Friday

Monday

 

Happy Birthday, dear daughter!  No surprise here...4 is Daughter of the Day.  I don't have much in the way of current pics of her, so I decided to go retro.  This one must be 18 or so years ago.  A very fun time for Old Dog.

December 24th has been our family's most special day of the year for the last 26 years.  I guess this year we will at least be able to celebrate the 24th on December 26th...with everyone together.

Merry Christmas to all.

BCOT

Sunday

Happy Tax Birthday to 4!  Hope you have had a good day, Kiddo.

So I actually started this yesterday, but my workout got in the way, and then some Louis Martini took over for the evening.

I actually did some Christmas shopping today, a day earlier than my normal routine.  But I never made it past Kohl's as the traffic by 10:30 had become too heavy to keep my interest.  While the check-out line at Kohl's was long, it actually went pretty fast, and the clerk even gave me credit for an expired $10 Kohl's Cash certificate.  Bonus. 

(I stopped at HyVee 53rd yesterday on my way to the solo spin class, and ran into gridlock in the parking lot.  If people weren't in the giving mood, there would have been no left-turns completed, as all of the lanes and parking-lot access points had car-after-car.  But fear not,  I did get into the Wine & Spirits store for Harvest Path FFF supplies!)

One of my objectives for 2013 is to make some different choices on wine acquisition.  Notice that I didn't say anything about less wine!  But 53rd Hy Vee is becoming too same-old-same-old.  Maybe a wine club or two from recommendations from friends.  I'm thinking that there's lots of options out there.  Plus, the HV wine manager, with whom I have had several conversations in the last couple of years about guys being called by acquaintances by their middle name, continues to call me Paul.  Marketing 101 must have been out of his reach.

Lots and lots of non-retail businesses are closed tomorrow...or will be down to skeleton staffs.  We are open, but only the partners will be there.  The market is also open, but it will be light trading and a shortened day, closing at 1300 EST.  Over/Under on number of business calls to Criterium by 1500 CST?  Let's use 5 for the bet.  Can you bet a Push?  I think there will be 5 calls.

My latest commercial irritant is Hy Vee's venture into target-marketing with their gas-card discount program.  I have avoided getting too much information on the program, but it has the deal of buying specific products in the store, swiping your gas card at check-out, and then getting a reduced price per gallon at the pump (I think).  My objection is that they're throwing some pennies your way to have you voluntarily lay down even more traces on your electronic trail.

As I think of it, the gas card is a minor thing in comparison to the data that Safeway (or other retailers) record when they require you to use one of their store cards to get the "member" pricing on virtually all of the goods in the store.  And Apple, Google, Microsoft and the other tech giants probably have a server full of my wanderings.  It might take a major cleansing effort on financial activities (can you say, CASH?) and Internet usage to get off the grid.  An intriguing thought, eh?

Turns out that the snow removal at my house on Thursday night was done not by my PN, but by the guy across the street with all the Christmas lights.  He has a good-sized John Deere garden tractor with a blade, and he was working with my PN to clear several places in the neighborhood.  The heavy snow was almost too much for the regular blowers.  Whomever the Good Samaritan, its still a good result for LtPC.

I was surprised to receive an over-sized postcard from TOMRV in yesterday's mail for the June 2013 ride (it will be the 36th edition).  Hmmm.  I fully expect that I'll do the ride; I mean, I am doing spin class already, but the thought hadn't occurred to me before I got the card.  Presuming 2 and I keep our date for Italy, I'll need to map out the training for the year, including TOMRV.  But let the world know...there will be No Climbing 20-mile Climbs in 2013!! 

The snow did freeze the connections for my Christmas lights.  They're plugged in now, and still off.

Hope Christmas Eve is good for all in the Peanut Gallery.  Thanks for reading.

BCOT

Thursday

Happy Birthday to 1.02.  You are Grandson of the Day!!!

More later.

Now later...

The weather came in late this morning and put around five inches of snow down in our area.  Now we have wind and cold.  But the snow is done, and the plows should get a good handle on things by the morning.

I came home after work to find that my Perfect Neighbor did most of the shoveling and blowing of my sidewalk and driveway.  I'm thinking that he must have figured that the dropping temps and the up-tick in the wind made the work easier earlier in the day than me trying to fire-up my blower tonight.  I need to take care of that guy!

So the trip back from PHX was an exercise in endurance.  We were on schedule to get back to the airport after our AM meetings.  After we dropped the car off at the rental center, I tried to check-in with my iPhone while still on the shuttle from Hertz.  When we got to the terminal, and I tried to print the boarding passes, the kiosk machine essentially rejected me.  The wandering American attendant wasn't much help, and the line was out the door.  So I got on the laptop and started my research.

Bottom line, I was rejected because our connecting flight out of DFW had been cancelled.  No explanation.  I got on the phone, finally!, with an agent (who didn't even have the cancellation on her system!),  and the only legitimate option was to get to C-town and hope to drive to the QCA.  Ultimately, that's what happened.  But it meant a couple extra hours in PHX, a rental car on-line circus, and that long drive home.  But at least it was last night, and not today.  We'd could otherwise still be in C-town.

I'm thinking that this experience should help our odds for good travel results on our golf trip to Scottsdale in three weeks.

Another small thing, but good result from the end of the trip was a lost-but-then-found story on one of the mates for my good running gloves.  When I went to put them on this AM, there was only one glove in my jacket pocket.  Super bummer.  I knew that I had definitely worn them last night.  Fortunately, I was able to reach Bill by text before he dropped off the rental car, and, Wah-lah!, he found the lost glove...on his second look-through the car!  Some small things matter more than others.

Myan doomsday?  Winter solstice?  The half-full glass angle is that the day's now start getting longer!

I want to extend some general compliments to the Peanut Gallery for the many nice Christmas cards that have come to Maplecrest Road.  I've sent out a few this year, but I'm still behind.  Those of you who did the collages of family pics all hit home runs.  Great ideas.  Great work.  Love those Internet toys, eh?

