New Shoes in the Rain

Good Monday morning, everyone.  Looks like fall is really here in central Kentucky, as reported in this space last week.  Hard freeze the last couple of nights, and spits of snow were visible while I was wrapping up some yard work yesterday. Will you be wearing a costume for Halloween this year?  I had to think about the last time that I dressed up for the occasion.  It was probably the Halloween that I was working at a nursing home, as employees there were encouraged to dress up.  We had bought our son a replica of a classic flannel Chicago White Sox jersey, so I appropriated that (already had the hat) and went as a quasi-baseball player.  Got high marks from my associates, who assumed I was too serious to come in actual costume. This year?  I'll probably dress as "Bruce Wayne, eccentric billionaire," borrowing that character's phrase from "The Dark Knight Rises."  My Halloween job is to hand out candy at my son's house, so that he and his wi...

Good morning, friends.  It seems that fall has "fell" here in central Kentucky, so to speak as I played golf in shorts on Sunday and today I expect to wear a jacket all day.  It IS late October, of course... I love to cook.  I don't recall mentioning that in any detail in the past in this space, but it's something I really enjoy.  Strangely, neither my mother, who was what I would call a "utilitarian" cook, nor my father, were that interested in preparing interesting dishes. I think my first efforts to cook anything to actually be eaten came when I was ten or twelve, when my mom allowed me to heat up a can of pork-and-beans for lunch.  That was fine, but my next attempt involved adding stuff to the canned goods to the point where I was taking more time to find my add-in ingredients than to actually cook the final blend. Fast forward to my first years post college, where I devised a recipe for chili that has served me, my family and friends well ever si...

A very good Wednesday morning to all, at least at the time of this writing.... I want to first say "thanks" to those who have discovered this blog over the past couple of weeks.  I have taken note of a much larger group of viewers than previous entries had enjoyed, and I appreciate more people reading and hopefully enjoying these posts.  Please feel free to comment as you like. We just said goodbye to our daughter and her family, as they came to visit a couple of Fridays ago and left last Saturday.  I've mentioned here before that this branch of our family tree resides in the Denver, Colorado area, and we used to see them two or three times a year.  But between the high cost of air travel, their kids both being school-aged and the fact that I no longer travel by air for my work and collect frequent flier miles to use, those visits are now annual. And it's probably for the best, as we heard what our "Colorado grandkids" (my colloquialism, not my wife...

...the more we realize that what we hear is real. How true is that? Well, for instance, President Trump is now tired of waiting for Congressional Republicans (those in the Senate, specifically) to deliver to him a bill that will, once and for all, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.  Yesterday he signed an executive order that will allow government agencies to relax restrictions on health plans that don't cover certain conditions or those that exclude pre-existing conditions.  And he appears ready to follow that by withholding funding to insurance carriers who are providing coverage to low-income people. Remember, he's been saying he would do this for some time.  The House passed a bill and the Senate tried more than once to follow suit.  Did the spectre of a Democratic bill co-sponsored by some TWENTY Senators force the hand of the President and/or Republican Congressional leadership? Disaster relief came relatively ...

Sunday night's horrific events in Las Vegas are dominating the news, as they should, as this is now the single most severe mass shooting event to take place on American soil. We have a major problem in this country, and I'm not the right person to adequately detail all of the varying aspects of this maze of issues and positions and policies.  But what I do know has already been said by people far smarter than I am:  we need more than the "thoughts and prayers" of our representatives in Congress to address this insanity once and for all. I honestly thought that the shootings at Sandy Hook in 2012 would finally be the tipping point, where a man who was determined to be suffering from severe mental illness opened fire on a group of children and their teachers.  And it seemed at the time that something positive would come from that unspeakable tragedy. But members of Congress stayed true to form, cowed by the financial shackles placed on them by substantial financia...