New Shoes in the Rain

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Today is the day when we all take time to give thanks for the many blessings we each enjoy.  But I prefer to believe that every day is a day to feel and even express our gratitude. Here are some of the things that make me feel thankful: My wife, whom I met about 37 years ago.  I was not close to any of my immediate family (for a lot of reasons that I won't go into here) but I met my wife and her two amazing kids and I felt a sense of belonging that I had never known before.  The kids grew up, and they married and had kids of their own.  And the love has grown exponentially since then.  There are an awful lot of things about me that have not changed that much, but I prefer to believe that my personal traits that have improved are entirely thanks to her! My kids, whom I mentioned above.  They are both outstanding people, good spouses and excellent parents.  I'm proud of them, certainly, but appreciate them and the relationsh...

Happy Wednesday, everyone.  Hope your week is going well enough! Had an interesting experience over the weekend, as my grandson's youth hockey team was entered into a tournament in and around South Bend, Indiana.  My wife and I would have said, well, OK, except for the location, as this was a golden opportunity (and you'll pardon the pun) to see some of the campus of the University of Notre Dame. So we threw in and got a room as a part of the tournament block, and last Thursday set sail for Mishawaka, Indiana, which is adjacent to South Bend itself.  Made a pit stop in Milan, Indiana, the home of the "Milan Miracle" upon which the sports movie "Hoosiers" is based.  It's a real place, a little wide place in the road with a couple of stop lights and the kind of "downtown" that would look equally at home with dirt replacing asphalt on the main street and horses tied up in front of the old buildings.  We didn't go in but whatever locations were...

Happy middle-of-the-week day, everyone.  Not much on talking about "hump day," so there you go! I think I had mentioned before that I've had some fun with several of my grandkids by referring to myself as Richard, the Knower of All Things.  Most of them chuckle along with me, but our middle granddaughter just can't bring herself to admit that I know a thing or two, and responds by calling me Ricardo. You never can tell. Anyway, I don't have a specific theme for today's post, so it's a little bit of several categories.  Here goes: We watch a show called Morning Joe on MSNBC most weekday mornings, as they routinely discuss politics and national issues and have a pretty good variety of guests on the show.  I began watching a number of years ago, when Joe Scarborough, the primary host and former Congressman, very suddenly replaced Don Imus on MSNBC after Imus offended some viewers with one or another of his comments.  The co-hosts of the show were and are Mika...

Good pre-Halloween Friday to everyone.  Hope you're ready to trick or treat, or hand out candy, or go to a Halloween party, now that it's safer to have one of those.  I don't have a costume, at least not yet. I just returned from getting my COVID vaccine booster.  Why did I?  Well, for one thing, this horrific nightmare scenario is not yet over.  I have been most fortunate that no one in my immediate family, extended family or circle of friends has had it with any long-lasting effects.  One such friend tested positive, suffered only a runny nose and eventually concluded that this might have been a false positive test. Another reason is that I have underlying health issues.  I'm overweight and have some medical history that makes it essential to get as much protection from this virus as possible.   The third is that my wife also has some existing medical circumstances, so the last thing I would want to do is bring the virus home to her without know...

Happy Friday, my friends, we've almost made it! I've been making some mental notes, for all of the good that usually does, about things I've seen during my travels that made me pause, or laugh, or feel uncomfortable, or, well, all of the above.  For instance: I followed what I believe was a food truck for a few miles not long ago, until we both turned onto a four-lane highway and I pulled alongside of it.  I don't know if the name of the entity was in another language or was simply painted so poorly that I just couldn't read it.  I suppose if the food's any good that this would have a following, cult or otherwise, but why wouldn't you want to put the name of your business on the thing legibly? I was in a town a couple of hours away earlier this week and saw signage for a restaurant.  "Wasabi Mexican and Japanese Cuisine," the sign read.  I'm not sure how I feel about that. Outside of the same community, near Lake Cumberland (a man-made lake tha...

Good Tuesday morning, friends.  I am at home today and off work, and will explain below. Before I get into what's happening here, let's talk about a few things happening elsewhere. I'm not a Facebook user, as my stock excuse is that "I graduated high school."  That used to be a much more accurate statement than it is today.  I don't use Instagram too much, although I post a picture there once in a while and have a handful of friends I follow there.  Another very good friend decided to try living in Panama for a few months and so I'm communicating with her via WhatsApp. All owned and operated by Facebook. Yesterday's outage was rather amusing to me, given that so many people spend SO MUCH TIME on the main Facebook app.  There were numerous funny items I saw on Twitter about what people were doing with their time without Facebook or Instagram to weigh them down. But I find the outage to be just a little suspicious, as a former Facebook manager appeared o...

Hey, it's Friday, everyone!  If you're among the majority of folks who don't have to work on the weekends, good for you, we've almost made it to a couple of well-deserved days off! My wife and I bought a new car last weekend.  This is significant for a number of reasons, the primary one being that the last time we did this was almost fourteen years ago!  The other reason is one I'll explain below. As I've noted here, I work in a healthcare sales position and have responsibility for a pretty large geographic territory.  During the worst of the initial COVID-related lockdowns and limitations, this job became a work-from-home gig, which was OK with me, as I'd done that before.  My counterparts and I have been asked since sometime in the summer of 2020 to begin getting out to see active and prospective clients a day per week, then two, then three, and now back to our original model of four days per week in the field.  Complicating matters is that many of the ac...