Finally, I recommend that everyone put on their seat belts for the trip down the fiscal cliff.  The kids whom we generously call our representatives in Washington have concluded that their best work is to call each other names while the Mother Ship drifts out to sea.  I have stopped watching network news and all the talk shows for years.  I am now refusing to read the newspapers or web pages with anything political.  From either side.  If it ain't a business story, I ain't readin' it.

Make it a Good Friday.

BCOT

Wednesday

This will not be a great entry.  My pal Bill and I are sitting on the floor near an electrical outlet at our gate in Sky Harbor Airport charging our phones.  Travel back home is a mess.  Our original connecting flight from Dallas to Moline was cancelled, so our best option was a later direct flight PHX to Chicago.  And then we rent a car to get to the QCA.  If we're lucky with the weather.

I have my laptop, but the built-in keyboard is malfunctioning, and I won't have the patience to fight a long battle.  The cursor hops randomly, and since I watch the keys, it's a constant case of editing.  At home, I always use a standard keyboard plugged in with a cord.  I'm thinking that the whole keyboard
mechanism will have to be swapped-out.

Happy Tax-Birthday to 1.02!  You are Grandson of the Day!  (You are likely Grandson of the Day tomorrow as well, Kiddo!  Just sayin'.)

After our business meetings yesterday, Bill and I ventured into the bar/restaurant area near Arizona State University.  Lots of places similar to downtown Iowa City or near St. Thomas in St.Paul.  I wanted something other than beer and pizza, so we landed at Z-Tejas, a Biaggi's-like place with a varied menu.  The wine list was short, but J. Lohr was there, so we split a bottle over dinner.  Not a bad experience, and we would go back if the opportunity presented itself.  With the 1/2 price wine on Tuesday, it was a very reasonable fee.

The crosswords on the way down yesterday were from the NYT and the Dallas paper, both being
NYT puzzles.  Interestingly, I would rate the Dallas puzzle at least at Wednesday difficulty, maybe even Thursday.  The NYT was definitely a Tuesday puzzle.  Makes one wonder who's pulling the strings at the other papers who publish the NYT puzzles.

So that's my offering for the day.  I'll be adding updates on my Twitter-feed.

More tomorrow.

BCOT

Sunday

I'll add a few more paragraphs today about ND. 

One of the things I did this morning to jog my memory a little was to dig out my ND student year books.  Those tomes have managed to follow me through the years, and I actually knew where there were when the thought came to me look through them as some minor research for this entry.

There are a couple of points that the year books make evident to me:  first, the students who were responsible for the compiling, writing, and organization of the year books had to work full time throughout the year to accomplish the task.  And second, ND operated as an advanced high school with it's approach to academics, campus life and the provision of the "college experience".  Father Hesburgh ran the show his way, pretty much as a disciplinarian.

In looking at the baseball pictures, I had forgotten that several football players also played on our baseball team.  As I have mentioned here previously, Joe Theismann, the quarterback on the football team, played 3rd base for us on our Spring trip to Florida my junior year.  I always thought he did that to skip Spring football for a month or so, because he went back to football shortly after Florida in order to be ready for the Spring game.  (He played well at third, and was a good stick with quick hands.  He was a hit with the Gator Girls as well!)

Joe wouldn't remember me these days, but we bumped into one another on a regular basis our last two years.  He would come to The Rock and play pick-up basketball in his off-season, as did many of the football (and basketball) players.  (We Rock Rats enjoyed having the scholarship players show up and find that the competition gave them no quarter. We often won against guys who came in thinking that their athleticism would keep them on-court in the Winner-Keeps-Playing games.)  I remember sitting with Joe on the back steps of Washington Hall at one point in graduation week when we were both trying to get our cap-and-gown get-ups issued to us.

Jim Wright was a catcher for us, and a starting linebacker.  We had Nick Furlong, a pitcher and a back-up running back.  As a sophomore, we had a forward from the basketball team, Bob Arnzen, as one of our pitchers.  I'm sure that these connections then produced other contacts, as I was able to recall more football acquaintances as I looked through these year books.

So in a final reference to the Yahoo article about the weaving of the ND athlete into the general student population, I guess my experience would support the thesis.

Some other thoughts occurred to me as I scanned the year books.  Mostly, I didn't participate in all that much stuff beyond baseball, class and a modest amount of social things.  ND had many notable guest speakers and entertainment opportunities.  Other than 3-4 concerts (The Fifth Dimension, Dionne Warwick, and maybe The Four Tops), I would have been a no-show.  Those speakers, senior year alone, included the likes of Saul Alinsky, Jane Fonda, Alex Haley, George McGovern and Dorothy Day.  (Leftists all, but I wasn't that political back then, so my dander was not ruffled.)

I have no recollection of any outbursts at ND following the Kent State riots in May of 1970, but the year book devotes a lot of pages to the protests that occurred on campus.  The Summer of 1970 would have been the year that I did my ROTC boot camp training at the air base in Charleston, South Carolina.  I certainly never had any bad incidents as an ROTC cadet on the ND campus.

ND's campus is fairly compact, and was even more so in my time.  Everybody who lived on campus (which was a heavy majority of the students), walked to class, practice and other activities.  Few places were more than a 10-12 minute walk from your dorm.  There may have been a few bikes, but not many.  No motor scooters.  Anyone with a car had it parked in a lot beyond the football stadium.  Even today, there are few actual streets on campus.

There was an army of maids who cleaned the dorms on a daily basis.  Lots of Polish/German ladies who were no-nonsense types tasked with the goal of keeping the hundreds of dorm rooms respectable.  Kinda like my current-day RCL.  Laundry was done on-campus, by a service, but you were in charge of getting your own stuff either to the laundry or maybe to your dorm's drop-off cart.  Each piece of clothing had to have your own laundry number sewn or indelibly stamped to the item.  After the prescribed number of days, you could go to the laundry and pick up your pack, paying with the chits that were distributed as part of your tuition (I think.  A little fuzzy on that process.)

Standard meals were served at two dining halls, North and South.  I don't think that we had a "plan" like most schools use today.  You either had a card or you didn't.  And since the options were so otherwise limited, all the guys I knew had a card.  And the athletes ate at the same dining halls.  I do think that they may have held the lines open longer for the footballers when the team's practice schedule fell outside of normal dining hours.

