Wednesday

From North Park College (I mean University!) on the North side of C-town...

Our ride in was mostly without incident. My pal Pete missed a couple of turns (with the Garmin!), but we arrived in one piece.

The music that they are playing here in the gym for the pre-game warm-up is loud and awful. The kind you hear in a club where everyone who is trying to have a conversation is leaning over to the ear of the person whom they are trying to talk to and screaming, "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

More cut backs at SB's. We can see a bit of a downturn in service at the Duck Creek store. They've reduced staff to two baristas until 7:30, and any unusual matter will cause a back-up. More stores to close. Those $3 lattes are getting a little dearer.

And there was a story on the wire today about possible legal proceedings by survivors of the Hudson River plane crash. What a surprise.

My pal Roy is headed down to Orlando tomorrow to check out the PGA products convention. Its basically like the computer convention in LV in December. Anything golf has a booth, from clubs, to clothes, to gizmos, to golf adventures. He goes every year. Flying private. Back Saturday or Sunday. A couple of rounds of golf included. And, the real purpose of the trip as far as Mrs. Carver is concerned, in Vero Beach a condo for future use.

My Russian cleaning lady has surfaced, but will not be over to my place until next week. She was gushing over her trip to Italy. And the wine. Let's hear it for the wine.

BCOT

Tuesday

Thanks for the contributions from the maddening crowd. We're all not that far away.

In looking at my picture options, I found out that I already have a Walgreen's account, and over 400 pics in a Google account that I didn't even know existed. Further evidence that data out there would preclude me from running for Dogcatcher. And that doesn't even consider the tapes on those hidden cameras.

Short tonight.

The one item that does come to mind is the music used by the spin instructors. Since the sessions are designed to be up-tempo, the music is a little faster apace (and louder) than anything that I would normally listen to. By artists whom I don't know (or know vaguely), and whose music has no appeal to me. I actually try to make out the words at times, but it's all guess-work.

At coffee this morning, I brought up the thought and one of the gals threw some light on one of the songs that is a fav of the oh-dark-hundred instructor. I had remembered the refrain, "If you liked it, you shoulda put a ring on it". Turns out that this is a popular song by Beyonce. The gal at coffee said I would really get off on the video.

So I bit, and looked up the lyrics tonight through Google, and I wasn't even close on the entry lines. I had thought she was saying, "I'm a single A", in reference to a finger's ring size. (I don't know how fingers are sized for rings either.) And I couldn't have guessed those other lyrics if my life had depended upon it.

Which makes one wonder, even if it's not Gangsta Rap, exactly how is Hope 'n Change advanced if the entertainment and sports leaders whom the youth admire continually lower the bar for standard language and conduct?

BTW... obeying the male genetic code, I pulled up the video from YouTube. (Is that legal?) It was 3:29 long. I lasted a little over a minute. Bring on Shania and "Man, I feel Like a Woman". She even out "oh-oh's" Beyonce. You can look it up.

So I have a big day tomorrow. Spin. Work. C-town with my pal Pete and the Augie game at North Park College. (I wish it was the mall!)

BCOT

Monday

Big Monday. Time for the Irish to lose their 4th straight. Mike Brey will never be confused with a defensive genius.

I spent most of the day completing an on-line course to obtain another professional certification. I had started it last week, and decided that I needed to take the full dose over the space of no more than a couple of days, rather than take the Chinese waterboarding (oops!) torture over a week or more. Mission accomplished. (Oops again.)

Some post-course observations:

1. I used to turn my nose up at on-line course work thinking that you had to be "there" to truly benefit from the program. Since my attention-paying habits at CPE programs have gravitated over time to near-zero, I'm rarely "there" anyway. On-line, here I come.

2. The program was audio with slides. You had to select the next slide when the audio was done for the current slide. That required a higher level of attention as compared to simply watching a video presentation.

3. Successful completion required passing a post-course, 60 question multiple-guess test. In this respect, the on-line course was/is certainly more difficult than on-site attendance.

4. This test was a little less-refined than some of those securities exams that I have taken in the past. You couldn't come back to a question, or review your answers before hitting the "done" button. Absent that feature, my test-taking skills are further challenged.

5. Why would you go to Pittsburgh to take this program? Even without regard to the marginal costs of travel.

6. The outfit sponsoring the designation has a great scam going. Their marginal cost of me taking the course was in the low two digits. My discounted participant fee was $1,375.

7. The best part of the scam was/is the additional $325 required for my first year membership fee for the organization that I am now a recognized "designee". Suite.

8. Can you say, "University of Phoenix?"

Moving on...

I successfully downloaded pics to a chip and key ones from the family will be in hard-copy form tomorrow. The next level of progression will be to do this all by email with Walgreen's or the Camera Shop. Suite two. (Snapfish is suite three.)

I'm thinking spin the AM again. It makes the nights a lot more productive.

Thanks for reading. Have a great evening/day.

BCOT

Sunday

Still Winter here.

The room was full at spin class this morning. A fairly diverse group. Young, old, male and female. I finally counted bikes. There's 30 in the room, although all 30 are rarely in operating order. Two were down today.

With the SpinNazi vocalizing most of the hour, you don't have lots of time to fall into deep thoughts like you do on the road in the Summer, but I do have a few items of interest pop into the brain in those rare moments of grinding. Today it was the realization that those out-of-service bikes represent the basic fact of life that a good portion of our population can be characterized as "Fixers". A place like a Gold's Gym location must have a Maintenance Man. All that equipment. All that usage. Things break down. Somebody has to fix them.

Some Fixers are self evident: car repairmen, dentists, plumbers, orthopaedists, and the list goes on. Kids under, say, age 15, and the elderly who have become dependent, are generally not Fixers. They are mostly Users. Users are not evil. They just use stuff, and it breaks after a while.

Of course, all Fixers are also Users. Some are able to fix their own stuff some of the time (think car repairs), while others need to use a different Fixer for a fix that they might normally do for another User (think a doctor with a broken arm). All Users end up calling a Fixer for at least a few things.

In our service economy, everyone depends on the IT Fixers. In India, the Philippines, or rarely, down the street. And we are definitely all IT Users.

There are a few actual Producers out there. Can you say OEM? (Look it up!) These people too are also Users. Those who write code for Microsoft are also Fixers.

I'm thinking that this topic has legs. I'm going to think a little more about it this week.

Switching gears...

My pal Bill stopped by this evening to borrow my extra office key. He had left his at the office and the building was locked by others before his return. Anyway, I shared with him my story about my keys being stashed in the Buick, and he insisted on taking a look at the problem. I mean, he wouldn't leave! So I pull the Buick out of the garage, get out, he steps to the driver's side, pushes the electric seat button all the way to the full forward position, opens the back door, and picks the keys off of the floor. No exaggeration. A Fool lives here.

And finally, for those out there looking for a taste of Summer, pitchers and catchers report in three weeks or so.

Spin at 0545. Getting an early start on what will be a great week. Make it so.

BCOT

Saturday

Another cold front moved in yesterday. -5 here this AM.

