New Shoes in the Rain

Good Thursday morning, friends! My schedule has been so haphazard lately that I really don't have any kind of pattern of when I find time to post, so I hope that this hasn't been an issue for any of you super-organized types out there. Interesting times we're living in within these United States.  We have one active war, two other conflicts in which we're involved overseas, humanitarian disasters in Texas, Florida and now Puerto Rico and yet our leader seems obsessed with petty grievances with other politicians and with professional athletes electing not to stand for the National Anthem before their games or to visit the White House. This same leader is being investigated by no fewer than four congressional committees and a special counsel for, well, a lot of things. Talk about leadership. Closer to my home we have the former basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, now the head coach at in-state rival Louisville, having been effectively fired yesterday...

Happy Monday, everyone. Hope your weekend was smashing, and that all of your teams won if you're into that sort of thing. One of our teams was struggling last night, as it got close to bedtime, so we watched a bit of the Emmy Awards ceremony. You know, the awards for stuff and people on television. Important to note if Shailene Woodley is reading this, since she made it abundantly clear to a reporter prior to the ceremony that she does not own a television, she READS BOOKS. So there. Anyway, I wanted to tune in because I like Stephen Colbert when he's not on so late at night (old guys can't stay up like they used to). In the twenty-five minutes we watched I saw him twice, once to say "Good night!" So that was a bit disappointing. And as the public address announcer, the show employed some standup comedian who apparently specializes in imitating another comedian, Chris Rock, as this guy sounded like him and all of his comments about presenters and winners alike wer...

Good Thursday morning to everyone. Here in my area, we're getting that promised portion of the remains of hurricane Irma, but a fraction of what folks further south experienced.  My thoughts are certainly with those affected in Florida and the Caribbean. The Equifax hack that we all learned about late last week is more evidence that nothing and no one is entirely safe online.  Try as we might to be cautious and use the kinds of safeguards that make the most sense, someone's always out there trying to extract information from banks, retailers and now credit reporting services. A good friend works in compliance and security for a regional bank and is a certified auditor, so I consulted him for advice.  His comments were simple and straightforward--freeze your credit reports immediately and consider a security product to protect your information from such attacks. I spent a fair amount of time Sunday evening moving gradually through all three credit reporting bureaus...

Good Tuesday morning....and, yes, I actually typed "Monday" before catching my own error. I had the pleasure of playing golf with some friends yesterday.  One is a friend through golf whom I had not seen in some time, the others I see regularly.  Somewhere along the way through our time together our conversation turned to golf courses in our home area that are no longer in operation.  We collectively agreed that those who were now out of business had flaws and issues that likely accelerated the circumstances that led to them ending their operations. The comments continued, and we began to collectively name restaurants and stores that have left the scene over the past few months.  It's a longer and longer list, and while new shopping areas open frequently, many bringing with them new retail and dining choices, some of the old stalwarts continue to leave. For instance, here in Lexington we once had THREE K-Mart stores.  I was just saying to a friend of mine ...

Greetings to all. Sincerest sympathies to those in Texas and elsewhere in the path of Harvey who have lost loved ones,  property and all semblance of normalcy.  Things will get better, I'm sure, but not quickly enough. Here in Kentucky we're getting some wind and rain, but not so much as was seen and experienced elsewhere. We're in a strange place as a country right now.  We're in a position where the people whose lives were upended need help in the worst way, yet the second-highest-ranking member of the Executive branch of our government lobbied AGAINST relief after Hurricane Katrina twelve years ago, on the basis of what it would do to our deficit.  Both he and the President have visited Texas, as that's now an expected element of disasters and recoveries. It appears that we're going to be hearing a lot about tax reform, though I don't yet have a clue if MY taxes will change or if that "reform" will extend only to those who most likely do...