The one pay-like-normal sandwich shop on campus was a place called The Huddle, located on the first floor of the student union.  It had your typical greasy-spoon menu of burgers, fries, donuts, and various candies, chips and the like.  It was located not far from Cavanaugh Hall, and I would get a soda there every once in a while when we would play pool in the union.  Due to its central location, The Huddle was a frequent gathering spot to meet-up with friends from other dorms for a trip off campus or to a game.  From a Google-search, it looks like The Huddle has become a modern day Food Court.

I went to daily Mass quite a bit, often at 10PM.  All of the residence halls had chapels, and at that time, each dorm had a priest in residence.  Dillon Hall was mentioned in the article, and that was one of my favorite late-nite Mass locations.  The chapel there had had all of the pews removed, and the usual celebrant was a priest well up the food-chain in the Administration whom Mary Neimeyer introduced me to junior year.  His Masses were always participatory, as were his sermon/discussions.

Mary also got me connected with the Holy Cross seminary on campus where we often went for Sunday Mass.  The seminarians led a very up-beat, energized service with all sorts of music that was one of the most well-attended Masses on campus.  (Our cousin Terry from Washington DC was enrolled at the seminary while I was at ND, but I don't think that he was ever ordained.)

The Crypt below the main church was another of my Mass locations, particularly as a junior and senior.  I think that it was actually run as a parish apart from the main church.  Obviously, it was a very intimate location, dark with no natural light, low ceiling and not probably for the claustrophobic.  (Interestingly, I never attended many Masses in the main church.)

Just down and away from the entrance to The Crypt, is The Grotto.  I spent a lot of time at the Grotto, contemplating life and such.  It still is on my list of favorite places ever.  4 should see the similarity of the ND Grotto with the Grotto at Lourdes, France.


Continuing on past The Grotto was (I'm sure still is!) the road to St. Mary's of Notre Dame, the unconnected girls school associated with Notre Dame.  (There was always talk of a merger, but it never happened.  Once ND went coed, the merger idea went away.)  I suppose that Mary Neimeyer was the primary reason that St. Mary's became a memorable aspect of my Notre Dame experience.  Through her, I met many St. Mary's students, dated a few, and had much more female contact than most of my classmates.  As a matter of fact, I'd have to say that "dating" was not part of the social life of most ND guys back then. 

I mentioned to 4 in a text last night that my ND experience was a year too long.  It was not a case of pure "senioritis", but the fourth year just didn't add much to my personal development.  Classes were generally boring, baseball was a huge drag (bad team, lousy relationship with the coach, sore arm, etc.), and my post-graduation program was already locked-in with the USAF.  I was passing time.

This has gone on too long.  I'll save my readers the agony of more detail from a time long ago, before there was an Lt in front of the PC. 

Busy, busy week in my future.  Make yours a good one.

BCOT

Saturday

I'll do a few paragraphs today and tomorrow to share some facts and some other memories of my days in South Bend.  To those who have heard my stories too many times, sorry.

I did read the article posted by Yahoo writer Pat Forde that 4 referenced in her comment a few days ago.  He seemed to be saying that there continued to be an element of truth to the concept that ND football players are mixed into the general student population without favor.  My guess is that there is probably a lot of stories to support that thesis, but there are probably a lot of specifics that might go the other way as well. 

To some extent, all schools have to have their athletes rubbing elbows with the other students.  You know, that whole business about "student-athletes". It sounds like ND still doesn't have a "jock" dorm like they do at some schools.  But I suspect that room selection after freshman year drifts more toward the athletes choosing to live with teammates.  And I suspect that over time, more athletes might choose specific dorms such that there will be some buildings with a greater percentage of athletes than that of the student population in general.  Proximity to the practice facilities.  Food.  Reputation of the dorm.

The article referenced Sorin Hall numerous times.  It was one of the older dorms, even when I was there.  It is located just down from the main church and the Golden Dome building.  (In the map below showing Cavanaugh Hall, Sorin is the un-named building just below and to the left of the church.)  Again, when I was at ND, the football captains had first choice to the end rooms on the first floor of Sorin.  It was a high-status thing.  My recollection is that they had a big front porch that was a bit of a hot spot on football Saturday's.  I never spent much time at Sorin.

I was assigned to Room 124 in Cavanaugh Hall as a freshman.  It was a triple, with one of my roommates from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and the other from Maryland, I think.  The Pittsfield guy was a really good guy and I roomed with him sophomore year on the second floor of Cavanaugh.  You can see from the map-ish picture (taken from the ND campus site) that Cavanaugh is just to the right of the Golden Dome building.

Cavanaugh was on what was then referred to as the Freshmen Quad on the North side of campus.  In those days, there were fewer students, no girls, and some remnants of "old school" college.  You had a dress-code for dinner, which meant a coat and tie.  (I think my freshman year may have been the last year for that nonsense!)  We had a curfew...with lights out...at 11PM.  Girls were not allowed in the dorm rooms.  (Yeah, like there were lots of girls hangin' around campus in those days.  Not!)  There were Saturday morning classes.

I don't recall many football players living in Cavanaugh.  I don't remember much about those years except that I was not very happy, school was hard, and baseball was a roller-coaster of frustration.  We played a lot of hearts at night, made popcorn nightly, had a late-night frozen pizza/sandwich room, and a TV lounge in the basement.  No car.  Almost no money.

A girl from my high school in Ottumwa was year ahead of me at St. Mary's (across the road), and she kinda saved me through those first couple of years.  Mary Niemeyer.  We never "dated", but she was one of those glass-half-full  people, was involved in several church and social groups, and she routinely drug me along to various get-togethers.  I remember riding the "red-eye" train back to Ottumwa with her one time, making the terminal change in C-town, and getting home dead tired.  We stayed friends for a long time.

