Sunday

We have some relief from the bitter cold today. It's a little short of mild, but certainly balmy in comparison to most of last week.

2 and I caught the Augie game last night. Another win, but again not all that pretty. Good crowd. There just must not be all that much to do in Rock Island on Saturday night.

The Augie coaches all wore white tennis shoes for the game as part of the national program, Coaches vs. Cancer. The coaches on the visiting team didn't get the memo. This is a deal that has been going on for several years and is usually a visual anomaly. I'm not sure how the effort actually translates to support for cancer research.

My pal Roy and I did the local auto show today. Can't say that I saw anything that I just had to have. Lots of pretty expensive cars.

New Orleans' quarterback Drew Brees was seriously injured in the Pro Bowl in Hawaii last night. An elbow-something in his non-throwing arm. It will not require surgery, but will take several weeks to heal. How long will it be before they either do away with the Pro Bowl or make it a non-contact event? The risk-reward ratio on a full-contact game just doesn't make any sense today. For anybody.

I did a little house work today and I have concluded that I need to do some serious cataloging of personal papers and memorabilia. I have stuff going back to grade school and high school which needs to be inventoried. If I get hit by the proverbial truck, the girls are going to have to sift through a lot of incidentals.

Interestingly, my effort at writing goes back all the way to these dusty boxes. I probably should have taken a more focused approach to writing in college or grad school. Or maybe now.

Did I mention that Discovery Channel has announced that it will be dropping sponsorship of the cycling team for 2008? There has been a cleaning of the house recently at Discovery's corporate offices, and the new head honcho must not be much of a cyclist. With the Landis thing, and other doping stories, (not to mention that Lance is not racing), the change is not all that surprising. Just like NASCAR and professional golf, sponsorships tend to change every few years as companies measure the marginal benefits of continued advertising of the same event. If Basso wins some races this year, and he is not found to have used drugs (now or before), a new sponsor will step up.

In another story of cycling news, there was an announcement last week that there will be a professional stage race in Missouri in September. The Tour of Missouri, starting from Country Club Plaza in KC. I'll be curious how this race evolves. The state is looking for tourism dollars and this kind of thing has possibilities. But there have been other attempts to host high-profile races in the States, and most have had short lives. Eventually, it comes down to money, and my guess is that the state will be willing to underwrite this kind of event just so long before it becomes more self-supporting.

The city has temporarily placed one of those digital "Your speed is" signs on my street to try to slow the cars down. Someone must have complained. I don't notice the traffic or the speeds that much in the winter because my windows are closed. But my street is a convenient short-cut for the high school and for shoppers. And lots of people get pretty lead-footed on the route. My guess is that once they move the sign to another location, speeds on my street will return to their previous higher levels.

Hope everyone has a successful week. Good luck in all that you do.

Be careful out there.