2 is very excited to report that the U of Iowa is storing its 12,000 piece art collection at the Figge for something like five years. The Museum of Art in IC was flooded last summer, and I guess that they were able to save all of their collection, but the rebuilding of the facility will take time. There are numerous valuable pieces in the collection, and the Figge may be able to parlay the loan into better attendance numbers. For anyone with an interest in art, this is a big deal.

My latest foible is fumbling my keys down between the driver's seat and the center console in the Buick. They're still there. I tried digging them out via the same down route that they fell with no success, and was similarly confounded from the under the backseat route. I'm going to need to do some fishing with a hangar or something. Talk about frustrating.

One of my goals at the office this year is to upgrade our telephone system. The existing hardware is now 20 years old, and the technology is such that none of the new gadgets work on our equipment because the manufacturers assume that no one is still using systems that old. We need to integrate our office phones with our cell phones and our computer/Internet connections. I'm not sure that it will improve our profitability, but it will definitely improve our processes.

The ESPN college basketball Game Day crew is at ND today. The Irish have a 45 game home court winning streak on the line tonight against UConn. Interesting how ESPN has taken its football Saturday game-site concept and applied it to basketball. They usually set up for a mid-morning broadcast on the selected court and then come back on live late in the afternoon as a pre-game show for a 6 or 7 Eastern time tip-off for the featured game. From a fan's perspective, I think it works. Erin is in the house.

One of the more absurd new nuances I first noticed last week over in Wheaton was a few of Wheaton's players doing their pre-warm-up shoot-around listening to Ipods. But the jumping around was such that the Ipods wouldn't stay in place, and one tool in particular spent most of the session re-adjusting the thing after every shot. The price of being cool.

I'm headed over to Augie tonight for their game with Illinois Wesleyan, their biggest rival. 2 has dumped me for a movie. As I noted last year, I'm sure, Illinois Wesleyan is the alma mater of Jack Sikma, a several-time All-Pro player in the 1970's and '80's.

More later.

BCOT

Thursday

This is a new event for me: blogging at The Airliner in IC. How collegiate! 4 is a little late getting in from CR, so I'm being nuevo productive.

I was shocked at early spin class today by a near turn-away crowd. Tuesdays and Thursdays start at 6 bells rather than 0545, and I suppose that that makes enough of a difference for some people. And there's a different leader. Whatever. I'm doing the afternoon class tomorrow with a classic spin-Nazi as the instructor. Wine at Biaggi's will have to get a later start.

OK. Now back in Bettendorf. Airliner pizza was excellent. 4 had had a tough afternoon on the job in CR, and dinner was good therapy (I think). Sparse crowd. Then again, the pizza was not half price like on Tuesday nights.

I'm going to try to set myself up with an Internet site for sharing my pictures. 2 gave me an idea and I just need to take the time to sign up. Details to follow.

For the record, I normally wear a sweat bandanna under my helmet on Summer rides. Actually, I often carry a spare and swap out a wet one for a dry one at rest stops. I'll hang the wet one on the handlebars and let it dry in the breeze for a subsequent swap-out at the next stop. I'm not much of a sweat band kind of guy. Retro or not.

My Russian cleaning lady is MIA. Her substitute has not even called. I'm not happy.

So have a good Friday. I might not be back on line before Saturday.

BCOT

Wednesday

We have the equivalent of a heat wave around here. Mid 30's tomorrow.

I have a small problem with the by-product of my thermoregulation system at spin class. In the last third of the class when my sweat output is at the streaming level, and we're standing up a lot and my bent torso is leaning forward, droplets from my face will fall on the front wheel. After a while, this extra moisture destroys any consistent tension on the wheel and you have to keep cranking more stress on the tension knob to minimize this slippage. More analysis to follow.

For the cycling fans out there (that's you, Revkev), the Tour Down Under started yesterday in Australia. Lance is there with the Astana Team. Astana is sponsored by state-owned companies in Kazakhstan. In reality, the team is the operating remnants of the US Postal/Discovery teams, including the same manager.

Spinning in the AM. Dinner in the PM with 4 in IC.

I read a story today about the betting line in Las Vegas on the Super Bowl. The line has Pittsburgh favored by 7 points. The gist of the story was that the Super Bowl line often doesn't reflect a true evaluation of a professional odds-maker's difference between teams because of the volume of bets places by the general public on the game. The casinos need to protect themselves from losing too much in a mismatch, and there's some sentiment that the Steelers might win big time.

What happened to January? I'm thinking that my two-week birthday extravaganza had something to do with it for me.

Quiet out there.

BCOT

Tuesday

Back at the grind stone.

The Houston trip had few bumps in the road. I don't think that I had previously been in the town. If I ever was, there was no specific memory. The Interstate system in the downtown area was a bit confusing. 2 and I had a difficult time getting out to our first checkpoint for the marathon from the hotel, largely because we couldn't find an entrance for any of the highways passing through (actually, mostly over) the downtown area. Finally, I was able to get on a road heading in the opposite direction, and then did a u-ey at the first exit.

Houston has built a new, not-so-small rental car clearing house a couple of miles from the airport. Phoenix did the same thing a few years back. This means that anyone renting a car now hops a shuttle to the separate facility and processes through their rental company for their wheels. The system basically works, but it does usually add a few minutes to your arrival/departure time at the airport.

Years ago, when volume was lower, the rental car companies all had space near airport departure areas. As the passenger count went up, the airports simply couldn't handle the numbers.

I managed to tick off a TSA supervisor in the QC on our outbound leg. All of our baggage was carry-on. My primary bag, which I normally check, contained a couple of wine bottle openers. (I have a small collection of openers since I usually forget to pack one and often buy one while on the road. And my departure list did not include taking inventory of wine openers in my bag.) One was a traditional kitchen model with two handles that you operated with two hands. They let me keep that one. The other was a waiter's opener with the three standard pieces, the corkscrew, the lever, and the cutting edge. The cutting edge was a problem and that opener was confiscated.

As 2 and I walked away from security, and not very much near anyone, I thought, I voiced a general comment to no one, and certainly not in anger, "What a crock!" A TSA supervisor sitting at a desk at some distance apparently heard me and took exception and made a retort of some sort that I was out of line. I ignored him, mostly because I couldn't believe that he was trying to make something out of something that I had no particular problem with, other than that the opener that they allowed me to keep was/is certainly a better weapon than the one that they kept. Whatever.

For the record, I will note that today is inauguration day. Coronation. Beatification. Salvation. Not a big fan. My TV spent a lot of the day on mute. But the Big O is my CIC, and I accept that. He has a job to do. May he do it well.

Spin class tonight. And plans to do so again in the early AM. As New Year's resolutions fade, a couple of bikes remained open in tonight's class. Augie has a home game tomorrow night. Busy day.

4 started her CR internship today, I think. Any news, Kiddo?

And 3 survived a foot of snow in Beantown this past weekend.

We live in interesting times.