For junior year, I moved across campus to Pangborn Hall on the South Quad.  My roommate then was Tim McCullough, a guy I had known in Cavanaugh and with whom I had spent some of those late nights in the TV lounge.  We were both in ROTC (he in the Army) and Pangborn gave us close access to the ROTC building.  You had to be in uniform for the ROTC classes, and I was always able to get in and out of uniform in the dorm without having to wear my dress blues to my other classes.  (But I would be remiss if I didn't admit that Tim and I had grade points that didn't give us much priority on any favored- locations in the dorm pool.  Pangborn was a good fit for us, but it was not necessarily a highly preferred residence hall among the student population.)

The other bonus for Pangborn was that it was immediately adjacent to the Rockne Memorial building.  (See the map-ish photo nearby.  At my time, the ROTC building would have been behind The Rock, just off this picture to the left.)  "The Rock" was the only indoor gym available to the students before they built the dual-domed Athletic and Convocation Center (ACC) next to the football stadium.  I was a certified Rock Rat.

Now, Pangborn did have a number of football players living there.  Walt Patulski was the #1 selection in the NFL draft in 1972.  He was a big guy, very athletic, and the center on our inter-hall team.  We weren't best friends, but good acquaintances.  He was in a few of my classes as well.  Mike Kadish was another player down the hall, maybe Patulski's roommate.  He spelled Walt at center on our basketball team.  The third player I remember from Pangborn specifically was Ralph Stepaniak, a d-back who had big hops.

Our inter-hall team with Patulski in the middle, myself and a 6'6" stringbean from Williamsburg, Iowa (yes, Williamsburg!) at the forwards, Stepaniak at the 2 guard and a gunner from C-town at point, won the campus-wide tournament my junior year, then lost on a missed free-throw in the championship game my senior year.  I remember that it took some convincing from other guys in the dorm to get the football players to let Williamsburg and myself be the forwards.  Once we came into the starting line-up, the team got it figured out, and we frustrated a lot of guys, particularly other dorms with footballers in their line-ups.  It was a fun time.

Another factoid from Pangborn is that I think I started my preference for country music there.  There were a couple of guys across the hall junior year who played in a band, and they always had country music coming out of their room.  It must of struck a chord with me, so to speak, eh?

So that's enough for today.  I've enjoyed the memories.  More tomorrow.

BCOT

Friday

I'm not sure if the D-III championship game on a Friday night constitutes the start of Bowl Season, but we do have a "live" game on ESPNU tonight that includes the University of St. Thomas Tommies.  (Looks like they won't survive against multiple-time champions Mt. Union.)  This will go on for another 24 days!  The BCS title game (ND -'Bama) is on Monday, January 7th.

The word out of NYC is that 4 will be making a move to a more "daytime" schedule as early as February.  This is a big deal when you consider that she has spent most of her time since graduation on either the swing shift or the graveyard shift.  While there are the exceptions, most of us do better with the more traditional sleep cycle associated with sleeping at night.  Here's a little review of circadian rhythm concepts from Wiki:

"Light resets the biological clock in accordance with the phase response curve (PRC). Depending on the timing, light can advance or delay the circadian rhythm. Both the PRC and the required luminance vary from species to species and lower light levels are required to reset the clocks in nocturnal rodents than in humans.

Lighting levels that affect the circadian rhythm in humans are higher than the levels usually used in artificial lighting in homes. According to some researchers^[37] the illumination intensity that excites the circadian system has to reach up to 1000 lux striking the retina.

In addition to light intensity, wavelength (or colour) of light is a factor in the entrainment of the body clock. Melanopsin is most efficiently excited by light from the blue part of the spectrum (420–440 nm^[38] according to some researchers while others have reported 470–485 nm). These blue wavelengths are present in virtually all light sources, therefore their elimination requires special lights or filters which appear amber.

It is thought that the direction of the light may have an effect on entraining the circadian rhythm;^[37] light coming from above, resembling an image of a bright sky, has greater effect than light entering our eyes from below."

===================

Whatever.  The body acts better when you sleep at night.

This business out in Connecticut is as bad as it gets.  I'm wondering if the psychologists will come up with any common characteristics between the nuts that have participated in similar massacres at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Fort Hood.  There are some news stories out there that have a laundry list of more than a dozen mass killings in recent years.  I'm guessing that the widespread reporting on this stuff, and the incessant post-event analysis can give the wrong people the wrong ideas.  I don't know.  Bad news.

More casualties in the conference realignment wars.  The seven, non-football schools in the Big East look like they are bolting to form their own league or make a deal with other schools, maybe the A-10.  Funny how the Big East has imploded.  There was a time when the Big East was THE basketball conference in the country.  Years ago when players were in school for four years (not that they went to class).  Georgetown.  Syracuse.  UConn.  Pitt.  Those games were notoriously physical and competitive.  Its a different game today.

4 asked for some history from my ND days with campus life and culture.  I'll give that a go tomorrow.

I'm hurting at the office right now without the help of an experienced administrative assistant.  While much of my work is now done via email that is naturally done by myself, there are numerous tasks associated with IRS correspondence and client file documentation that would work better with another set of hands (that knew what they were doing).  You might say that I have a backlog of this work on the various desk and shelf surfaces in my office.  Ugh and double-ugh!  Houston, I need back-up!

Looks like tomorrow may be the day to move Margret to Century Heights Avenue.  If it doesn't rain.  And I just stepped outside...and it is already sprinkling.

Finally, check it out!  My Perfect Neighbor's wife got my Christmas lights strung today.  That may make her Neighbor of the Day, eh?  Thanks Judy!

Hope everyone has a good weekend.  More here tomorrow.

BCOT

Wednesday

Who said you couldn't go home again?

Bobby Petrino, the former Arkansas football coach, last heard explaining (poorly) the presence of a pretty, young blond on the back of his motorcycle when he crashed it last Spring, has not-that-surprisingly landed another head coaching job.  The Hilltoppers of Western Kentucky.  In the world of big-time college athletics, winning means money to the universities.  So while Petrino brings baggage, his record on the gridiron keeps him relevant.  I'm saying that he will win at WKU.  The Over/Under on his tenure there?  Three...and take the Under.

