Friday

I have no excuse for failing to get here this week. My evenings were no more congested than other times. Maybe a little less motivation or something. Whatever.
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My current Amex bill had the gift that keeps on giving; the Hertz bill for the car in Italia. The transaction got posted the day after my September billing cycle closed, so it appeared on the October statement. No surprise, but I did calculate out that the exchange rate was $1.52+, which is no small currency loss on that transaction alone.
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I have no direct point of reference, so it's hard to say if the trip cost more than it should have. Or not. When I first started thinking about it two years ago, I anticipated a Euro dollar at maybe $1.25 US dollars. In that line of reasoning, I spent an additional 20% ((1.50 - 1.25) /1.25) for the deflated US dollar to finance the experience. And since I had no control on that cost, I can intuit that 2 and I spent 10 days on the road in Italia (air, hotels, car, bike, and cash) for less than 5 grand, all in. I can live with that.

The march to the Turkey Trot is going slowly. With less than four weeks to go, I have serious concerns on my ability to make the one hour time goal. My outside runs have revealed a lack of wind in these old lungs. And not much better on the treadmill at Gold's. We'll see.

It looks like a new phone system here in the office will happen before Christmas. We are still using the same equipment and technology that we installed when we built the building 20 years ago. Most of the features on new phones can't be just added to our existing hardware through a black box concept as the digital technology just won't communicate with our analog-based stuff. Of course, I can't tell you the difference between digital and analog, but that's a separate topic.

A partial culling of my plant collection occurrred last week when I left several of my indoor plants out on too-cold of a night. Tropicals just don't handle frost all that well. Note the top of my big ficus. I'm thinking that this occurrence was akin to "defensive indifference", the term used in baseball to describe the defensive team's lack of concern for a baserunner's advancing to second or third when that team in the field is ahead by several runs in the last inning. Maybe a stretch, but it is the season for baseball analogies.

I generally don't root for the Yankees (or any American League team in the WS), but I'm glad they won last night. Pedro is such a tool.

And I'm in the camp that is glad to see Mark McGuire coming back into baseball as the hitting coach for the Cards in 2010. I'm wondering what he will need to do to satisfy the dirt-seeking sports writers/talk show hosts on the 'roids thing? I can live with no revisiting of the past, but the media hacks won't be so kind. The Cards and McGuire need a plan to face the music on Day 1 of training camp so that it won't be the constant topic all of Spring Training. And beyond. Then again, for some writers, they'll never give McGuire a break. As though everyone in Cooperstown is a saint.

ND flexes it's TV muscle tomorrow with a "home" game in the Alamo Dome in San Antonio against Washington State. Huh? I read the story on NBC's webpage and the concept is kind of interesting, but it also reflects ND's snootiness side. (Not to mention notredamenomics! (sic)) With the 12 game schedule, ND is now structured to have 7 (!) South Bend games every year, four for the road, and one "home" game at a neutral site. With traditional home-and-home relationships with USC, Purdue, Michigan, and Michigan State, the scheduler will need an abacus, at least.

Back to work. Have a great weekend.

BCOT