BCOT

Monday

Here we are splitting up this morning at the Houston airport. Actually, the airport's separate rental car center. 1 and 1.1 made it back to the TC on time, but 1 was already whining about the return to sub-zero temps. 2 and I are in a short (I hope) delay to the QCA.

1 and 1.1 are sore, but no worse for wear than the expected results of running a marathon. I'm thinking that an ease-off on training is a good plan.

I'll try to pick up regular entries this week. Travel is a pain.

BCOT

Sunday

I doubt if we will be going back to Houston anytime soon. Two finishers. But nothing close to Boston. Some days you get the bears. And some days the bears get you. The latter was the case today.

Really a nice change of pace from -40 in the upper Midwest. Mid 70's here this afternoon. 2 and I saw 1 all four of our scheduled times without a problem. There were probably less than 7500-10,000 marathoners which meant that there wasn't the congestion on the course. 2 and I had a city map and 2 navigated.

More later.

BCOT

Friday

Another day of bitter cold.

I traded Biaggi's wine for a Gold's spin class tonight. It was cheaper, but not necessarily as much fun.

2 and I have a mid-morning departure for Houston tomorrow. 1 and 1.1 have already checked in.

I'll add from the road in the morning.

BCOT

Thursday

Bitter, bitter cold in the upper Midwest. Maybe -20 tonight. Ouch!

1 begins her journey to Boston via Houston tomorrow. She and 1.1 fly in tomorrow and 2 and I join them on Saturday. Race day in Texas is Sunday.

I'm in recovery from the late night last night from the trip to Wheaton.

Another item of evidence of my elderliness is my inability to distinguish between black and navy when I'm picking out turtlenecks in the morning. Today, I had chosen a black sweater and went to the pile of turtlenecks and consciously compared darks, and picked what I thought was a black one. Later at the office, I noticed in a mirror that my shirt was decidedly navy. Not the first time.

I'm thinking that I need to put a written code on the collar tag to indicate black or blue.

Everybody out there paid their Social Security taxes on the household help? I thought public servants with aspirations all had taken Zoe Baird 101 years ago. Then again, in a time of Change, these little oversights really aren't that important. How could some honcho with the IMF or the Fed be expected to know stuff on complicated things like payroll taxes anyway?

I'm guessing that those folks on the jet that landed in the Hudson River today aren't worried about taxes or their marathon training.

Have a great day.

BCOT

Wednesday - Final

Wheaton 79 - Augie 71.

They came out hot at the start of the second half, like 13-2, and we could never get closer than 5 the rest of the way.

We can get them at home in Rock Island if we have luck and play a little smarter. Their All-American killed us.

See you tomorrow. We're back on the road.

BCOT

Wednesday - Halftime

Good game. Great atmosphere.

Who can keep up the intensity?

Wednesday

The blog is on the road tonight, in Augustana's entourage visiting Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. The host Thunder are undefeated coming into this game, and are ranked #1 in D-III this week. If the Augie boys don't come ready to play, it could be over early.

I grabbed a ride with my pal Pete, which is the only way that I would have made the trip. Surprisingly, the roads weren't too bad, and we made the trip easily in under three hours. With the help of a little Garmin device. Although we did have to over ride the instruction on exit from the freeway. They had changed the off ramp configuration and the GPS hadn't quite caught up with the new pattern.

Wheaton is a very competitive D-III school in several sports. Their girls soccer team has won three recent National championships. This facility is very contemporary, with an Olympic pool down the hall and a fully-equipped fitness center in an adjacent section. Very well-presented.

We had another 5-6 inches of snow last night. I broke out the snow blower after spin class this AM, and did the front walks for myself and both my adjoining neighbors, and the driveway for my Perfect Neighbor. By that time, I was too cold to finish my own driveway, and it's still a bit clogged even after clearing the access to the street before heading to the game.

The surgically repaired thumb remains a tender spot in the cold. The circulation just isn't quite there. Then when I went inside and jumped into the shower, the thumbs and fingers had that stinging sensation when exposed to the hot water. It's heck gett'n old.

My friend Rick who joined 2 and I for my Biaggi's birthday party on January 2nd called me from the bar on Friday the 9th when I was in Scottsdale to report that the Biaggi's bartenders were not honoring his request to use "Charlie's glasses". I gave him my sincere regrets, but policy is policy. (In fairness, I don't think that he realized that I had actually purchased the glasses myself.) After the fact, he such a good friend that I probably should have given the bartender clearance for his use. Next time I will.

The game is getting started. I'll file a final report later.

BCOT

Tuesday

No blog today. It's too cold to think.

BCOT

Monday

Snow day in The Quackers. I'm guessing that we received about three inches this afternoon. Maybe more on the way, and then we go into the deep freeze for a few days. I think that I saw where the low one day will be -12. Ouch.

The good news: my Perfect Neighbor shoveled my sidewalk and driveway all the way back to my garage.

Sorry for not adding much to the blog over the last week. The time in Arizona and the two travel days didn't present a lot of time for creativity. From the pics, you can see that we had great weather, and the golf courses were all high grade tracks. The Grayhawk Raptor course that we played on Saturday had been the site of a two-day pro event on Thursday-Friday (won by Mark Calcavechia at 23 under!), and the set-up was humbling. Rocco Mediate (who took Tiger to a play-off in the US Open last year) was on the putting green when we came in from playing the slightly lesser Talon course on Thursday. He didn't request any advice from me.

We stayed at a Hampton Inn & Suites right across the street from the course where they play the FBR Open in two weeks. The TPC at Scottsdale. The Stadium course. The par 3 17th at that course is known as the loudest, most raucous hole on the Tour all year long.

The surrounding commercial area is very high-brow. We couldn't find a Walgreen's anywhere close, and there are any number of exclusive resorts near-by that cater to the visiting golfers and conference-goers.

Private air travel is pretty sweet. The plane was not a jet, but rather a twin-engine turbo-prop. But relatively new and very well-appointed inside. There were six of us as passengers, but there were spots for five others, so we had plenty of room. Plenty of food and drink on board. And there was a DVD system with small screens for each set of seats. They watched a Bourne movie on the way down, and multiple episodes of a previous season of 24 on the return flight. I did crosswords.

One of the little extras on the return trip was that they let the hotel shuttle drive out onto the tarmac and drop us and our baggage at the aircraft rather than lug it through the private terminal and out to plane. Very Pretty Woman-ish.

The bad news upon my return was a flat tire on the Taurus in the Davenport airport parking lot. At 8 o'clock on Saturday night. In the cold and wind. My pal Ron had waited to make sure I was on my way, so he helped me do a NASCAR pit stop, single-tire change inside of 10 minutes. I need to get him a bottle of Scotch in thanks.

The more severe bad news received on Sunday when I went to Tires Plus for tire repair was that it was more than just the tire. As it turned out, a coil spring had broken, which had then punctured the tire. Then when they tried to install the new springs (can't buy just one, you know), they figured out that the struts (which the springs go around) were also done. Long story short: my one flat tire cost north of $700 to fix. Your classic case of the used car going bad. I hope that thing about bad things coming in three's is not applicable here.

