Thursday

This was a TdF day that I found it hard to pull away from the coverage on Versus cable.  The last 15 miles were on the route that I took up to the Galibier two years ago.  It was good to see the pain on the faces of the peloton.  The non-climbers came in to the finish over 35 minutes after the winner.  Those last 8 kilometers are not made for cycling!  Painful, but memories that will always be with me.

I also had a dental check-up this morning.  The hygienist was new and was pretty determined to get things done "right".  This led to a longer than normal appointment, and has since made me wonder how much time I have spent in a dentist's chair in my lifetime.  Braces.  False teeth.  Bridges. Root canals.  Extractions.  Regular check-ups.  Over/Under on total hours through age 62...say, 750.  That's a full month.  Hmmm.  Taking the Under, but it could be close.

Over/Under on my out-of-pocket costs for dentists, after age 21. (Whatever my folks spent on braces and other stuff before that age was their costs.)  Including braces for the girls and all dental insurance premiums.  Say $30,000.  Taking the Over.  Not going to add it up.

Hey to the vacationers at Tahoe.  Enjoy.  I know that all of us not there wish that we were.

The Winniferous and I are doing fine.  She is a needy dog!

Since when is supporting a balanced budget extremist thinking?  Just sayin'.

The Buick's radio is new enough that the digital face of the unit will name the singer and the song title as the songs are played.  This technology has been around for quite a while (although the Taurus seems to pre-date the feature).  I suppose that the stations need to have the right technology from the broadcast-end of things to get the proper signal out on the airwaves.  Probably just another application of the digital signal that NCIS is always tracing to the bad guys' phone or computer.

The point of the observation is that I noticed that this artist/title digital announcement is not embedded on the weekly Countdown shows that the local country station plays several times throughout the weekend.  They must get a tape or download a file from the Countdown show's producers that for some reason doesn't lay down that ID feature.  I wonder why?

A tidbit of local interest here in the QCA, one of the honorees in a week-long recognition of important women in Quad Cities sports history was Connie Shafer. http://qctimes.com/sports/high-school/article_7cdf01ee-b288-11e0-9ed0-001cc4c002e0.html  Give her the props.  But she was a strange lady.  My guess; she still is.

Hope Friday is good for all area codes.

BCOT