Friday AM

Glad to see the end of the week.  It feels like I've been busy all week, but I'm pretty sure that I haven't got much done.  And now we have another computer problem this AM.  I'm guessing that this one is hardware related as it is unusual for us to have a LAN problem, but still have Internet access.

I attended the visitation last night of a modestly distant relative; a first cousin of Grandpa H.  The deceased was a priest at St. Ambrose, and was the last man standing of that generation of cousins on Daddy's side of the family.  Father William Dawson.  Questions on the related branches of the family tree should be directed to Tahoe Phil.

Lots of moving parts to the fam this weekend.  3 and Herky head to London later today, and 2 and 4 join @srh4 for a girls shopping weekend in C-town.  The Winniferous and I will be holding down the fort in the QCA.

4's addition to the Comments section on Wednesday is a direct link to the controversial essay in The Atlantic magazine by a professor (Stephen Bloom) at the University of Iowa.  The essay goes on for several pages detailing this guy's "honest" appraisal of Iowa's backwardness, small mindedness, and numerous other "ness's", and generally concluding that Iowa is a place where losers to go to die.  All this coming from a Left Coast transplant.  Maybe he should go back home.

So I'm not much of a Tim McGraw fan.  But he has a couple of songs that have always resonated with me, the one currently in mind: Live like you were dyin'.  Another close friend from another lifetime passed away this week at age 62 from pancreatic cancer.  Tahoe Phil makes the comment that he's in the 1/2 of 1% on the survival rate.   We are all so lucky.

I'm headed out to my normal Friday AM "meeting" at Gold's.  Hope everyone has a good TGIF.

BCOT