Tuesday

Happy Birthday to Margaret!  By my count, she would have been 104 today.  I'm not entirely certain, but this pic may have been taken at Aunt Margaret's wedding in 1967.  That puts Mother at just shy of 59 in this photo.  Tahoe Phil or Aunt Martha may be able to confirm the date.

This also listed on the calendar as the Vernal Equinox.  I always have to check Wikipedia to get the definition of these things a little clearer in my mind.  While the easy way to define it would be the first day of Spring, or one of the two days in the year where night and day are basically equal, there's more to the story.  An "equinox" is actually a point in time where the angle of Earth's equator to the sun is just so.  An "equilux" is the term to describe a day where sunrise and sunset are closest to 12 hours apart.  That's already more than I care to process.

My venture to Harvest Path last weekend was a big success.  1.01 and 1.02 are great kids.  The Twitter pic's captured most of the highlights.  Here's a family photo at the park on Sunday morning.  1.01 has now mastered the art of walking up and down the small slides, and needs no help or encouragement on the bigger slides.  Given her interest in being outside, and her non-stop motor, she should sleep well!

We watched a lot of b-ball over the weekend.  The CBS distribution package for the tournament gave us all of the games that we could handle...and then some.  My level of interest is no where near it was a few years ago.  Not sure why that is so, but it is probably related to the decline in the level of competition.  Sure, there are the upsets, but no small factor in that reality is the one where the "really" good players are one-and-done.  Does Lehigh get by the Dukies if Kyrie Irving is still in school rather than running point for the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers?  How can you get excited about Kentucky when their team is essentially an AAU All-Star program put together for one-year runs?  Graduation rates at Kentucky?  What graduation rates?

Switching to a topic with not as much interest in the Peanut Gallery, but a fav of mine, the international cycling season is in full swing in Europe.  Last Saturday, they ran the Milan-San Remo one-day race in northern Italy. It's one of the more celebrated Spring races for the peloton.  Close to 200 miles in length, it generally favors a strong sprinter with a good team rather than a Tour General Classification rider.  The hills near the end of the route are tough, but not the Alps, and the finish is flat.

Team tactics won the day, and my rider, Fabian Cancellara, got nipped at the line by one of the two wheel-suckers who drafted him most of the last several kilometers.  Cancellara is a horse, a time-trial stud and hugely respected in the sport.  He jumped up with the other two guys (who both had sprinter teammates in the bunch) on the last climb, and then pulled them down and toward the finish, keeping a roaring peloton a few seconds in arrears.  Cancellara is one of no more than a hand full of riders stronger enough to do this kind of thing.  If he hadn't made that effort, the three would most certainly have been absorbed as the other two riders were under team orders not to take the lead on the break.

So Cancellara (in black), knowing this, still buries himself in an effort to overpower the drafters for the win.  Only to have the guy on his wheel pull out and pass in the lunge for the line.  Is there a morality point here?  It happens in NASCAR all the time.  The old bump-and-run on the last lap.  Life's a beach.

Props to 2 for her efforts last weekend at the Figge.  She had them "painting like Pollock" on the square in front of the museum.  The U of Iowa Art Museum has recently issued marching orders for the much-celebrated mural that has hung at the Figge the last couple of years (since the big flood in IC).  This event was part of the "good-bye" celebration.  2 was in the local papers and TV.  Way to go, girl!!

I commented here last week about random solicitation calls on my cell phone, thanks to one of the commercial sites (I wondering Kohl's, Gap, or Delta) giving up my number.  Since then, I've actually received a text from a mortgage re-fi place.  Say, what?

And speaking of drama, what's a Tebow to do?

Maybe more later.

BCOT