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