My substitute RCL was in again yesterday.  She continues to star.

I've had a couple of items occur within the last month that illustrate the encroachment of service fees on to functions that seem to me to employ a counter-intuitive logic.  First, I had a UPS package (letter actually) that needed to go out on a Saturday a few weeks ago.  (We use UPS rather than FedEx or DHL, but the concept is the same.)  As is the case with most of these service companies, they don't have a regular Saturday pick-up at their drop-off boxes.  And while they use to allow for drop-offs at the office of their transportation hub, they now only accept Saturday drop-offs at their retail locations known as The UPS Store.  (I found this out the hard way, but that's another story.)

Anyway, I did drop off my letter that Saturday morning at The UPS Store, and pulled my copy of the manifest sheet just like always.  When the bill actually came a couple weeks later, I was surprised to see a $15 Saturday pick-up charge for the letter.  So what is normally a net $9.75 after our CPA discount, became over $25 after the Saturday charge and a store fee of some sort.  I do the work of getting it directly to them, and they charge me for the privilege?  What a deal.

The second example came from the bank.  One of my clients pays our annual fee from an insurance holding account.  And the insurance company requested that the payment be made electronically through a wire transfer.  OK.  Sounds easy and efficient.  So it was handled that way.  When we received our November bank statement, there was a $15 fee without an adequate description.  We inquired, the banker investigated, and she came back with the explanation that it was for the receipt of the wire transfer.

Historically, I've always been aware of a fee to send a wire transfer.  It never occurred to me that there would be a fee to receive a wire transfer.  I mean, what work is done to make an electronic deposit?  Will they start charging user's a fee to receive direct deposits?  Electronic deposits of tax refunds?  Welcome to the New World. 

I see in the news this AM that musician Ravi Shankar has passed away.  This obituary is probably relevant only to his family...and crossword puzzlers.  The unique combination of letters in his first name, and his association with an unusual instrument (also with convenient letters), gave puzzle authors some flexibility.  Clue: Musician Shankar; Solution: Ravi.  Clue: Shankar instrument; Solution: sitar.

Busy day.  Thanks for reading.

BCOT

Monday

We could all be working on the driveway on Harvest Path in Woodbury!  Glad to see 1.01 getting an early baptism in Winter activities.  I'd say this makes her Granddaughter of the Day in a landslide vote!  (Or would that be an avalanche vote?)

So I elected to go the Summer route with the new Home page pic.  As I view it now, it was either here before, or a similar one was. The shot was taken on my mini-digi Canon one day last Summer at Geneva while I waited on the tee.  (Why do I keep looking at new cameras?  This little, almost throw-away, unit takes really good pictures with almost no effort or skill.  Point and shoot.  It works.)

I'll add more here later this evening.  I wanted to get the snow pic up on the blog.  1 took it and had it on Twitter just a while ago.  I need to go see The W!

BCOT

Sunday

I really don't have a lot to add to the intelligence encyclopedia tonight, but I'll throw some stuff up against the wall to record the day.

The Winniferous and I have been bunk-mates for the weekend. Not exactly bunk-mates.  She stays in my kitchen at night.  But we're pretty much joined at the hip otherwise.  She's really kinda like a Las Vegas dog.  After two days and three nights, she needs to go home.

The Christmas party last night at Geneva was fun, but I struggled today with digestive issues that had to be related to the dinner.  The problem with holiday dinners is that the chefs feel the need to make statements on their prowesses.   Last night was no exception.  The lamb-chops/lobster-tail may have looked good on the menu, but when paired-up with foo-foo salad and an undefined appetizer, LtPC had a recipe for the day-after tummy rumblings.

The club also made the mistake of hiring a live band to drive the party-goers away from the dining room and back to the bar area.  They do this routinely.  People get done with dinner.  They're relaxing and doing their after-dinner drinks.  And the band fires up, and no one can hear anyone talk.  The migration to the bar is immediate.  I don't get it.  Who's on the party committee?

The boys managed to have a good time, none the less. Some fine wine, including a higher-higher end Louis Martini that Ron brought home from Napa last Summer.  One month to Scottsdale where these guys will be on the tee at Grayhawk!  (Geneva officially "pulled the pins" on the golf course Friday.  No more matches there until Spring.)

The NASCAR jacket got into immediate use with the change of a flat tire on Friday night.  My pal Cal and I were meeting friends in downtown Davenport around six and one of the gals got caught on a detour, the street narrowed, and she ran her Equinox over a curb and killed her tire and rim.  Cal and I were separately just a few blocks away, got there, and did a change to the donut in less than 15 minutes.  Not bad for a CPA and an MD in the rain.

The reports from C-town were fairly meager.  I'm assuming that a good time was had by all.  And 1 reports lots of snow in the TC. 

More here tomorrow.  Have a great week.

BCOT

Friday

Another Pearl Harbor Day.  Seems like we were recognizing those patriots just a few weeks ago.  The year was a whisper.

The Salvation Bell Ringers are out in full force.  I stop at three different Hy Vee stores over the course of the week, and they have the ringers at each location.  Since I really don't "shop" that much, I can't verify how many other retail establishments participate in the program.  But I assume that it is not a short list.

My level of interest is too low to even research the topic on Google, but I remark to myself almost every time I pass a ringer that they are a Motley Crew.  I'm guessing that most of these folks are paid ringers these days.  In more traditional times, I thought the kettles were manned (woman-ned?) by volunteers from service, educational or religious organizations.  Like high school cheerleaders, for example.  Today, the ringers look more like the panhandlers at the local Interstate-exit-ramp stop signs.

I think I commented here on the blog in the last year or two about how the IRS has more-stringent criteria for the deductibility of charitable contributions.  Cash deposits to a can don't make the list.  The Salvation Army needs to get the political fund-raising consultants on board and jump into the Internet/electronic medium to tap new sources for their funding.

Looks like a busy weekend in the fam.  With 2, 3, 3.1 and @srh4 meeting up in C-town, I get to camp out with The Winniferous. 

Make it a Good Fiday.

