Wednesday

Another day, another cold front.  I'm giving 1 the distinction of Daughter of the Day for her selfie Twitter pic yesterday during an outdoor run.   A work out in that weather definitely puts her in a small group of dedicated sorts.  Very burka-esque!

There is the suggestion that my back is recovering from Scottsdale.  So that means that three days of golf requires three days of bed rest for the under-prepared hack.  I really have some work to do between now and, say, May 1st.

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/92892/buffet-a-billion-dollars-for-perfect-bracket So 3's friend Warren has thrown this out there for the clan's March Madness challenge.  I think the Under is the safe bet.

(For what its worth, my early favorite for March Madness is Kansas.  The Big Twelve is a murderous conference this year, and KU will be primed for a deep run if they stay healthy.  The freshman shooting guard, Wiggins, got all of the pre-season press, but that 7-footer in the middle, Embiid, may now be the #1 pick in the NBA draft this year.)

I'm throwing some props out to Hertz for my rental experience down in Arizona.  I rented this Chevy Suburban through my Number One (Gold Whatever) membership on line earlier this month.  When I arrived at PHX, I took the shuttle to the car rental center, walked past the Hertz counter to the car lot, saw my name on the board with the parking place of the vehicle.  I walk over to the car, the keys are in it, and I take off, showing my driver's license to the agent at the exit gate who quickly provided me with a copy of the contract.

When I returned the car on Sunday morning, I drove it to the return lane at the car center, the garage clerk made an electronic reading as I pulled my bags from the rear compartment, and handed me a printed receipt.  I then took the shuttle to the terminal, got through security and to the gate where I sat down with my pals and fired up my iPad.  An email from Hertz had already arrived at my Yahoo account with confirmation of the receipt provided by the garage clerk.

It strikes me as a pretty efficient process when you can go through a car rental experience with relatively little human contact and have it work this well.  And the ultimate bill was $2 different from the estimate provided to me when I reserved the car online two weeks in advance of the rental.  That $2 difference was on some airport fee that the estimate stated might change upon actual rental.

We drove 141 miles over the less-than-four-days of our visit and the total cost of the rental was $400 (or $100 each).  Not cheap, but compared to the golf/wine/food bills, not expensive.

I didn't see the visual evidence on the Suburban of the electronic tracking devices that I noted on my car rental when I had made the December trip to PHX.  But I have no doubt that NCIS knew exactly where we were at all times.

All for now.  Hope it is a Good Wednesday in your neighborhood.

BCOT