Saturday

Real Winter here today. The snow began this morning and has continued to fall most of the day. No blizzard or anything. Just steady. Fluffy stuff. I shoveled about 4" off the sidewalk around 5 this afternoon. And there's another coat on it now.

Didn't get to the blog at the office yesterday afternoon, and 2 had borrowed my laptop for use at a function last night at the museum. Not that I ever do much writing on Fridays anyway.

3 had a scheduled weekend in NYC (New York City!) with a college friend who's working there taken away from her by a boss's decision. A deadline for some report on one of her cases that wasn't supposed to be until a February date was unexpectedly (unnecessarily?) accelerated. The fact that the East Coast is under a Winter storm watch is cold comfort. (No pun intended.) Sorry, Kiddo.

Looks like while there will be no Cabo trip, there will be a long weekend in Scottsdale. I have an invitation to a vendor conference in Scottsdale on January 10-11. The boys are now talking about heading down the 9th and staying through the 13th. I'm going to try to work it so that the vendor pays for my airfare and a couple of hotel nights. If I don't play golf Wednesday and Thursday, so be it.

SB's has opened yet another local store, this one on Locust Street in west Davenport, at a busy intersection within a few blocks of West HS. I'll likely never get there. One of the assistant managers at Duck Creek said that the busiest QCA store is over in Moline, which is their only location on the Illinois side. The multiple Iowa stores are probably just stealing business from one another. In my case, once they stole me from Panera, my daily consumption didn't add to their overall sales, regardless of the store I stopped at each day. Unless the girls came to town.

I was very impressed with a recent online transaction with The Gap. In reference to my misplaced/lost jeans from last week, I elected to order some new Gap jeans to upgrade my look. I paid (with my Gap credit card) $34.50/pair for three pair to get over a $100 minimum order to obtain free shipping. The package arrived at my doorstep within four days.

I should have my clients as satisfied with my services. The product was exactly what I wanted. The process was efficient. The delivery very timely. The online equivalent of concierge service.

(I suspect that it is not lost on the more fashion-conscious that I acquired three pair of jeans for the cost of a C-note. And while there is no designer label involved, I think that they look just fine. I mean, it's not like I bought them at Tractor Supply.)

I'm wondering if Ultimate Fighting will be supplanting "48 Hours of Bond", or perhaps, "48 Hours of Eastwood" over the holidays on Spike TV. It's a sign of the times. Young men in the preferred age groups don't know who Sean Connnerly was/is. And I don't have a clue who the players are in the Octagon. Talk about disconnect.

I heard a teaser today on Sportscenter for "Capital One Bowl Week." The onslaught of post-season games between teams with so-so records. From December 20th to 30th. Why would anybody in the media be concerned that a week is made up of seven days? At least NASCAR calls their extended stay in Daytona, "SpeedWeeks."

I have made special arrangements with my Russian cleaning lady to come by for an early visit next Friday since her normal day falls on the 25th. FFF here one of those weekend days.

More tomorrow.

BCOT