BCOT

Wednesday

Yesterday was the first day that I had the substitute RCL in for the weekly cleaning.  And this is at least the third-team RCL as I had a message on my cell phone on Monday from an Irina or Karina or Some other 'rina indicating that she would be in on Tuesday to do the house.  It was almost like she was reading from a script.

Anyway, I prepped for her in the same manner as for my regular RCL (towels and jeans started in the laundry), and hoped for the best.  When I got home last night, everything was done just as though the true RCL had been there.  Down to the position of drain stoppers in the sinks, folded clothes in my laundry room, and pillows on the couch.  I was impressed.  How detailed are my regular gal's notes?  Do they have an RCL School? 

Tonight is the annual basketball game between local small college rivals Augie and St. Ambrose.  It will be the last such game for a while as Augie has elected to not renew the game past this year.  Another case of bureaucracy rules.  Here's why.

Augie is a member of the NCAA Division III.  St. Ambrose has elected to remain in the NAIA which is a similar, but competing, organization for small college athletics.  The NCAA has gone to a generally technical evaluation of results in determining at-large bids to the season-ending D-III tournament.  (I think in an effort to take politic-ing out of the at-large bid debate.)  Thus, if you don't receive you league's automatic bid, your results are plugged into the computer and compared with other teams in your region.  The team (or teams) with the best outcomes get the available at-large bids.

One of the criteria in the computer analysis is total win-loss record...against NCAA D-III teams.  Games against NAIA schools don't count.  So if your total record is, say, 20-5, with one of those wins against an NAIA school, the NCAA considers your record to be 19-5.  Which places you below, in the pecking order, another D-III school with an identical record, but with all wins against D-III opponents. 

This exact thing happened to Augie last year.  And they didn't get a bid, whereas a team in their conference with the same record (and whom they had beaten) did.

It doesn't look like I'll get to the game tonight.  I have a late afternoon meeting down in Muskie, and I'll probably go over to the club for dinner afterwards.

I remain amazed, and a bit uncomfortable, about the deep tracking done by retailers on a person's Internet trail.  That notification yesterday of being followed on Twitter by Silver Oak was either a case of incredible kismet, or some troll is reading the labels on the pics that I have sent out on my Twitter account.  And the side-bar ads that pop-up on my Google page are for Canon and Nikon cameras, because I have looked at such items on searches recently.

There is no such thing as "below radar" these days!

Hope everyone has a good Wednesday.  (Monday for 4!)

BCOT

Monday

I'm going to use the weather as my excuse for not getting back to the blog over the weekend.  It remains unseasonably mild here, and my pal Ron and I played 18 holes at Geneva both Saturday and Sunday.  Two rounds on our home course in December?  Not what you would normally expect.  And that Sunday round was one that neither of us planned to do after we were done on Saturday.  It was a moon-and-the-stars kind of thing.

The big story on my golf game is that new belly-putter.  My primary thoughts behind the acquisition had originally been, 1) my putting in 2012 had been so bad that some kind of change needed to be made, and 2) my pal Ron was/is a golfing traditionalist and even the concept of the belly-putter really gets under his skin. Without any pre-planning, I pulled one off the rack in the Geneva pro-shop when we were just hanging out before our Saturday round, and told the pro that I wanted to test it out.  The timing seemed right.

Well, I had almost instant success on the course, and my store-credits in the pro-shop took a big hit.  (The pro admitted that I had randomly picked the most expensive putter in his inventory.)  One round of good results doesn't mean much in golf, but with Sunday being another good day, I'm optimistic about that lowered handicap goal in 2013.  (Plus, the $7 I took from Ron over the weekend equated to an immediate discount on the purchase!)

The college football bowl line-up seems to be set.  The big news is that one-loss Northern Illinois (that loss being to Iowa in September!) bumped Oklahoma out of an at-large BCS game.  But they get Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl, which could be one of the best games in the mess. I couldn't quickly find the financial impact of BCS vs. non-BCS games, but I'm sure that it is millions.  In the conferences, the schools split the combined payouts, to some degree, so ultimately, one school's benefit/detriment is mollified.  Except for ND, that keeps all the schekels.

This fiscal cliff debate is annoying.  David Walker is on CNBC again this morning talking from a non-partisan perspective, and every other guest just spouts their respective party's talking points.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/tallying-the-debt-the-ex-comptroller-generals-view.html?_r=0  I've cited David Walker before here on the blog.  He is legit.  And still holds an active CPA certificate in Florida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_%28U.S._Comptroller_General%29

One of the more committed runners from the local Gold's gym was with a group forming at Dunn's for a Sunday training run yesterday morning.  She had done the New York marathon in prior years and I asked her if she had been caught up in the Sandy debacle.  While she had been scheduled to run, her travel had not started before the cancellation, and she got that ticket refunded.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324355904578155361133154162.html  Sounds like the whole business of refunds on that event is still up in the air.

As a substitute race to make her training count, she's going down to Cancun for a marathon next Sunday.  Not sure if a Caribbean marathon is that appealing anytime of year.  It looks like they have run the race at night in prior years to beat the heat.  This year they will be going off at 0530.

Hope the week is a good one.  December!

BCOT

Friday

Down to the final stretch on my seminar. Today does nothing but reinforce my decision to exit the tax return business within the next 18 months. My pal Bill will be the stuck-ee of my left-overs.

I'm making 3 and 4 Daughters of the Day for their dress-alike outing last night. This is the pic from Twitter.


I thought that it was a very nice photo of both girls. Hard to tell that they are sisters, eh? Congrats to both on DOTD designation!

So we have the end of November today. Its been a great year...and the final month will be little more than a vapor trail, what with the travel, work and family activities scheduled to take place. Here's my Top Ten high-lights from 2012 thus far:

1. 07282012. Duh!
2. My trip to NYC in May
3. George Strait in DSM.
4. Scottsdale with the boys in January.
5. Maplecrest Fit Club in June, July and August.
6. San Antonio in October.
7. Turkey Trot time.
8. Wining and BBQing on the driveway on Maplecrest.
9. Early morning and DeWitt cycling with my pal Pete. (Mt. Rose not so much!)
10. Every visit with 1.01 and 1.02.

