at 9:30 PM. At 9:30 PM the night before, we weren't even in the room, much less watching expensive bad movies. They did take it off the bill but were pretty obvious in their attitude that we were lying about not watching it.