Top of mind
Good morning to all. Hope it's not too cold where you are!
No particular subject or theme today, so here goes...
I had a pretty strange experience over the weekend, so I'll see if I can outline this in brief but still convey the entire situation:
- My wife offered to run an errand for me Saturday afternoon, dropping off dry cleaning
- She returned to the house a short time later and told me she had a flat tire, which she drove on from the cleaners to the house
- She took my car on her next trip and I moved the car into the garage
- Her temporary spare was also flat, so later in the evening we took it to inflate it
- I located tires at Costco and set an appointment for noon Sunday to buy and install them
- When I left the house Sunday the temporary spare was still inflated, but within a few miles it lost its air and was flat again
- I called three places before finding a towing company that could come to get the car
- I called Costco and they told me they would hold a place in their queue for me
- I arrived there only thirty minutes behind schedule and was told that it would take ninety minutes to install the tires
- The car was finished inside of an hour, so I happily drove home
- I compared that purchase to the last set of tires seven years ago and saw that we saved almost $400
- Yesterday I took the temporary spare to an independent tire dealer, who replaced the valve stem
Talk about peaks and valleys!
Elsewhere, I am somewhat fascinated by a trend among some hotel chains, where they have ceased to stock their hotel room bathrooms with individual bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, instead choosing to install dispenser sets in the shower that contain shampoo, hair conditioner and body wash. I like it, although I am amused that one still needs a bar of soap for handwashing at the sink, wherever it happens to be located.
Speaking of hotels, when did most every chain move to a model where you reserve your room, guarantee it with a credit card, and then make the reservation uncancellable more than 24 hours prior to your stay? I experienced this quite a bit with a couple of corporate travel agencies, as they relied on the better prices obtained through prepaying for hotel stays, but this same tactic is now spreading to the company sites themselves. Plans change, people, and it's more than a little punitive to do it this way.
Whatever your political leanings, you have to agree that we're in the midst of an historic period right now, as for only the fourth time in our country's history a sitting president is about to be impeached. If you're curious, Richard Nixon resigned while articles of impeachment were being drawn up and voted out of committee, but was not officially impeached.
To me, the strange thing is that so many people who defend President Trump say that he did nothing that rises to the level of impeachment. Yet Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were both impeached for reasons that were more personal in nature (it's said that few people really liked President Johnson). Perspective depends on the times we live in, certainly.
I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a shout-out to the Kentucky football team, as they qualified for a bowl game by finishing the season with a 7-5 record. The last seven games were a showcase for a talented player named Lynn Bowden, Jr., a high school quarterback who had been converted into a wide receiver/kick returner. But this season Kentucky lost its starting quarterback and his backup to injury, so the team turned to Bowden to return to playing QB and he certainly delivered. If you're not familiar with Bowden, look him up online, he has quite a story. And he's going to enter the NFL draft after playing in the bowl game, so good luck to him.
My wife and I also follow Kentucky's volleyball team (we have a volleyballer in the family) and they're in the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament. They resume play Friday after breezing through the first two rounds without losing a set.
That's all I have this morning. Stay warm!
No particular subject or theme today, so here goes...
I had a pretty strange experience over the weekend, so I'll see if I can outline this in brief but still convey the entire situation:
- My wife offered to run an errand for me Saturday afternoon, dropping off dry cleaning
- She returned to the house a short time later and told me she had a flat tire, which she drove on from the cleaners to the house
- She took my car on her next trip and I moved the car into the garage
- Her temporary spare was also flat, so later in the evening we took it to inflate it
- I located tires at Costco and set an appointment for noon Sunday to buy and install them
- When I left the house Sunday the temporary spare was still inflated, but within a few miles it lost its air and was flat again
- I called three places before finding a towing company that could come to get the car
- I called Costco and they told me they would hold a place in their queue for me
- I arrived there only thirty minutes behind schedule and was told that it would take ninety minutes to install the tires
- The car was finished inside of an hour, so I happily drove home
- I compared that purchase to the last set of tires seven years ago and saw that we saved almost $400
- Yesterday I took the temporary spare to an independent tire dealer, who replaced the valve stem
Talk about peaks and valleys!
Elsewhere, I am somewhat fascinated by a trend among some hotel chains, where they have ceased to stock their hotel room bathrooms with individual bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, instead choosing to install dispenser sets in the shower that contain shampoo, hair conditioner and body wash. I like it, although I am amused that one still needs a bar of soap for handwashing at the sink, wherever it happens to be located.
Speaking of hotels, when did most every chain move to a model where you reserve your room, guarantee it with a credit card, and then make the reservation uncancellable more than 24 hours prior to your stay? I experienced this quite a bit with a couple of corporate travel agencies, as they relied on the better prices obtained through prepaying for hotel stays, but this same tactic is now spreading to the company sites themselves. Plans change, people, and it's more than a little punitive to do it this way.
Whatever your political leanings, you have to agree that we're in the midst of an historic period right now, as for only the fourth time in our country's history a sitting president is about to be impeached. If you're curious, Richard Nixon resigned while articles of impeachment were being drawn up and voted out of committee, but was not officially impeached.
To me, the strange thing is that so many people who defend President Trump say that he did nothing that rises to the level of impeachment. Yet Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were both impeached for reasons that were more personal in nature (it's said that few people really liked President Johnson). Perspective depends on the times we live in, certainly.
I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a shout-out to the Kentucky football team, as they qualified for a bowl game by finishing the season with a 7-5 record. The last seven games were a showcase for a talented player named Lynn Bowden, Jr., a high school quarterback who had been converted into a wide receiver/kick returner. But this season Kentucky lost its starting quarterback and his backup to injury, so the team turned to Bowden to return to playing QB and he certainly delivered. If you're not familiar with Bowden, look him up online, he has quite a story. And he's going to enter the NFL draft after playing in the bowl game, so good luck to him.
My wife and I also follow Kentucky's volleyball team (we have a volleyballer in the family) and they're in the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament. They resume play Friday after breezing through the first two rounds without losing a set.
That's all I have this morning. Stay warm!
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