Friday

Happy 25th to 2!! She is Daughter of the Day.

We are all anxious to to hear that 4 has made it to her destination in Spain. We know that the airline lost her luggage in Madrid, and that she missed her flight to Seville. She had kept some clothes in her backpack for just this reason, but it is disconcerting nonetheless. It is hard on Mom and Dad when a child is in trouble six or seven time zones away from home.

My pal Pete and I did a 15+ mile bike ride this morning at 5:30. Ouch! I never do early workouts and I can't say that I enjoyed this one, but it certainly frees up your day. It was cold this AM, maybe a degree or two below 40. I wore early-Spring attire; tights, dri-fit long-sleeved shirt, wind-shell, and full-fingered gloves. And I still got cold in the extremities. Not much traffic on the bike path at that hour.

Beautiful day here today. Margret made her first appearance of the year at the office.

I just got very lucky. I was checking my Criterium email account and opened an item which had a separate web address that I also opened. When I determined that that site was extraneous and hit the close box, I got the prompt, "Do you want to close both pages?" Which I answered, "Yes", and the system proceeded to close Blogger as well. On that previous blog site where I had the problems, my entry would definitely have been vaporized. But when I logged back into Blogger, I had a "draft" for this entry. An automatic feature of Blogger. Good deal for me.

In another example of Dad making it into the Technology Age, I used my cell phone as an alarm for the first time this morning. It was simple to set, and worked like a charm (actually, like an alarm). Not that I needed it, as I was awake at five bells. But it was my back-up plan, just in case. You always need a back-up plan.

How high can gas go?

Our neighborhood Hy Vee Food Store opened their new building this week. I'm a bit negatively curious as to whether they will be able to maintain their customer-friendly atmosphere in the new digs. The company opened a totally new facility in another section of Bettendorf a little over a year ago, and I have never felt as good about my shopping experience at that store. They hire more people to staff a bigger store, and those new employees do not have the history of the former operation. We'll see. The parking lot is a challenge, and will be until they tear down the old building and create more space.

Good luck to 1 and Matt for their half in Green Bay.

Big weekend in C-town. Cubs-Sox series at Wrigley. Won't be any parties in that area tonight or tomorrow. Right. 3 is in town looking for apartments. No big news at the Giro, but the Landis doping arbitration hearing in California is a circus. And the left-turn crowd is in Charlotte for their All-Star event. No points on the line, but $1 million to the winner of the race.

So I'm off to have a celebratory libation with 2. Thinking of 4.

Be careful out there.