Thursday

Not a good afternoon for lower seeds, eh?  The 'Clones played awful.  Their star(?) couldn't throw it in the ocean.  The play they ran with 15 seconds to go when they were down one was pathetic.  The Mayor didn't deliver.  Whatever.  Take solace ISU fans, you have company from Baylor, Texas and SMU followers.  There'll be others too by the end of Friday.

This all makes concentration at work a lot easier.

I'm giving recognition to Margaret today on her tax birthday.  We'll be on the road tomorrow, her birthday, and I doubt if I'll have time to write.  She would have been 107.  She passed away in February 2001.  I still think of her every day. Happy Tax Birthday, Mother.

This is not the best pic, but it is historically significant.  It would have been taken in the early Spring of 1971 at ND following a baseball game.  Mother and Daddy came to see me play just a couple of times in my career.  On this occasion, Aunt Martha and Uncle Phil came along.  I'm thinking that that is Phil in between Mother and Daddy...and that has to be nephew/cousin John in front of Daddy.  Martha must be taking the picture.  As I recall, Phil, Martha and I hit one of the close-to-campus watering holes that night...and did some damage.

In 1971, Daddy would have been 61, Mother 63, Phil almost 30 and Martha nearing 34.  Wow!  Comparing to moi now, they (we...all of us...) were all youngsters then!!!

In the FWIW Department, I did switch over to golf once the damage was done to my picks and kept it there the rest of the afternoon.  I mean, the market was trolling South as well, so why not catch the tour at Bay Hill in Florida, hosted by Arnie?  The interesting point actually came after 1700 hours when PGA feed ended and they switched to the LPGA tour...which is in Phoenix this week.  I didn't know that until I started picking up on the fact that the desert course that they were playing looked pretty familiar.  In fact, the course is within 4-5 miles of Grayhawk.  So the same mountains pop up in the horizon camera shots.  I like the scenery.

The resort is a JW Marriott luxury spa/hotel with two championship courses immediately adjacent at Wildfire Golf Club.  Those JW Marriott places are really nice...that's where we had the family gathering in Vegas in November...and I've been to one in San Antonio where they play a PGA event later in the year.  They're not too shy about charging $20 for a lobby-bar glass of vino.

The local golf courses here are beginning to open.  A couple already are.  My pal Ron is on Spring Break this week and he says that he is playing tomorrow.  Its a little cool for my tastes.  I mean, there still are some piles of snow not quite melted away at the edges of the big parking lots.  I'll be waiting until after April 15th before I pull my golf bag from the basement.

All for tonight.  Look for Twitter updates from the road tomorrow.  Make it a Good Friday in your neighborhood.

BCOT