Sunday

So I pulled this picture from the New York Daily News site this morning, depicting a runner in Central Park yesterday.  What a difference a week makes!  Last week at the time, 3 and Herky and I were spending a leisurely two hours in Central Park with several thousand other New Yorkers, in decidedly more enjoyable weather conditions!  See below.

Pretty low-key weekend here on Maplecrest.  The cycling club dinner with guest speaker Bob Roll on Friday night wasn't too bad.  There was a little kerfuffle when a couple elected to crash our table and refused to honor our reserved status.  Which led to our whole group picking up and moving to another table at the back of the room rather than spitting our party.  Leaving that twosome by themselves at the premium-seating table.  Very surprised that people would dig in for spaces at an event like that.  Why would you choose to hard-line it at that kind of function?  It takes all sorts, I guess.

Anyway, Bob Roll stayed in character for his talk.  Which is to say that he played a bit of the fool.  Lots of drinking stories.  Lots of hyperbole on different things that happen on the Tour.  Not much organization to his remarks. But still entertaining.  His appearance doubled the attendance for the dinner from last year.  And he hung out another day for a 40-mile ride with club members yesterday.  I chose to work in my yard!

Not sure if this is lottery-ticket stuff, but I did get all but a couple of single boxes in both the Friday and Saturday NYT crosswords.  This after somewhat easily nailing the Saturday puzzle last weekend while on my visit to The Big Apple.  Either the moon and stars are in favorable alignment, or I'm spending way too much time sharpening the noggin on extraneous information.  I probably need to get out more.

All of the local towns have (or have had) their "Trick or Treating" schedules either this weekend or tomorrow night.  Bettendorf's is tomorrow, so I'm thinking that there may be a Biaggi's dinner in my future.  Halloween remains my least-favorite celebratory day. 

NASCAR has various things going on to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Pink curbs at this week's race in Martinsville is a new one for me.  (With the 24 pretty much out of the hunt for the championship, I haven't followed the races that closely in recent weeks.  But with no-name games as the only TV sports fare today,  I have the race on for background noise.)

I gave into the elements yesterday and moved my indoor plants that had spent the Summer on my deck back inside for the on-coming colder weather.  A few of the higher branches on the big ficus trees had already been nipped by frost in spite of some attempted blanket coverage the coldest of those nights.  It's a bit of natural trimming that keeps them short enough to fit in the room!

I've been doing some more math.  Actual retirement.  I think that what's going to happen, provided the health stays on plane, is that I'll keep throttling-back a little each year until sometime in the year that I reach age 70.  (More than a few people wonder whether I have already retired, given my coffee-shop and travel habits.)  So while the original 4000 days estimate might have been a little short on total days, I'm guessing that it will be right on target for applied hours.  I take some comfort in being able to identify a definitive date to put out there.  You can do the math.

I have a busy week ahead.  I have an evening meeting in suburban C-town on Wednesday night, and then fly out of Midway on Thursday morning for Reno, and a three-day weekend in Tahoe.  3 has bid'ness in California this week, and will be coming up to the lake on Friday (Safe travels, Kiddo!).  Should be fun.  And we hope to add to our knowlege-bank on our service-providers come next July.

Maybe a little more later.  Off for TT training.

BCOT