New Shoes in the Rain

Happy Monday to all....I was scheduled to be gone for the day in meetings about three hours southeast of here, but due to an illness among my meeting group, here I am. Lucky, too.  My, but it's COLD here today!  Temperature still in the 20s, lower if one factors in the wind chill.  I was actually on my way out of town for my meeting today when I learned it was being postponed, so I was out among 'em in the early part of the morning.  Encountered a little black ice along the way....for the uninitiated, that's when there's a slick spot that blends into dark pavement so well that you cannot SEE that it's icy and slick, and often don't know until it's too late.  Anyway, because it was early there were fewer cars out, so this little issue didn't cause me any problems. One complication that required a little more planning than usual this morning was that our garage door developed a problem over the weekend.  My wife and I were out a good part of the day on...

Happy Hump-day, everyone.  And, no, I'm not going to include a link to that silly commercial with the people saying that to the camels.... Suppose I should begin with last night's State of the Union address by President Obama, his sixth.  I'm always struck by the optics of roughly HALF of the House of Representatives chamber coming to its feet to applaud something that the President says.  Doesn't matter which party holds the office, that's been done for a long time. Regardless, I thought the President did a nice job specifying some things that had already been mentioned, like middle-class tax cuts funded by additional taxes on the highest earners, free community college tuition (if you qualify), revised trade policies, etc.  Not that anything he put forward has any chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress, mind you.  And did anyone else notice that we NEVER saw Mitch McConnell on camera after he entered the House chamber a couple of spots behind...

Happy Friday to all.  Another week is almost in the books! A lot of this and that today, so bear with me (or skip ahead) if what I write in one segment isn't of interest.  Sometimes my brain just works that way, unfortunately. Do you use Twitter?  And do you write much there, or just use it to see where the rich and famous are having dinner?  I do a bit of both, write things mostly in response to what I've seen there.  After the dreadful terrorist attacks in Paris Twitter was the vehicle through which many expressed their sorrow and opinions.  And many responded to those expressions, as you'd imagine.  I won't detail it here, but if you have some curiosity about how to shut someone down on Twitter effectively, Google the search terms "J.K. Rowling Rupert Murdoch Twitter" and that should show you what I'm referencing. Gee, never thought I'd write those words in the same sentence.... Saw that Major League Baseball is going to be experimenting wit...

Greetings, folks.  Shivering a bit as I write this, as it's only 19 degrees here in Lexington, and was actually below zero last night.  And that's the air temperature; colder when the wind chill is factored in. And I HATE to be cold.  I'm a big guy, too, but for some reason, I feel the cold a lot more these days than I did when I was younger.  Old age, I suppose, but now when it's cold outside, the last thing I want to do is try to grin and bear it.  Get me into the house, the car, a store, somewhere warm! Suppose it could be said that Kentucky's basketball team is warming up a bit, but they had to struggle before finally beating Ole Miss in overtime Tuesday night.  This mega-talented team is still searching for its identity, I think, so the more great escapes they can make against motivated opponents can only help them in their conference schedule from this point forward.  And I agree with Coach John Calipari, in that a loss might actually be bene...

Greetings to one and all and a very happy new year! I hope 2014 was good for you and that 2015 will be even better.  I didn't stop by to write about what did or didn't go well for me in the past year.  There could be a lot of details, good and not so much, but the important thing is that I am blessed with a healthy, happy family and that's what truly matters! Nothing in particular is on my mind this morning, although I had a few stray thoughts that I found interesting.  For instance, I read an article online about someone who has kept his America Online (AOL to those who are into the whole brevity thing) e-mail address active for MANY years, and how he has to explain to many that he is not, in fact, a caveman who refuses to join us here in the early 21st century. That made me think of how I first used a computer to get online, first e-mail addresses and so on.  I remember making the investment in Prodigy, which was, like AOL and CompuServe, a dial-up service wh...