Monday

Welcome to another edition of Big Ten Football New Year's Bowling Beatdown.  Or choose your own title.

I am officially holiday-partied-out.  I need to rest.

The laptop is toast.  I'm thinking that water somehow got dumped onto the keyboard.  When I opened it up today, there was significant condensation on the outside of the screen.  Never a good sign.

The island nation of Samoa elected to convert their time to the West side of the international dateline effective last week.  So they "lost" Friday.  Hmmm.  The math on this reminds me of a genealogy discussion with Tahoe Phil.  Apparently, they decided that going back to the West side (from which they had jumped a hundred years ago) made economic sense with their Australian and New Zealand trading partners.

(There's a separate island group called American Samoa to the East of the Samoan Islands.  I guess today the two Samoa's are at least a day apart, if not world's apart.)

The TV was on during most of the evening at the New Year's party that I attended, and I couldn't help but wonder about the not-so-ageless wonder, Dick Clark.  I just confirmed that the guy is over 80 years old.  The make-up artist in charge of him for the show should have received combat-pay.  It's one thing for an 80 year-old to want to stay in the game...think Joe Pa...but really, trying to mask that many years for the klieg lights is A Bridge Too Far.  Not to mention that most of the people who might actually remember him from his glory days are either below sod, or asleep.  Let Ryan call the ball, please.

Bob Barker is another guy who hasn't been able to quit.  Scary.  Chuck Grassely?  At least Hef isn't on the tube.

Interesting that in competitive sports, you really don't have an option: when you can't perform at the highest levels, you retire voluntarily, or are unceremoniously cut from the team.

I have determined that the local Country radio station plays three distinctly different "countdown" shows each weekend that review the current hits in country music.  Kix Brooks (formerly of Brooks & Dunn) does one now that he's no longer singing, and there are two other long-standing programs.  I suppose that each station can choose...and pay...what they want to do for weekend programming.  It just so happens that the local station uses all three offerings.  And that Kix Brooks show is played multiple times for good measure.

I'm guessing that a local radio station can be run on weekends with no more than one or two people in the building most of them time between Saturday afternoon and early Monday morning.  Role the tape.  Or may, run the download.  A guy could conceivably do it all from his home computer.  Kind of like landing on the moon.

By my count, it's 200 days to #7282012.  And it's no longer "next year."  We have now moved to "this Summer".  It even sounds closer. 

(Small UPDATE...3 notes, correctly,  in a Comment below that her date is actually 208 days away.  My mind was working on the house rental date which is 07/22/2012.  Which is technically 202 days...but, I'm just not that good at math!)

Thanks for reading.

BCOT