I did the Sunday 10 AM spin class, and the 0545 class this morning. There's a little extra bad shrimp from Arizona to get out of the system this week. (We didn't spend the entire time on the course.)

In that vein, we ate one night at a restaurant that had an attached wine shop. If you didn't like the wine on their list, you could literally go across the room and pick a bottle off the shelves for drinking with dinner. Which I did. Basic retail pricing (the J. Lohr was $15+) and a corking fee of $10-20 depending on the bottle. They had a great selection, from the modest to the expensive, and a very glib owner who helped me choose a couple of bottles upgraded from the J. Lohr. Cool.

Finally, I think that my 60th birthday party is over. The staff had one last laugh, decorating my office with over-the-hill and old-fart stuff for my return today. That made the party train last in excess of two weeks. I'm even tired of the yea-hoos. But it was fun while it lasted. Thanks to all who participated.

So have a great evening/day.

BCOT

Sunday

Our second day at Grayhawk. Pretty much perfect.

More later.

BCOT

Friday II

I've had this idea several times recently, particularly after the multiple mis-steps that I had when I went to that first early-morning spin class last Monday. There's been a lot written about life-time "bucket lists", those things that people want to make sure that they do before they check out for their respective after-lifes. In my case, and without regard to my mortality, I need to make a bucket list every time a that I walk out the door.

I think that the popularity of the "bucket list" is a left-wing liberal thing. It sounds good, has a wanderlust sense to it, and elicits a certain euphoria of "getting there". My guess is that a few of the modern-day liberal arts colleges have bucket list courses, maybe even majors. No more of the jocks working on their General Studies degrees. The new focus is on feeling good, achieving, understanding one's self. Develop your bucket list.

What a crock.

But I digress.

Seriously. I make lists all the time. I have a day trip to C-town; I make a list. I do a conference in KC; I make a list. I take a 45 mile round-trip bike ride to DeWitt: I make a list. A week in Tahoe? I start my list six weeks ahead of time. Given my problems on that first oh-dark-hundred spin class, I now have a written list on my counter that I scan before heading out.

One thing that I don't have is a "bucket list" as it is known or regarded in popular culture. The trip to Italy with 2? It came up as a result of Briancon, France being an over-night town on the Giro (Italy) and the Tour (France) in the same year a couple of years back. 2 and I will have a trip to remember, for sure. But I'm not sure in the long run, if it will be any more special than a Friday night at Biaggi's, or a routine basketball game at Augie.

Nothing I do will ever be as special as Christmas Eve at Chunky Cheese, or a day at Sand Harbor.

I may add more to this another time.

BCOT

Friday

Another day in paradise. And, all too frequently, in the desert.

Legend Trails Golf Club.

Back to Greyhawk tomorrow. And then back to reality.

BCOT

Thursday

Greyhawk Golf Club. Talon course.

Great day.

BCOT

Wednesday AM

One of my really good clients couldn't pass up the opportunity to get my attention. (The client is not the clown, but the client got a lot of yucks from the greeting!)

.

More from the road.

.

BCOT

Tuesday

Tomorrow.

BCOT

Monday

Day Two of the spin class experiment. Yesterday's turn-away crowd for the 10AM class became a cozy group of seven this morning for the 0545 Quick Spin. I hate to crank up the exercise routine at that hour. But I'm guessing that I'll be there at least twice a week for The Early Show through mid-April.

My effort to get to class on time was another example of why old people don't change their routines. My phone alarm went off fine at 0523. I was actually up a few minutes early and waited for the ringer. After throwing on my biking gear and jacket, I couldn't find my Gold's pass. I looked over my kitchen counters, and my jacket pockets. No luck. I gave up, figuring that I'd just give them my name.

I jump in the car and take off. Half way there, I remember that I forgot my biking shoes, so I have to make a u-ee and go back for them. My original thin time line is coming apart. And I have to wait for traffic a couple of times, both ways. At five-thirty in the freaking morning!

And the parking lot is packed. I'm thinking that those New Year's resolutions are really kicking in. But the spin class room is almost vacant (as expected), and I still haven't figured out where all the people were at that hour. Anyway, I get there and throw off my sweats, and jump on a bike just as the leader is cranking it up. No warm-up for PC.

The first thing I realized in the first routine was that I left my water bottle in my car. And as hard as the class is, I needed the water bottle. But not today.

To review, in the course of a single effort to get to one class, I lost my gym pass, forgot my shoes, and forgot my water bottle. A well-oiled machine doesn't exactly capture my schtick today.

One consolation later in the day was that I found my gym pass. I had had an Alzheimer's moment and had forgotten which jacket I wore to Gold's on Sunday. The pass was in the pocket I had placed it in yesterday.

Other than spin class, my Monday was pretty ordinary. I did learn that the private airfield in Scottsdale doesn't have a rental car counter open after 6PM local (in my price range). One of the hardships of flying private. The hotel shuttle it is.

Glad to see Revkev back online.

Have a great evening.

BCOT

Sunday

This is not actually the spin class that I attended at Gold's this morning, but the look is similar. I decided that I needed to get off the couch and get started for the year. I'm thinking that 3-4 classes each week over the next 90 days will get me through the Winter with a fitness level ready for the early outdoor season.

There are probably between 30 and 40 bikes in the spin room, and they were all occupied today, with a couple of people wait-listed (to no avail). I'm guessing that New Year's resolutions are responsible for the SRO crowd. But its my recollection that when I belonged to Gold's previously, the more convenient after work and weekend classes all had to be signed-up for a day or two before hand, or you couldn't get a bike. I'm planning on doing at least a couple of 5:45 AM classes each week, which aren't that well attended.

Augie won last night in a so-so game. 4 joined in on the fun. Augie had the opponent well-scouted, and the opposing team's guards (who had been scoring big time) were shut down by the home team's switching, double-teaming defense. The Augie coaching staff consistently out coaches the other schools.

The pro football referee who was pilloried for a mistaken call in a San Diego-Denver game early in the year is reffing one of today's play-off games. The Fates were kind to him as the disadvantaged team had a big end-of-season run, made the play-offs, and actually won their first game last night. The ref had immediately admitted his error after the game, and, of course, took all kinds of abuse from the boxer-clad blogging critics. It looks like the league has given him a pass on any black-listing treatment. That seems like the right result.

SI had a story in the year end edition about some true sportsmanship in the 2008 girls high school track meet in Washington state. The short story is that the 3200 winner was DQ'd by a judge saying that she had stepped outside her lane. The second place finisher who was awarded the win disagreed, and gave the DQ'd girl the first place medal. The other seven girls in the placing did the same thing. And the girl who was given the first place medal placed in another event, and gave that medal to the girl who had given up her eighth place medal in the 3200. (A review by the race officials subsequently confirmed that the girl's got it right and reinstated the original winner into the record books.)

