New Shoes in the Rain

Good rainy Monday morning, everyone.  Hope the weekend was good where you were. My wife and I returned from one of our periodic weekend getaways last night.  We customarily travel the short distance to Cincinnati, which is about ninety minutes from our home city of Lexington, Kentucky, for some time away.  We enjoy these little sojourns quite a bit, as we're in a pretty different environment than at home, and the cost of traveling there (both in travel and time) is pretty small. Had a couple of novel experiences on this particular trip that I thought I'd share.  The first was a visit to an establishment in downtown Cincinnati that I'd always wanted to experience, Batsakes Hat Shop.  I'd heard of this place for some years, as I'm a great hat fan (would be hard pressed to count the number of hats and caps that I own for various purposes and activities) and it's the nearest "traditional" hat shop.  If you Google that business name, you'll see news...

Top of the morning, all.  I hope that you enjoyed Easter, Passover or just the weekend, depending on your perspective.  Our gang celebrated Easter well, with egg hunts, church and some great family time.  So I hope that you had the opportunity to do the same. I'm in the fourth week of my "sabbatical," as I begin a new position on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo, if you keep track of that sort of thing).  At this point I wish I had played more golf and done less work on my lawn, but that's how it goes whether I'm working or not.  This morning we're making our latest attempt to persuade grass to grow in the space in our front yard where a tree formerly stood.  Bought a product I've used before that contains seed, mulch and fertilizer and it works pretty well.  Just hoping that it will produce at least some grass in these bare areas of the front yard! I have also had the privilege of performing some volunteer work with a fine organization here in my home area ca...

Friends, if you didn't watch the NCAA men's basketball championship game or just don't care about sports, you wouldn't know that the University of Kentucky Wildcats went down in defeat to the University of Wisconsin Huskies by a scant six points.  Analysis is futile at this point, but let's just say that a number of things that plagued the Kentucky team earlier in the season made an untimely return, and UConn played a VERY good game and deserved to win. And since my last entry, my beloved Cincinnati Reds have won only three games.  They've played three series so far, three games each, and that's not a good average to this point.  A week and a half does not make a season, of course, but it may foretell some eventual patterns that emerge as the long baseball season unfolds.  There are people that say the baseball season is too long, but I feel that it's the appropriate length.  A person wiser than myself once wrote that each team will win a third of thei...

Good morning, gang.  Thought I owed my loyal following a few updates on some things that I have mentioned in recent blog posts, so here goes. Looks like we finally have our washer fixed.  We've replaced the drain pump, then the motor, and now the drive belt.  Not much else in the way of moving parts to replace, and we're hopeful that we won't experience any more of that horrible burning smell.  The technician was pretty confident that the smell was caused by the old belt becoming too smooth and spinning on the drive spindle. Hope he's right, or else we'll have to buy a new machine. Remember when I mentioned my experimentation with homemade popcorn?  Two very nice folks whom I've known for some time (we used to work together) generously sent me a pan specific to the task of popping popcorn on the stovetop.  It's called a WhirleyPop and does a very nice job.  Just a little practice and I was able to prepare some very tasty popcorn.  No more micr...