That didn't take long.

One item of unsolicited email on my Yahoo account this AM was from Amazon, stating that they noticed my interest in higer-end cameras, and they just happened to have a Nikon unit on a special sale today. I gotta disable my Cookies. (I don't NEED another camera. I just like the idea of some newer equipment with more whistles and bells.)

Looks like a Friday night at Geneva. I'm betting that my pal Ron will want to play this weekend.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

BCOT


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Thursday

Day Two of my continuing education seminar. Double the attendance today.

All morning was on Obamacare. Truly, a disaster awaits us. No wonder they have hired thousands of new agents. And those agents will never need to learn tax law. All they'll need to study is Obamacare. And they'll never get a true handle on it. The thing is such a cluster, there'll be annual changes forever.


Probably the most disturbing aspect of the Cloud of Obamacare is the en-charging of the IRS as the enforcement agency for this gargantuan social program. The rules and regulations to oversee the operation of this monstrosity are obscene from my perspective as a veteran tax preparer. Its not even close to a tax program.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Moving on...

To golf.

My pal Ron is now a bit giddy over the governing bodies of golf (US PGA


and the Royal and Ancient folks in Europe), having proposed to ban the long putter by 2016. This point has been a controversial one over the last couple of years as the winners of the last three Majors have used these clubs. The purists think that the "grounding" or "pivoting" of the upper handle against the body creates an advantage. Hmmm. An interesting point. How is that more controversial than a titanium-strontium alloy driver weighing six ounces that will send a ball 400 yards? Whatever.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the long putter. When my stoke was so bad at the end of the season, I told Ron that I was going to the long putter for 2013. Mostly to get under his skin, but also as a change that certainly couldn't hurt my pathetic game. It did get under his skin. He sent me three texts last night in celebration of the proposed rule change.

I might get a long putter to take to Scottsdale in January just to rattle Ron.

Props out to 4 for making it to downtown Manhattan last night to watch the lighting of the Christmas tree. Here's another copy of her Twitter post of the event.


I saw my RCL yesterday as she was finishing-up. She's headed to Italy for five weeks. So I have the Substitute RCL beginning next week through the New Year's week. Irina promises a bottle of good Barbera di Asti from Italy on her return. Still looking for a match from that bottle that 3 and I had with her friends at Limoncello's in Beantown.

Looks like we (1, 1.1, 2 and myself) have put George Strait back on our schedule for February 15th in the TC at the Excel Center in St. Paul.


1.1 conducted the successful hunt for tickets. He had a buddy with the T-Wolves, who had a contact at the concert venue. The normal pipeline for tickets reflected a sellout. This also gives us a scheduled shot to catch up with 1.01 and 1.02. Guess who we have "invited" along for the trip to "spend some time with the kids" while we go to the concert?

May be more here later. I'm looking to apply some more abuse at 1730 spin class.

BCOT

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Wednesday

This comes to you from the iWireless Center in Moline, Illinois where I am attending a continuing education seminar on tax topics for the upcoming season. I've been to programs at this place before, and it is a bit interesting what this facility may do for (and against) the local convention business.

(We'll see how that pic works on the final entry. I still don't have a handle on posting photos from the iPad.)

The smart phone and iPad (both connected to my desktop Outlook service) make being out of the office so much better than the old days. I was always super-concerned that I'd miss an important call. Now, I might not get the call immediately, but the message recorded on my voice-mail hits Outlook right away, and I can decide if I need to make the return call now, or perhaps just send a short email to indicate a follow-up when I'll be back in the office.

Of course, all of that said...with the same technology that makes you always available, you're ALWAYS available. Hiding below radar becomes less-easily explained.

That spin class last night was about as much fun as pulling out your fingernails. It was my first time on a bike since the trip up Mt. Rose with @bcbison on Monday, July 29th. I hadn't missed the experience. Either on Mt. Rose or the spin room. It was a well-attended class with only a hand full of bikes open. Could it be that New Year's resolutions have already started?

As I am wont to do, I did some math while I was taking the spin-abuse. It had been 121 days since my last ride. When I measured that number of days on the other side of the wedding, I got into the latter part of March of this year. Which seems like a life-time ago! And if I add that number of days to the current date, we're back into March 2013, which is equally eye-opening. For me. Not so much for anyone who actually has a life.

The political posturing on the "fiscal cliff" seems to have extended the campaign. I've said since the election that it would be interesting to see what The Big O did with himself, now that there was no elective office to pursue. Obviously, the lure of the campaign trail was too hard to resist. As though his constituency needs further encouragement to tax the rich.

(Keep in mind, my business keeps this political/economic/finance debate in my daily life. Its almost impossible to separate these aspects in the discussion. There is no report on the business news that doesn't consider the political forces in play. I'd much rather spend this time of year worrying about the SI swimsuit cover than the Alternative Minimum Tax...or Buffet's secretary's tax rate.)

My long-time-ago pal Wally and I would schedule three-day weekend in Vegas this time of year (after Thanksgiving and before Christmas) to argue over the college football bowl games. Of course, the number of games in those days was no more than 10 or so, so the interest in each game was considerably more so than today. I remember sitting at the bars with the "tout" sheets from the casinos and putting $5 per game with Wally (not the sportsbook). In most years, Wally and I never made much money off of each other.

Speaking of bowl games, the first one I attended (and only one now that I think about it) would have been the 1970 or 1971 Cotton Bowl when ND played Texas. I really can't remember which year, or the result of the game. ND lost the '70 game and won the '71 game. Some ND friends and I drove Phil and Margaret's car from Iowa, straight to Dallas, and slept on the floor of a player's room whom we knew. Details are sketchy. There was a huge snow storm on the way down (that did little to slow us down). There were some coeds from Baylor involved on New Year's Eve, and a private club in the middle of "dry" Oklahoma on the way home. All very foggy.

(I saw Joe Theismann in a TV shot of the sidelines at the LA Colesium last Saturday night shaking hands with Teo and some of the other players. He was a classmate of mine and the QB of those '70 and '71 teams. He's had several network TV jobs over the years after a reasonably successful pro
career, but not sure where he is now. His shtick wears thin after a while with most viewers. He was never what you would call a shy guy.)