I took ten minutes yesterday afternoon and took the lights off of the front bushes. There's a country song, Redneck Girl, I think, that contains as part of it's chorus, "I leave the Christmas lights on my front porch all year long." I'm trying to stay below that radar scan.

I'm saying that tomorrow is the official start of the New Year. Friday was a orphan day of a sort since, except for shoppers, regular business was at a very low roar. I did get some of the piles in my office rearranged, but plan to do more of the same tomorrow. My pal Bill always does at least a small amount of rearranging of his office furniture, which he did on Friday. I did that once, a few years back. The urge has not returned.

This will be a fun week for me. A couple of works days, then Scottsdale for golf and fun in the Valley of the Sun with my pal Roy. Private air. Resort courses. But just an ordinary hotel, and we'll eat well, but not extravagantly. And I'm pretty sure that we'll keep a lid on the wine costs. This birthday thing is going to wear me out!

More reports as the week comes along.

BCOT

Saturday

Wow. This has been one of those, "Where'd the time go?" weeks. My New Year's was extremely uneventful, and judging from the lack of comments, there were no outrageous stories from the peanut gallery.

Since this is the new year, it wouldn't be right if there weren't a few resolutions to shoot for (or break). I researched the blog for last year's list and found it in the entry for January 13th. Among the goals were Mt. Rose (done), the Turkey Trot (done), TOMRV and RAGBRAI (done in part, as planned), read 15 books (not quite fully done), more photography (definitely done), and efficiency at work (probably not done as well as needed).

So for 2009, here is a short list of to-do's:

1. The Galibier (a historical Tour climb near Briancon, France).
2. TOMRV, the Turkey Trot, and one other organized bike ride.
3. Attain Fiduciary Analyst designation for work.
4. Re-do all yard edging and front landscaping at my house.
5. Do C-town for a Cubs game, and TC for a Twins game.
6. Celebrate graduation in IC with 4.

Another little 60th birthday party last night at Biaggi's. A couple who had not been able to attend the party at my house joined up and the staff managed to find a little ice cream dessert to share. Pretty neat. With the trip to Scottsdale next week, I will have managed to stretch out the birthday celebration into the three week range. Suite!

I haven't watched much of any of the bowl games. I like the fact that several of the winners have been underdogs. With 34 bowl games, played out in the month after the last regular season game, the old argument that a playoff system would keep the "student-athletes" away from class too much is absurd. And who cares if Directional State U wins the Mineke car Care Bowl? And the schools going to these lower-tier bowl games can't possibly come out ahead financially.

If you had a sixteen team playoff, eight teams (the losers) would play only one additional game, just like now. Four others, the second round losers, would have only that second extra game. So you end up with only four teams that have considerable extra playing time. They figured out the money for the basketball tournament. Surely they could do the same here.

My biggest problem with a playoff system is that it puts me on the same side of the fence as many of the hack sports writers/talk-show-hosts, and the Big O.

Here's another prediction for 2009: there will be numerous pull-outs of corporate sponsorships in golf, NASCAR, tennis and various other sports and sports-related events as the economy adjusts to the new reality. Banks and other financial entities will be hung out to dry if they sponsor a tournament, and then won't re-write mortgages. Detroit will be running backwards to keep TARP money. And political grandstanding on these issues will keep the spotlight on any company or executive who doesn't toe the line on frugality.

2 and I are headed over to Augie tonight for the conference opener. Like with the D-1 schools, the conference season begins the real Road to the Final Four.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

BCOT

Thursday

Happy New Year! Go Hawks!

I didn't make it to midnight. Surprise.

Any stories?

BCOT

Tuesday

I have become a bit of a geek with my new camera. The Christmas "gifts" included a flash attachment, a tripod, and some extra storage cards. Thrown in was one of those digital picture frames. To facilitate transfer of pics, I bought a mini card reader that I can connect to my laptop with a USB connector cord that allows transfer of data between devices. Suite!

The progression of technology in my world has really had a definitive and impactful progression. Here's a bit of a Top Ten list, in partial order of occurrence:

1. Grade school: The party-line telephone on the farm. #682-2548. USPS.
2. High school: Computers did not exist. Not even a ten-key. The radio was king.
3. College: Paper tape records in computer science class. USPS.
4. USAF: My first ten-key electronic computing machine. USPS. An electric typewriter.
5. Grad school: IBM card programs in computer operations class. The same typewriter.
6. AA & Co. in C-town: Batch processing to an outside service. A computer operator.
7. The 1980's: PC's. Word processing. Mag cards. Truck phones. FedEx.
8. The 1990's: Desktop tax programs. Dot matrix printers. Fax machines.
9. The early 2000's: Cell phones. CD's. Satellite stuff. Email.
10: Today: Wireless every thing.

I had to hurry through this a bit. 2 and I are headed over to Augie for a game and I need to get going. The list could be expanded and refined with interesting details. I might do that later.

Here's a little shout out to 4 as Daughter of the Day. I didn't get her featured on her birthday last week. You 'da girl!

Have a great evening.

BCOT

Monday

Here's a group photo of our annual PV Breakers' lunch from this afternoon. Six of the nine team members were able to make the show. This is a great group of girls who played AAU basketball together from 5th through 8th grade. Judy, Scott and I were the coaches.

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Lindsey, on the lower left, played four years as a starter for the Minnesota Golphers soccer team. They got beat last month in the NCAA tournament by ND in the Round of 16. In South Bend. In OT. On a penalty kick. In 9 degree weather at night on a field that had to be cleared of a foot of lake-effect snow. ND got to the finals later on only to be beaten by North Carolina.

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Ashley, next to Lindsey, played four years of volleyball at the U of Colorado in Boulder. And Alisha, next to me, has played four years of softball at Central College in Pella, Iowa, a perennial D III powerhouse.

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(A fourth girl, Teresa, not pictured, played four years of D-1 soccer at Northern Colorado in Greeley, a member of the Big Sky Conference.)

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4 may be the only Breaker to have run a marathon, but Kelly, in pink, has done at least one half-marathon, and I see her at numerous local races.

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More later.

.

BCOT

Sunday

So here are a couple of key pics from the weekend. The top one is from Christmas Eve at 4's birthday party at Chucky Cheese's. The lower one is an end-of-evening photo-op on Friday night after my surprise birthday party. I'll add a couple more in each of the next few entries.

We had good luck throughout the weekend with weather and travel. (3's trip from Beantown being the exception.) The bitter cold broke on Friday and I can even see my driveway now. The melting snow and the steady rain had my sump pump going most of Saturday. A bit odd for December in Iowa.

After this little Holiday Hiatus, 4000 Days will be back in full beginning tomorrow.

BCOT

Tuesday

Happy Tax Birthday To 4 !!!!

We did a little din-din at Azteca. Good time had by all.

Gathering of the clan tomorrow.

Best Wishes to all.

BCOT

Monday

Monday night at Biaggi's. Amanda makes the blog!

I'll try to clean up the presentation later.

BCOT

Sunday

Brrrr! Something below zero. Wind. Blowing snow. Excellent day to stay inside. Or be in Cabo.

