New Shoes in the Rain

Good Monday morning to everyone!  If you're like me, and stayed up to watch the Oscars last night, you're a little sleep deprived.  I mean, after all, how often does an awards show end with a major twist in the ending? If you didn't watch and have not watched or read the news, then you don't know about the colossal screw-up that ended what was a pretty entertaining Academy Awards show last night.  The final and biggest award, for the Best Picture, was being presented by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, selected apparently because 2017 represents the fiftieth anniversary year of their vehicle "Bonnie and Clyde." In any case, after a brief political statement, the pair got down to business and introduced the nine nominees, then Beatty appeared a bit flummoxed by the contents of the envelope.  Dunaway laughed and said "you're impossible" and announced "La La Land," the odds-on favorite, as the winner. In the midst of acceptance speech...

Greetings, everyone.  Is the weather unseasonably warm where you are, or are you getting torrential rain in place of the years-long drought your area has suffered? It's been in the 70s here in central Kentucky recently.  New record high temp for yesterday's date.  I played golf in short sleeves on Sunday.  February 19. Common wisdom around here says we'll pay for this warm stretch with some heavy winter weather.  Much the same thing happened last year, as we had two major snowfalls in early March 2016.  Let's hope that we don't see a repeat of that. I suspect I'm a bigger baseball fan than many of you who visit this space regularly, but I'm pretty dejected over an announcement made by the leaders of Major League Baseball.  Starting with the coming season, a manager may signal from the dugout that he wants to intentionally walk an opposing batter, instead of the ages-old practice of actually having his pitcher throw four balls way outside to walk ...

Greetings to everyone.  More strange weather here in central Kentucky, featuring massive temperature swings, all manner of precipitation and forceful winds.  I won't say it's unusual for February, as there's hardly any weather pattern that's actually "usual" any longer. Had a recent oddity with our home telephone.  And, yes, before you gasp further, we DO still have a landline at our house.  I think I've mentioned here that it's easier to keep it as is for now, but as time passes, we have fewer and fewer compelling arguments for it to remain in service. Anyway, Thursday I noticed that the phone would ring, and on the other end would be what sounded like a call that I had dialed attempting to connect.  A lot of static and interference, but the unmistakable sound of a phone ringing was present.  If you hung up, you'd get a callback almost instantly. For some reason it stopped at the close of the business day on Thursday, so my wife and I wonder...

Friends, I really meant to follow through on my comments about NOT watching Sunday's Super Bowl.  I tried.  But ultimately, I failed, although only partially. Let me explain. My wife was in complete agreement with me, she also stated that she did not care to see the New England Patriots and more particularly their owner, coach and quarterback all receiving the Vince Lombardi trophy while acting as though their past behavior had not happened, as they had acted on four prior occasions when winning the game. We avoided the pre-game programs, watching a movie at home.  We decided to go out to see a movie, "Rogue One--A Star Wars Story," thanks to a Fandango gift card from our son and his family.  We even decided to have a modest dinner out before the movie. Aside--we really enjoyed this movie.  I'm not as invested in Star Wars as others I know, but found the original three movies highly entertaining and the most recent film to be very good as well.  Thi...

Good afternoon to everyone.  Unusual day and time to post, but my schedule got a little fouled up this week. Are you planning to watch the Super Bowl?  For a number of years, starting when our kids were, well, kids, we really made a big deal of the day of the big game, buying special snacks, planning a menu appropriate to the site of the game or the participating teams' cities, and so forth. Last year was great, since the Denver Broncos won and our daughter and her family are season ticket holders! But this year?  Hard to get excited about the New England Patriots (again) and the Atlanta Falcons.  Admittedly, the Falcons have a Kentucky native and UK grad on the roster, tight end Jacob Tamme, but he was injured mid-season and won't play.  But otherwise, the Falcons don't have any players who command a high level of attention from me. And then there's the Patriots.  Sorry to my friends in the northeast, but I don't care for the team owner, the head c...