Monday, May 18, 2015

Monday

Yeah, so the spooling-up of the blog has been on the ineffective side of the Gettin'-it-Done O'meter.  No excuses.  As the tower chief said to Maverick, "The pattern is full".

I would be severely deficient if I didn't at least get a couple of pics up today in honor of 2.  As it is her birthday, you are Daughter of the Day, Kiddo!!

We did do a nice BBQ at her place in Iowa City last night.  We test-drove a pretty decent bottle of Bordeaux in our Summer-long effort to acclimate ourselves to the Bordeaux vintages before our arrival there in September.  I'm betting that a Russian hacker could be employed to get us all a link to her new Fitbit to keep the fam apprised of her post-surgery rehab progress.

One of the topics of discussion over wine was the prospect of an extended family reunion in 2016.  Tahoe Phil and I had talked a little about the idea earlier this year, but we both thought this might be a job for the cousins to orchestrate.  In the chat last night, Kansas City was the leading candidate for the destination.  The Midwest folks could drive to KC, and it makes the travel time a lot easier on the East coast contingent.  2 and RevKev maybe the prime movers to get something on the calendar.  Go for it!

All for now.  I just wanted 2 to have a bit of the spotlight.  Hope its a great day!

BCOT

Monday, May 11, 2015

Monday

I actually started a post last night (Sunday) on my iPad, but ended up brushing a key that deleted the draft from the Blogpress app.  Bummer.

So the weekend up in Minnesota was not all that remarkable.  But there were no incidents with travel, the wine and food were good, and the business side of the trip was time well-spent.  My Thursday and Friday were mostly business, so we had only the evenings to hang out and chill with 1.01 and 1.02.  These shots were taken Saturday morning at the little park by the coffee shop before I headed South.


The book-on-tape for the trip was another case of lots of words thrown together with little to show for it.  It was one of the new Jason Bourne novels written by a guy named Eric Van Lustbader.  I never have heard of the guy, but he has written a lot of stuff.  Picking up on Jason Bourne seems to have been a profitable experience for him.  But really, how many new corners can you create for Jason Bourne to extricate himself?  I skipped one whole segment of the storyline when he rotated events between the Mideast/Asia story thread and the Washington piece.  Didn't miss a thing.  And I won't be reading any more of his Bourne efforts.


In the Good News Department, it looks like I have a lead on my Yard Boy for the Summer.  My pal Ron had told me that he thought he had a kid in his neighborhood who would be good for the role, but that was a couple weeks back, and I figured he had too much on his plate to make the contact.  I was probably right, but the mountain moved to Mohammed at Dunn's yesterday when the kid's mom happened into the coffee shop.  Long story short, we exchanged phone numbers and the Dad gave me a call today.  On-sight conference will happen on Maplecrest later this week.  I hope it can work.


I've got a couple of 16" x 20" color prints of the ND campus under a framing contract at the local Michael's.  The prints were the bonus if I threw in an extra $25 bucks on my annual subscription to the alumni magazine.  (Actually, one print was the bonus; I paid an additional subscription price to get the second print.)  The price of framing?  Keep in mind, there was a published 60% discount advertised...plus an additional 10% for the day I was there.  Yeah, well, the base price musta been off the charts.  My average price per frame exceeded $250.  Hello.  And I don't even have a place specifically in mind to hang the finished product! 


I started eating almonds a couple of years ago, initially as an addition to oatmeal.  I've always thought that they were a little pricey, but the California drought has recently added 20% to the price of the standard package.  I've read some stories about how much water the almond trees take to maintain, and the competing political/social/business interests for the limited water supply.  How the planners have computed out the ability to sustain unlimited development in the California, Nevada and Arizona deserts makes me wonder who's in charge of the spigot.  My oatmeal will be a little more bland going forward.


OK.  Not a great effort here.  But a start.  Hope its a good week in your neighborhood.


BCOT