I've spent more time cutting snow-ice on my sidewalk, driveway, the office's sidewalks, and 2's street the last two days than I care to document. Suffice it to say, memories of the "ax-n-spade" days breaking pond-ice on the farm have been plentiful.

The headline-grabbing securities fraud case of Bernie Madoff is a current-day example of greed and corruption to the ultimate degree. Here you have an internationally renowned investment guru with A-List clientele (who call in favors to participate in the guy's programs). Consistent returns in up or down markets. Seemingly an answer for everything, even his skeptics. Then the wheels come off, and the losses exceed the GNP of a small country.

My thought this morning is that if Bernie can do it, is NASA working the same script? Maybe 1's been right all these years.

Not!

3 had the excitement of trying (and succeeding) to fly out of Beantown on Friday when many flights (including her own originally scheduled one) were canceled. She got the dreaded "auto-cancel" call at 1AM for a next evening scheduled departure. But her boss let her take the day off, and she was able to battle the system at Logan and finagle a seat on a late afternoon flight. Score one for 3!

4 is headed into C-town this AM to pick 3 up and return here tomorrow. My guess is that the chill will limit their running around on Michigan Avenue. Then again, Water Tower Place is inside.

College football's bowl weeks are in progress. The NFL has games on Thursday nights, and last night as well. Their NFL Network is even hard for me to find on the satellite. This is a similar play to the Big Ten Network that had the stink last year with the cable operators. It makes you wonder on a half-life analysis exactly where the rates of return and the fragmentation of broadcast sports are headed. They've obviously concluded that the old paradigm of the general broadcast network TV deal is dead. But how narrowly do you slice and dice the pie?

This is also related to my lament earlier about the disappearance of the traditional newspapers. Money drives everything, and if they can't make enough at a lower price for a general audience, then they go for a higher price for a more specific viewer. Fundamentally, you have the ad-rate driven media competing with the fee-rates of specialized programming. People always seem willing to pay more for the things that they actually want. Think Disney World. I'm betting that 3 could give us a technical marginal analysis on this, with charts.

Another aspect of this is the fantasy sports angle. I continue to notice (or even start reading) stories in the mainstream sports pages that are literate analyses of make-believe scenarios. I know 1.1 is into this stuff, but I just don't get it. And it is apparently just continuing to grow in participation among the more committed viewers and observers.

Which gets us over to the fantasies of online second life and virtual worlds with avatars (and avatarettes...my word!). I suppose that psychologists use different forms of personality substitutions to "get" to their clients, but I have trouble enough figuring out life in the real world let alone in a second one. Then again, the virtual world can exclude all the nasty things that we have to face and can be designed to be each person's Camelot. Again, just to many moving parts for me to process.

So does anybody out there have an avatar that they want to share?

My Russian cleaning lady came this morning so that I would have a clean house for the Christmas week. I'm thinking that Friday night for FFF at my place.

I just remembered that I can report that my lower level DirectTV unit is back on line. I had been told by a couple of people with whom I had shared my problem that the first thing to do was to hit the "reset" button. This sounded like good advice, and I had actually looked for the "reset" key several times when I had been at that TV over the last week. With no success even finding a "reset" key. Well, yesterday I resorted to the penultimate anti-male protocol and looked in the instruction booklet. Wall-ah! There's not a "reset" key on the hand-held clicker. The "reset" button is in the black box receiver. One "reset" later, and I'm watching HSN and ordering my Big O collector coin set.

For the truly nerdy, the term "reset" is a recurring crossword solution to the clue, "Common alley instruction." As in bowling alley when you want to override the automated pin-setter.

The information available on 4000 Days continues to set new standards for the obscure.

Lastly, the assistant manager at Biaggi's stopped by my table Friday and presented a gift bag that contained a bottle of red and a bottle of white along with a few snacks/treats. (You know when a restaurant gives you a holiday gift that you are spending too much time and money there.) Very nice. The thought was the good news. The reality was the bad news. I popped the cork on the red last night, took a whiff of the bouquet, a very small sip, and immediately re-corked it for re-gifting to 2. If she can drink it, or pass a couple of glasses on to then-to-be former friends, she has a drinking problem. Or a friend has a drinking problem. Easily the worst vino to come out of the Biaggi's wine room.

So hope everyone has a great day.

BCOT

Thursday

Here's to The Ryan Clan, our Clan of the Day. Breckenridge, Colorado. July 2008.

Another weather system headed in tonight. I'm scheduled for a tax CPE seminar in Cedar Rapids tomorrow. I'm taking the under on that one. Hope the travel gods are good to 3 on her return to C-town tomorrow night.

This global warming thing has me worried. Vegas. N'Orleans. I'm thinking that these anomalies happen pretty regularly. I believe that mankind has responsibility, but that might be the easy answer. I bet the dinosaurs never saw that meteor coming.

We had a Christmas luncheon for the office today. Fairly low-key at a nice place on the Illinois side. Word that I hear out and about is that many companies have cut back on Christmas parties, year end bonuses and other truly discretionary expenditures. (Personally, I've never had the same level of interest for the holiday parties that I have had for the April 15th celebration. The grinch lives.)

My basement TV is on the fritz again. I'm wondering if that DirectTV receiver is to blame. My main level unit is fine, as is the unit at the office. Anyway, I listen to the basement TV in the mornings when I'm getting ready for work. So without the satellite signal, I have it tuned to the local NBC outlet. They now have an hour and a half prelude to The Today Show, and I swear that their content is about 12 minutes in length that is on a permanent loop. And the weather guy is bad the first time through it. And doesn't get any better on subsequent renditions.

Actually, what they do on that early show is similar to the prior evenings readings. They now have half hour local news at 5, 6 and 10. If you make the mistake of watching or listening to all three shows, you can almost echo the stories word-for-word by the 10 PM presentation. It's no wonder that media companies are in trouble. Their broadcasts insult the intelligence of their audiences.

Add this poor quality of product to a broken business model, and you have to wonder what the world will end up with in 10 or 15 years. Wireless everything, I'm sure. Will a traditional newspaper even exist in the USA?

So the family travel starts tomorrow. Be safe. Be patient. And...

BCOT

Wednesday

No blog today. Surrogates welcome.

BCOT

Tuesday

I think I just need to drink faster or longer.

Snow day today. And cold. They say that salt doesn't have any melting effect when ambient temps are below 10 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm guessing that we will have ice-packed streets for a few days.

Here's a Top Ten list on all time favorite warm-up events:

1. The pop-belly stove in the kitchen on the farm. Circa 1955.

2. The electric heaters in the milk house in the barn. Circa 1960.

3. The mid-mountain ski lodge at Arapaho Basin, Colorado. Circa January 1980.

4. Aunt Martha's kitchen upon ski trip return. January 1982.

5. The electric heater under the sink. Scott Street Davenport, Circa 1986.

6. Our first LP gas furnace in the farm house. Circa 1958.

7. Any car, YMCA or coffee shop. Turkey Trot. 2004.

8. Living room fireplace. Century Heights Avenue. 1995-current.

9. Vanderveer skating pond lodge, Davenport. Circa 1991.

10. My couch. Nice little electric heater. Tonight.

In other news...

