New Shoes in the Rain

Just a short post to express my thanks to everyone who visits this space.  I write this blog for fun, so I hope that it brings you a little fun, too. But I do want to say that I'm very thankful for my wonderful family, for my many friends, for my health and for my prosperity. Have a nice Thanksgiving!

Friends, on the start of this week of national Thanksgiving (yes, it's a week, I think, since the morning news shows led off today talking about "Thanksgiving week"), I have a few things I'd like to pose as rhetorical questions.... Starting with last night's NFL game between the Broncos and the Patriots....NBC persisted in calling it "Manning vs. Brady XII" or somesuch, identifying the quarterbacks for each team.  To be fair, New England's Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, formerly of the Indianapolis Colts and now of the Denver Broncos, have played against one another numerous times, but they have something like 48 teammates, so it's not a solo act on either side.  Plus, since they're both quarterbacks, they don't technically play AGAINST each other, but that's quibbling. I'm already sick of Black Friday and it isn't even here yet.  My wife asked me over the weekend why they call it that, and I used to think that it was some ...

Hope today's entry finds you well. Here in the central Kentucky area we were very fortunate not to have been affected by the recent spate of severe weather that struck about a dozen states.  My mother-in-law's home county in western Kentucky saw some heavy winds but none close to where she lives, thankfully.  And while I don't know anyone in Illinois who was affected, here's hoping those who were can find some positives in their current circumstances. Now it's cooler again, which I suppose is appropriate for mid-November, but after seeing high temperatures in the mid 60's recently, it's a bit of an adjustment. And nightly I feel just awful for those in the Philippines whose home area was ravaged by the recent typhoon there, as I watch the latest news reports about relief and recovery efforts there.  The company for whom I work, along with many, many other American entities, have some business installations in the Manila area, and from all reports that ...

Good morning, one and all. Woke up to a very pretty layer of snow on the lawn this morning, although there's not enough to cause road problems, even here in bad-weather-challenged central Kentucky.  It IS November, after all! Was talking with my daughter last night and she mentioned that she has a couple of friends who went to Walt Disney World this week or last week.  Apparently all said that the weather was much more agreeable than during our week there recently, less hot and humid.  Also, my daughter indicated that according to her Disney Experience smartphone app (I had this while we were there but deleted it as we left Orlando), the wait times for various popular rides and attractions were a fraction of what we experienced! Since our return from vacation I can add another worthwhile skill to my portfolio....product tester.  My friends at Colonel Littleton asked me to use and evaluate a couple of their new products, and offer my opinions of them.  So I...

I have a bunch of random and unconnected items to bring up, so here's a list from my brain purge... Blockbuster announced that it's closing its remaining 300 or so stores by early 2014.  I worked for a videotape rental store in the early 80s.  Honestly, if you had told me then that people could rent a movie by clicking a couple of buttons on their TV remote, or, better yet, visit a vending machine to pick up a movie to watch tonight, I would have thought you insane! Hard to imagine a professional football player being bullied, but that is exactly the scenario that's playing out in Miami right now. Rand Paul apparently wasn't graded hard enough when he wrote term papers in school, if he's this willing to use other people's words without proper attribution. Someone else whose work I read mentioned this, but the NFL really is all about the quarterbacks.  In Monday night's game between Chicago and Green Bay, both teams were forced to use their backup QBs...