Brian Christiansen reports 3,800 people showed up to try to get one of 2,000 flu shots (500 for H1N1, 1,500 for regular flu):

... Took my 14 month old son to the clinic held at Burlington, MA’s high school today. I got there a half hour before it opened, after sitting in a half hour of traffic on Rt 3A to get there. Police blocked the driveway, sending people to park at Simmons Park, about a half mile up the street.

I parked there and took my son in his stroller back through the pouring rain. When I got about half way up the school driveway, the woman whom I parked next to was coming back towards me with her infant. She said there wasn’t enough vaccine of either seasonal or H1N1 for the number of people in line. She said 3800 people were already there, pushing and shoving. ...

Channel 5 has the details on a two-car crash around 7 a.m. Channel 4 tweets a 10-mile backup at 8:26 a.m.

Serious enough to require firefighters to cut open the roof.

Photo by Dangut.

Seems the towns along Rte. 3 north of 128 are trying to come up with a branding campaign to make their towns more attractive to business - something along the lines of "Rte. 128," only they can't actually name the road because they wouldn't want people to think they have anything to do with those trashy towns along Rte. 3 on the South Shore and all:

DJDiva reports from what sounds like the aftermath of a food war:

... Where did all the 'restaurants' go? The whole thing is boarded up shops. It looks like a mall 4 days before it closes forever over there. My hope is that they are trying to clean it up, put in some healthy options (bring back fresh city!) and make it look better for the launch of the new Nordstrom wing. ...

With bonus rantage about the Macy's and other stores there (but with kind words for the Mac stores and Legal Seafood).

Back in 1930, somebody gave Boston 200 acres of land in the two suburbs on the condition the city maintain it forever as "a public pleasure ground."

Only now Boston seems to want to sell off the land either as a subdivision or a golf course, according to Friends of the Cummings Park, which notes the city took $141,000 out of the park trust fund last year to pay a subdivision surveyor and $13,000 for legal fees this year - while spending absolutely nothing to maintain the land as a park.

Rob brings his laptop over to the Apple Store in the Burlington Mall when the hard drive dies, but discovers he can't get any help from the Apple "geniuses" because they're all busy helping middle-aged women with iPod problems:

At 9 this morning, Rebecca and Peter checked in from the Burlington Mall, where they were waiting for the opening of the new Apple store:

According to a preliminary count we are 34th and 35th in line. All of the usual suspects are here…The young guys next to us who are watching the Simpsons on their iBook, the twenty-somethings with their earbuds plugged in, the dads and moms with their excited kids ... AND the elderly mall walkers who, on each go round, question us as to why we're in line. ...