I've never been a Paterno fan (or hater), but come on already! The guy's eighty-freak'n-two and they give him a three year contract extension! Eighty-two year olds pay their rent month-to-month. They buy their paper subscriptions week-to-week. They shop for tomorrow. I don't get it. Make him a saint. Name the field after him. But punch the guy's AARP card and send him to Sun City.

Happy tax-week birthday to 4. She's down to a semester to go.

Have a great evening/day.

BCOT

Monday

If I had heard of 1's Christmas tree follies, I had an Alzheimer's moment and forgot. Glad this year's experience worked out better. (For what its worth 1.1, I had Sue decorate a plant pole in our apartment the first year that we were married. I'm pretty sure that that was the last year that I had any decision-making responsibility with regard to Christmas trees.)

We're in the Deep Freeze here tonight. The front came in last night, first with cold rain, then freezing rain, then snow. Then cold. More snow is headed in tomorrow. Hello Winter.

Anyone planning to head to Hawaii to see the Irish in their bowl game? Right.

The next problem to ponder is, "How long does it take an open bottle of wine to go bad?" Consider that it is not uncommon for better sense or time to come into play and a newly uncorked bottle is not fully consumed, and the cork goes back on. Since I usually drink red wine, my questions focus there. I suppose that the same applies to the whites.

I'm not sure if there is an exact term for the process or not. Spoilage? Putrification? Gone bad probably says it well enough.

There's probably some math at work here as well. For bottles costing less than $10, there's probably an FDA (or ATF?) warning on the bottle that says that it needs to be consumed within two hours of opening. For $15 bottles, there may be a 24 hour window. For $30 wine (which I have little experience in unless my pal Roy has been involved), the time frame may be out there a little further.

This whole hypothesis is a little curious since the sommelieres are always asking if you want the bottle to "breathe" a little before pouring. And when you are hosting a wine party with the wine being butlered, they will commonly "decant" a number of bottles into a decanter for ease in filling several glasses at a time.

There's probably another variable involved with how well the bottle is recorked. And yet another on how long the bottle has breathed before it is "saved". (I'm wondering if the opacity of the bottle's glass is a factor as well?)

My experience is that anything past three days is anathema to my taste buds. If it was any good to start with.

Then you have the occasional bottle that doesn't quite meet your expectations, and you recork it after a single glass and set it aside for later use. Later use really doesn't happen very often at my house unless 2 stops by, and I unload the pour (sic) performer on her (with full disclosure).

In their later years, Grandma and Grandpa H would buy a bottle of red wine (can you say, "Mogan David?") for holiday meals when the Left Coast crowd would be in for a visit. It was rarely fully drained, and the remnants ended up in the refrigerator, usually for several weeks. I'm guessing that it eventually made its way down the sink.

I'm sure that Google and Wikipedia have a perfectly scientific explanation for all of the above. I didn't check.

Thanks for reading.

BCOT

Sunday

Funny day here. Warm enough for runners to be out in shorts. Windy. Rain. And we're talking single digits temps tonight.

The Augie game last night was just so-so. The opponent was a winless team that played with a lot of emotion, and the game was close most of the first half. The Augie boys were sluggish and played down to the competition. My guess is that the locker room needs a new coat of paint after the coach's halftime comments, as they came out and did a little 13-0 number in the first couple of minutes of the second half. And coasted home. We left with a little less than 10 minutes to go.

I took Margret out for a spin this afternoon, and left her in the third stall over at Mom's. This gives me garage space for my regular cars. I walked back on the new sidewalks that the city paved this Fall, which I think will get a lot of use in the years ahead. The demographics of Bettendorf residents suggest a fitness orientation, kids, and dogs/bikes.

It occurred to me on my walk back that I missed the "thinking time" that I have during the Summer on my bike. When you're out on even a relatively short evening ride of 15-20 miles, you have a lot of time to consider the news of the day, or dream dreams, or calculate the square root of the distance you traveled in the last four minutes.


This in contrast to my mental experience when running, which is a simple exercise to determine how much longer the pain will last.

Here is a pic that I just got from 2 of her first Christmas tree in her first year in her first house. I am not responsible for the slightly blurry image. Me thinks that her phone was moving when she clicked the shot. Pretty amazing technology. She texts me the message. I email it to my Yahoo account, copy it into my laptop, and then upload it into Blogger. Very cool.

And to the right is my very iffy picture of my two-bush Christmas light display. I had to take the pic from inside my car because of the downpour. (I'm a little worried about ice by morning.) It took all of five minutes to hang the lights, but it was almost an hour beforehand to untangle them and search for burned-out bulbs. I think when they were last up a couple years ago, there were several sections that never lit because I didn't test them in advance.

No Aunt Martha, I do not regularly read the NYT. I will pick up a section occasionally when someone has left it at SB's. I read the local paper and The Wall Street Journal most days, and USA Today a couple of days a week. And several business web pages.

The fact that the NYT Public Editor has to write an analytical column this weekend to consider the question as to whether the murderers in Mumbai (Bombay) should be called terrorists in NYT stories on the event is evidence of political correctness run amok. See www.nytimes.com and click on the Opinion box in the mid-page menu.

I thought that Susan's Estrich's column in today's papers was a bit of self-serving tripe, suggesting that the work of Old Media reporters was the core substance for analysis of politics, government, the arts and culture. Her work is located at www.creators.com
(Don't confuse my dismissal of Old Media as any endorsement of New Media. They all drink from the same cool-aid.)

Lastly, have my readers noticed the daily email from e-tailers? I signed up for a Gap card and a Kohl's card a couple years back, and gave them my yahoo address on the application. Then I ordered a couple things on line from other places, and all of a sudden, I'm getting sometimes two emails a day from each store's auto-email servers. I'm thinking that that methodology has got to be cheap advertising, and probably has good $$$ returns. It really doesn't help me when I'm doing most of my shopping on Christmas Eve morning though.

Stay warm. Have a great week.

BCOT

Saturday

Just a few lines before I head over to the Augie game with 2. I've had a busy day with work, and a work-out. All on a body getting over a little bit of bad shrimp at Biaggi's last night.

The news out of Ames is that their football coach is headed to Auburn. I guess the rationale is that his 2-10 record this year is not indicative of his potential. Whatever. I'll be surprised if he lasts three full years in Alabama. Those people demand victories. Now.

(The former Iowa State coach is the line coach at Florida this year. He'll probably get a shot at another head job too. He actually won at ISU.)

The political mess in Illinois is not surprising many people in this area. Its almost SOP in the state.

The tough economy continues to make headlines in NASCAR. The Watkins Glen road course race lost its primary sponsor this week, and the Petty's released Bobby Labonte from his driving contract with the 43 car. The 43 lost its primary sponsor (Betty Crocker/General Mills) for 2009, so the Petty's have no primary sponsors for either of their cars for next year. They've been rumored to be in merger talks with another mid-level team. Lots of lay-offs on several teams. Future funding from Ford and GM absolutely in question. It will be an interesting year.

