Friday

This will be another mobile effort from the Friendly Skies. Still interesting to me that the Blue Tooth feature doesn't work from the air.

My check-in process with the electronic boarding pass went fine. I used my iPad rather than my iPhone because Yahoo queries me for identification data on the iPhone after I have been checking mail from another device. And I wasn't able to "save" the boarding passes and had to go to the UAL site each time to pull up my itinerary. The keyboard with the iPad is a lot easier to use. (I'm confident that the need for that last little roundabout exercise is all operator ignorance.)

I'm continuing to give a favorable review for the new bike. (It's a Trek Domane 5.2. Shimano Ultegra components, Bontrager tires and wheels, a double front chain-ring with eleven gears in the rear cassette.) My riding will be confined to the bike path for another couple of weeks until I can get strong enough to hit the roads with @bcbison. It would be nice if it was warm enough to make the morning ride a little more comfortable. I was glad I went with the full-fingered gloves this AM...and the digits still got cold. (The limited traffic on the bike path at 0630 is a real pleasure though. Just a few dog walkers and even fewer bikers.)

The MCSC was open (albeit inside) for business the last couple of nights with a number of takers. 2 may be providing membership cards. My pal Pete may be doing the legal paperwork and other positions may be formalized. There's probably a job opening for all takers. (The process kind of reminds me of TEGWAR from The Boys of Summer....The Exciting Game Without Any Rules.)

Illinois and Chicago just can't help themselves. The state is broke. The city is dying a slow death a la Detroit. The governor and the mayor of Chicago, both legendary fiscal conservatives, have recently proposed higher state income taxes (the governor), and higher real estate taxes (the mayor), to plug disastrous short-falls in their respective budgets. And in the midst of this, the politicians vote to provide $100 million(!) as seed money to attract the Barack Obama Presidential Library, and $60 million(!) to fund the Barach Obama College Preparatory High School. You can't make this stuff up.

In the For What It's Worth department, I hope that the Republicans stay away from a Jeb Bush candidacy for 2016. He may actually be the most qualified man in their field, but I don't think that the the electorate can be persuaded to put another Bush in the White House. The progressives desperately want to add a female President to their list of barrier-breaking achievements, and they really wouldn't even have to make new anti-Bush placards to take to the streets. The old ones would work just fine. And the minions wouldn't even need to learn new slogans or rehearse new chants. Just like the second Obama election recycled a "Blame Bush" meme four years after Dubya left office, the progressive operatives would salivate at the thought of running Hillary or Liz on a "Not Another Bush" campaign.

In other headline news, the Buffalo Jill cheerleaders have been put on the shelf as a result of a suit brought by a couple of former cheerleaders who claim they were harassed/mistreated/underpaid. This is the third or fourth such disruption on the NFL sidelines in the last couple of years. Personally, I've never thought much of the plight of NFL cheerleaders. Most seem to work pretty hard to get the jobs in hopes of leveraging themselves into other acting/modeling/publicity careers. Interns in every industry work for fairly low pay. If the cheerleaders get themselves unionized, we may have an NFL without cheerleaders.

Moving on...

I'll do my best to add some pics and observations from The Big Apple over the weekend. I'm looking forward to sampling some fine wine and interesting cuisine, and checking out Spring with the NYC contingent of the fam.

Make it a good weekend in your neighborhood.

BCOT
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