I get around

Good morning, everyone.  Hope you're ready for a good weekend and will have good weather.  The forecast for central Kentucky looks pretty good, especially for tomorrow.

Still hoping for the best for the people of Ukraine.  Unfortunately, the Russian military appears to be asserting itself, and the flow of civilians out of Ukraine is now estimated to be around a million people.  With more to come.

I'm just back from an overnight business trip this week.  In brief, here are some of the highlights of the trip:

My company requires traveling employees to reserve a compact car, but because I have a membership with their preferred vendor, I almost always get an upgrade.  Monday night I went to pick up the car and my compact car turned into a Nissan Armada, a truck-based SUV that is, well, pretty big.

The most expensive gas I saw during my trip was $3.89 per gallon for regular unleaded.

We have a corporate deal with a hotel in the area where my employer's facility is located.  It is OK, but very much like a time warp.  Lots of earth-tone wallpaper all over, the first generation of flat-screen TVs are still in use, and the rooms have what I would estimate to be the cheapest mattresses available.  It's in a good location and they direct bill our facility, so those are pluses.

Our grandson had a hockey tournament in Evansville, IN last weekend, and we traveled down for the games.  Stayed Friday night in a certain hotel and used points for our son and his family to have their own room as well.  Planned to stay over Saturday night, but the team lost Saturday morning.  The hotel could not have been nicer in allowing us to check out late, early Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday morning.  This place is probably about the same age as the one where I stayed for work this week, but they've updated the common spaces, as well as carpet, bathroom fixtures and televisions in the rooms.  The exterior needs attention, but I'd wager they'll be working on that later this year.

Lucky me--I partially broke a tooth Wednesday evening while eating a tuna sub.  Yessir, those sub sandwiches are really hard on your teeth!  Kidding aside, this was probably a tooth that was ready to crack.  I'm not in any real pain, thankfully, but the soonest I could get into the dentist is next Monday.  Same dentist that cancelled my March 2020 appointment and did not get me into their schedule for a cleaning until June 2021.

I witnessed a semi blowing a tire on my trip home yesterday.  Harder than you would think to avoid all of those flying chunks of rubber.  I was also impressed at how well the driver got his truck under control to get it off the road.

Speaking of semi trucks, I passed through Indianapolis on my way home and saw a few people with American flags gathered on three overpasses to recognize the "Freedom Convoy." As quickly as mandates for masking and vaccination are being lifted, I'm not sure what these folks are protesting, but they apparently were planning to travel through that area.  It was originally rumored that there would be a large number of truckers in Washington DC to protest the President on the night of the State of the Union speech, and I believe there were about a dozen protestors.

I visited a restaurant along my path home for lunch yesterday.  The front door bore a sign that said (paraphrasing here) "Thank you for stopping in today!  We will do our very best to serve you and meet all of your needs, but please remember that we are somewhat short-staffed.  So we appreciate your patience!" The service was excellent, in my opinion.

Glad to be home!