Wednesday

Is there an echo in here?  What happened to November?

Big day in the market today.  Don't look for a long, sustained up-turn.  Europe is still murky.  Holiday sales will lose steam as the discounting goes deeper.  (Kevkev, don't even think about buying anything at Kolh's without a 30%-Off-Everything coupon!)  The Washington DC fighting will have another kerfuffle, and once the Dow approaches 12,500, the shorts will exert their influence and the selling will pick up speed again.  There's simply not an over-abundance of buyers out there.

The Four Letter channel (ESPN) is kicking off a week of fund-raising for the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research tonight.  It's a worthy cause.  They ran the 1993 ESPY Awards speech again tonight, simultaneously on all of their channels at 1900 hours CST.  Here's a link to the video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuoVM9nm42E

I'm thinking that 4 has become a bit of a Dunn's coffee regular as I ran into her there this morning for the second straight day without any pre-arrangements.  And not at my normal mid-morning time.  At least today I was quick enough on the draw to notice her before she had bought her coffee.  Yesterday, she had already paid and was just hangin' there by the delivery stand before either of us picked up on one another.  Definitely a nice surprise.

Dan and Denise get this year's award for the first Christmas card received on Maplecrest.  Thank you much-ly. 

My pal Bill was at a tax seminar the first two days of this week, and his big take-away was that we needed to establish a secure portal system for access to returns for any electronic delivery.  Big penalties apply if the IRS catches you sending taxpayer documents on the Internet without proper security.  Basically, the IRS is regulating the preparers to become an extension of their own bureaucratic system.  Let's definitely not make things easy on anybody.  And we'll need to raise our fees to cover the additional IT costs.

For what its worth, I get it.  I blame the attorneys.  Cue the joke:  What do you call 1500 jailed lawyers?  A good start.  Bah-da-bing!

Congrats to 2, 3 and Revkev on their workout challenge. 

The Augustana basketball team is rated #1 in D-III this week.  They won a tough game last night against local rival St. Ambrose at the SAU gym before a full house.  Their rating status will likely get a strong challenge this weekend when they go down to StL for a 4-team tourney.  Wash-U is always competitive.  Regardless, Augie could have a legit shot at the national title if they can keep healthy.  They have a 6'8" guy at the three spot who could be the D-III Player of the Year.  He tossed in a little 38 against Ambrose.

My desktop is supposed to be swapped out in the AM.  Over/Under on a smooth transition?  I'm fooling you and taking the Over.  Maybe that's just hope, eh?

Just a reminder, every once in a while, Blogger's spell-check won't work. When that happens, my Rick Perry-esque-ness may come out.  Sorry.  Blame Blogger.

Hope everyone has a good Thursday.  Thanks for reading.

BCOT