Saturday

A bright, sunny wintery day here today. Cool, so not much of the snow will melt this weekend.

The good news is that my snowblower came to life last night! I had gone home after work figuring that I would be moving the snow the old fashioned way, but I elected to give the blower a few more pulls before I picked up the shovel. And, wal-lah! On about the tenth pull it fired up. So I was able to do my drive-way and the neighbor lady's across the street without injuring my back.

The snow blower is one of those two-cycle engines where you mix oil in the gasoline. Of course, I have no idea what the mixture should be, so I do the finger-in-the-wind test and add the oil to the gas container til it "feels" right. Looks like I guessed ok for this winter. I will have to buy a new gas container for the lawn mower come Spring since it uses pure gas.

I went to a Christmas party last night at some friend's who live on Schoolhouse Road. A couple houses down from Dr. J. (Not that Dr. J. for you basketball fans out there!) The house was very Christmasy, with, by my count, six Christmas trees in the basement. They had it catered and serviced by Biaggi's. Very nice. And I knew a lot of the people so I was able to float through several conversation groups. I did get tired standing so I was outta there by ten or so.

Because of the party, I was unable to watch the exciting Hawkeye game. And now they get Coppin State tonight in the championship game. Who said Alford couldn't excel in Non-Conference Scheduling 101?

Here's some food for thought. Name another sporting activity where the regular season ends, and you then wait 6-8 weeks for psuedo play-off games. Which is what exists with the college football bowl season. The criticism of the BCS and the bowl selection process seems to ignore the timing aspects of the games themselves. You play a game each week for three months, and then you take a month and a half or so off before you play the "big" game. The real issue with this scheduling is that the bowl game committees are focussed on January 1st as the best clebratory time to capitalize on the economics for their communities. While the coaches and college President's may be crying foul about their concern for the "student-athletes", everybody is simply following the money.

A play-off system could work. See what happens in every other NCAA sport in D-1, and every NCAA sport in all other divisions.

Interstate 80 in central Illinois was a real problem during the snow storm Thursday night. I guess people had abandoned their cars and everything. It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Sounds like it was a mess at O'Hare too. You just never know about winter travel in the Midwest.

I tried out the new SB's today. I doubt if it will become a regular hangout. I asked for my extra hot Americano, specifically telling them to steam the water. I then sat down in a chair out of eye sight of the barista, and way too quickly, she delivers my drink as an "extra hot Americano". There was no steaming of the water. She surely just poured from the hot water spigot labelled "hot". They must think I'm a rube.

That's actually the second time that that has happened to me at a local SB's outlet. The Moline store tried the same thing one morning last month. I think that corporate policy is to not serve overly hot stuff in order to avoid a McDonald's coffee-like law suit. The Incline Village staff were similarly reluctant to meet my request last Summer, but the Woodbury store delivered the goods willingly, calling it a "cup of fire!" Fortunately, the Bettendorf SB's staff has catered to my preferences.

I'm headed to my indoor workout this afternoon. 2 may be on her own from here on out, or at least until they get the sidewalks cleared.

Be careful out there.