So I may try to dress this entry up once I get to my laptop at home.

Thanks for reading.

BCOT


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Tuesday...UPDATED

UPDATE...I should have remembered this earlier.  I'm making 1.1 Son-in-Law of the Day.  He's a birthday boy today!  Happy Birthday, Dad!  In the archives of this computer, I don't have many pics of 1.1 to choose from that don't include his whole crew.  So this is one from earlier this year.  Make it a great day!

It was 14 degrees here when I drove to early coffee.  I'd say that that was getting into the season.

If you took 1) the fiscal cliff, 2) cyber Monday, and 3) the BCS out of the daily news, would there be any?

And Powerball is getting to be even bigger. That means that the split on my winnings within the fam is thus also getting bigger.  Life would be pretty nice if we had to worry about that allocation!

I finished a book last night that was certainly as close to a waste of time as any reading exercise could be so described.  In The Moon of Red Ponies by James Lee Burke.  Really not sure how or when I had acquired the paperback, but it had been sitting around my house and I decided to get through it over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Torture.  By the time I was done, I had forgotten the original premise from the beginning of the book.  The reader was left with poor resolutions for all of the various conflicts that the author presented among the book's characters, none of whom were particularly sympathetic.

The primary reason that I stuck it out to finish the book was my conscious attempt to balance my literary leisure time away from crosswords.  I think that it is fair to state that I enjoy the mental gymnastics required of the Friday/Saturday NYT puzzle much more than processing the story presented in most novels.  From an educational standpoint, I think that reading is much more beneficial to the life-learning curve.  Getting better with crossword solving pretty much means that you get better at crossword solving.  Period.

It looks like the progression in my out-sourcing efforts will extend to my (non?) Christmas lights on Maplecrest.  My Perfect Neighbor and spouse (Judy) were finishing the hanging of their own display on Thursday and there was a little repartee back-and-forth about maybe I needed some help with my lights.  My response was that I would welcome their participation.  I strung the extension cord from the garage outlet to the front of my house and left the four boxes of lights that I had in my basement on the steps to my side door.

Judy stopped over Sunday to ask for some direction on a tax question for her retired father, and asked about the lights when she was leaving.  I told her that I was not going to be offended if she elected to finish the task.  I'm thinking that the warmer weather in the next couple of days may produce that result.

The advertising airtime freed-up by the end of the election season seems to have been taken over by the car companies touting their Christmas "deals".  (Maybe my earlier suggestion to short media companies was premature.  A better post-Christmas idea?)  The higher end cars are always promoted as the perfect gift for a spouse or girlfriend.  Really?  What's wrong with a coffee-maker?

I'm scheduled for continuing education at the iWireless Center in Moline tomorrow through Friday.  As a reminder, CPA's have an annual requirement of 40 hours of continuing education, which essentially translates to five days per year.  We all need an update course for new tax rules each year.  I've reached the point where I try to limit my travel for these programs, and the University of Illinois has this three-day deal that is both local and relatively inexpensive.  Plus, it tends to be well put together.

So the blog will probably come to you from the middle of those classes the rest of the week.

Happy Birthday to @srh4.

BCOT

Sunday

I'm adding a few pics from the weekend.  The kids are at an age where posing tends to be problematic.  Other than the trip over to the John Deere Pavilion yesterday, the number of Kodak Moments was in the low, single-digits.

We missed the NYC girls (and 3.1) a lot.  Facetiming last night was a great idea, and it worked out really well.  I had never done much of it previously, or Skype, and was impressed with the Star Trek nature of it all. 

Sounds like the fam stayed up to see the Irish complete the victory against USC.  That goal-line stand was a statement-maker.  Although I have to say, the USC coach is hugely over-rated.  With the talent clearly visible on that team, to come out of the season with five losses is hard to understand.

 

Is there another sport that is set up for the "championship" game to take place six weeks after the qualifying game?  I understand that this is one of the vestiges of the "old" bowl system, when the four big New Year's Day games marked the end of the college football season.  And all those other "Who Cares?" bowl games that now exist do mean something to the host communities.  But the idea that the team that ND brings to the BCS game in January will be the same one that played last night in LA is a bit debatable, even if it will be the same players.

 

May add some more later.

 

BCOT

Saturdy

Really not much to add from here today.  The crew is largely in nap-mode as I write this entry.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Watching Oklahoma - Oklahoma State at the moment in deference to 2.

1 gets a little recognition for her effort in the Trot.  She finished in the top fifteen among all women.  And 1.1 wasn't too bad either.  It was fortunate that the race was Thursday, from a weather stand point.  It was around 30 degrees cooler Friday and today than it was for the race.

Sports Illustrated elected to preview the ND-USC showdown with a cover story to try to debunk some of the waking of the echoes of this year's team's success.  SI likes these expose-oriented pieces to validate its position in the media hierarchy.  Let's use the spot light to drag up some dirt on the Catholic boys.  Kind of like the national media on the Big O right before the election.  Well, maybe more like their views on Lance, The Rocket, Big Mac and other lesser souls into chemical enhancements.

I was successful in competing both the Friday and the Saturday NYT crosswords.  Non an every-weekend result by a long shot.  My skill-set is definitely at a lower level than Expert, but I can solve things with a certain back-door methodology.  (But if the puzzle author insists on several names of people, places or cultural events, I can be toast regardless of my intuition.)  Usually, I don't have the time that it takes to logic my way through Friday and Saturday puzzles, but when I'm on holiday or traveling, I can stay on point long enough to get'r done.  This has been the case this weekend.  Its always a good feeling.

The end of TT training brings me back to re-upping my Gold's membership.  Looks like spin class torture starts next week.  Sad that my favorite instructor is now in Milwaukee.  I may try some body-works classes over the next few weeks to get ready for Scottsdale.

We miss the NYC limb of the family tree.  Glad to know that the Christmas gathering in the TC will include everyone.

Maybe more later. Go Irish!

BCOT