So my goal is to get back on to a more regular blog schedule starting tomorrow AM.

BCOT

Friday

This has been a challenging week. 3 advised me this AM that I had been negligent to my cast-of-thousands readers. Of course. The lions and tigers (and sharks) kept me on my toes. Still lots to do.

2 and I shared pizza with 4 at The Airliner in IC on Wednesday evening, on our way to the Augie game in Mt. Vernon (20 miles north of IC). I'm thinking that 2 went to the game to get the pizza and the popcorn.

My Tuesday evening was taken up with a visitation/memorial service for a client's 20-something son who passed away after a 5+ year battle with cancer. It was a huge gathering. Visitations are never much fun, but when the decedent is young, its even harder to process.

(My snow blower did come in handy on Tuesday night. The blower started on the second or third pull. Pre-planning worked. I did my dis-abled neighbor's driveway, but not mine! The Taurus and the Russian cleaning lady's car blocked me from doing my own.)

And my pal Roy had the other side of his heart roto-rooted on Tuesday as well. Angioplasty for those into technical terms. Three stints. He gets bulk pricing. All's well. He was back at coffee on Thursday AM.

I'm not sure which drama interests me least, the Big Three bailout, or the Illinois governor's arrest. Both situations are saturated with politics, greed, corruption and players trying to avoid the spot light. Can it be a surprise if the Big O (and his chief of staff) get tainted as the layers are pealed back on the scandal?

So I am spending my lunch hour at the Speedy Lube with the Buick. (And "speedy they ain't.) Denying any interest in additional filters, flushes or fluids. There was a time before marriage (and certainly before kids) when I would save the $20 bucks and change my own oil. But you always had to dispose of the old oil (and filter) and it was always a mess. The hassle factor is way higher today.

Iowa-Iowa State men's basketball tonight in IC. Can't say that I know many of the players on either team. Both have had decent seasons thus far, but we'll see what the real deal is once the conference seasons start after January 1st. The bigger schools all seem to come out of December with 10+ wins against so-so competition (and lots of home games). Winning on the road in the league (whatever the league) is always an iffy proposition. Augie has the same problem in D-3.

I doubt if I get back to this before tomorrow. Work is a beach.

BCOT

Monday

I consider myself a fairly well-read individual, with an above-average vocabulary. I have no recollection of ever seeing the term "sclerotic" used in any way in any story any where. This week's BusinessWeek ran a big story about the problems in India, and the sub-title made reference to the country's "sclerotic"political leadership. I had no clue. Finally looked it up and it means "hardened". Doubtful if it will make my normal speakage (sic).

Equally distressing from the same article was the realization that all this talk about the Indian city of Mumbai was actually about events in Bombay. They made this name-change over 10 years ago. Missed it entirely. Does that mean I've been drinking mis-labled Bombay gin for a decade?

Then I had to check out the regional geography on Maps because it was my recollection that Pakistan or Bangladesh or one of those places actually had locations on either side of India. Well, Pakistan did have a West and an East state, but East Pakistan became Bangladesh. In 1971. What planet have I been on the last 40 years?

I've commented several times in the recent past on particularly bad days in the stock market. Today was an "up" day and a little easier on the faint of heart. Lots of uncertainty in the future though. Can all the sure-to-come bad news already be "baked in" to today's stock prices? I don't think so. That doesn't mean that we couldn't have a little further run up in the near-term. But I think that the averages will chase downwards again before we get a jump beyond 10 or 10.5.

That advice, a gold card, and a buck and a half will get you a grande at SB's.

The Big Three bailout remains in the news. The Big O makes not-so-veiled references on the Sunday talk shows that the GM guy may need to go. Barney, Harry and friends all have their own wisdom. Any bets that whatever the bad result, it will be Dubya's fault?

I'm not sure if this is a case of Murphy's Law or one of the anti-Murphy's Law. The forecast calls for some snow accumulation tomorrow so I hauled out the blower from the back of the garage tonight to see if it would fire up. I poured in a guesstimate of the gas/2 cycle oil mixture, pushed the primer several times, and gave it a go. With no snow to plow, it came to full life on the second pull. In year's past, usually under the duress of several inches of snow on my drive way, the thing has frustratingly failed to start until a visit to the tune-up shop at the hardware store. Maybe this means we'll have a low-snow Winter.

Finally, with today's new stand price increase to $1 for USA Today, I am officially a non-buyer. Another sign of trouble in print media. Relatedly, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy today (carefully excluding the Cubs and Wrigley Field). Will the venerable Gray Lady be next? Do I hear a "TARP, TARP, TARP" refrain echoing from the chorus?

Have a great evening/day. Thanks for reading.

BCOT

Sunday II

The pics on the separate post below were taken on my street up by the high school this morning on my way back from coffee. The deer herd within the city limits continues to be a bit of a problem. They have authorized bow-and-arrow hunts in recent years, but I haven't noticed any decline in numbers. You can argue that we're poaching on the deer's turf (which we kind of are), but reality is reality, and this boy (or girl) needs to head for the hills if he (she) wants to see Christmas 2009.
Here's a little shout out to 3. This was taken at the QC airport last week as she was headed back to Beantown. By making her return on Saturday, she avoided the big rush (and some iffy weather), on Sunday.

We do need to make a commitment to take some family pics over Christmas. Maybe at Chunkee Cheese? The Canon has a timer so we can all get into the picture this year.

I've had this thought recently about words with more than one distinct meaning. You run into the situation in crosswords quite a bit when a good author wants you to think outside the box. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

1. Mean: as in, "She is being mean", and "I really mean it".
2. Deck: A deck of cards. "Let's eat on the deck".
3. Milk: A glass of milk. "He knows how to milk an injury".
4. Board. The school board. A board fence.
5. Base. An Air Force base. The base of a column.
6. Blue. The blue sky. "How blue am I".
7. Still. A whiskey still. "He loves her still".
8. Match. A tennis match. "He lit the fire with a match".
9. Club. A tennis club. "He hit the ball with a club".
10. Flag. A flag is a banner. "At mile 18 she began to flag".

These are called homonyms, since they are spelled the same way but can have different meanings. (This is in contrast to homophones which are words that sound the same but are spelled differently.) So this is not exactly particularly insightful or all that meaningful, but to an amateur linguist, it is at least mildly interesting. It can get a little better when the word has meaning(s) as both a noun and a verb. See Wikipedia under homonyms if you want more education.

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. I've never studied much on the facts and history associated with the Japanese attack, but from the Wikipedia main page on the topic, there's been a huge amount written about the event over the years. One theory that has been widely debated is that FDR was actually aware that the attack was imminent, but he did not mobilize defenses in order to bring public support behind a declaration of war. The archives on this theory are located on a grassy knoll in Dallas.

Hope everyone has a great week.

BCOT