Thursday

Lots of games today. The ESPN site is keeping score as the games are completed.

This is "The Ides of March." Wikipedia has a couple of nice paragraphs that describes the history and usage of the term. I always thought that it was either somehow unique to March or that every 15th of a month was known as the Ides. Apparently, it only applied to the 15th day of a few months, and was the 13th day for the other months. Also, it was only applicable to the Roman calendar, which was replaced by the Julien calendar in the first half of the first century BC.

Then there's the conversion to the Gregorian calendar, but that gets even beyond the obscure interests of a trivia buff.

The "Ides" is the solution to the frequent clue for a four letter word in crosswords for something like, "March date", or "Bad day for Caesar".

I have the Buick out for the first time in a couple of months. I hadn't planned to do so today, but when I stepped outside to go to work this morning, the Taurus was heavily frosted over and I didn't feel like scraping. After having driven only the Taurus for so long, I had forgotten what a nice ride I have in the Buick.

My pal Pete's youngest son is on the Bettendorf HS team which won their first round game last night at the state tournament. If they win tomorrow and get to the finals, I may go over Saturday for the game. Another of their good players is the brother of one of 4's AAU teammates.

I'm not all that creative tonight. Hope 1,2 and 4 have a good start to their weekend. 4, if you're reading, use plenty of tanning lotion!

Be careful out there.