New Shoes in the Rain

Greetings from steamy Richmond, Virginia, where the high temperature today will reach 101 degrees. No escape from the heat and humidity throughout the Southeast, so it would seem. On my trip here I took special note of what seemed to be a higher than usual percentage of folks who had submitted themselves to artificial tanning. How do I know this? They're a different shade of "tan" than the farmer's tan adorning my forearms and neck these days (from golf, not farming), a little more orange. Why do people, and not just women, do this to themselves? I suppose my own level of vanity is manageable enough that this would nevr occur to me. Speaking to tanning, let me now turn squarely to someone who was humorously referred to as "the world's saddest tangerine," House Speaker John Boehner. This man apparently circled August 2 as the target date for his moment in the sun, so to speak, and, instead, we have been subjected to the worst display of political br...

Sorry, borrowed the title from an old Jimmy Buffett song I always liked, though he referred to a different point in life than I'm facing. I turn 51 on Wednesday, and, no, I'm not looking for an avalanche of birthday greetings and such.  Last year I turned 50 kind of quietly, spending the day traveling for business and the evening with a pizza in a hotel room in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina.  We'd already had a celebration of the family birthdays while our daughter and her family were in for a visit, and my wife and I enjoyed a getaway the weekend just before, so the bigger celebrations had already occurred. And I did what I was supposed to do, as I recently completed the two things I really didn't want to do...I had a physical, which included a prostate examination, and a colonoscopy.  In my mind, as long as I completed these before my 50th year was up, I wasn't untimely in doing so.  And both tests turned out normal, which is exactly what I wanted. ...

Good morning, one and all.  Back from a little more than a week's vacation and have a few items to share. My first comments will be about the visit just concluded by our daughter and her family.  I just want to go on record as saying that our grandchildren are growing up far too fast, and we really see this when our two Colorado-based grandkids come to visit.  It had only been six months since they and their mom last came to Kentucky, but they are both so different in that space of time.  Regardless, we had a great time with them here and enjoyed a lot of wonderful time with them and our son's family (also two kids). If you're either a NASCAR fan or a Kentucky resident, you have now heard (and perhaps experienced) the mess that occurred in Sparta, Kentucky Saturday evening, in which the Kentucky Speedway, having begged for the opportunity to host a real live NASCAR event, blew it completely by screwing up parking for some 20,000 carloads of race fans.  From ...

Happy Independence Day to all. Big milestone in our family, as tomorrow my wonderful wife and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary! Had a kind of hectic week (or a little more, actually) leading up to today. Our daughter and her family arrived in Lexington for a visit on the 24th, the same day that my wife concluded her full-time employment AND the day of my dreaded colonoscopy (and what you have heard is true....the prep is far worse than the procedure). Fun with them Friday night and when they returned Sunday afternoon (went to another part of Kentucky to see my son-in-law's relatives), continuing through Monday night. Family dinners and some good clean fun in the backyard, which we transformed with a kiddie slide, plastic bowling and golf sets and some other stuff. Then Tuesday I headed out for a business trip to Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee. Since I work at home it would have been challenging for everyone had I attempted to work in my office shushi...

Back from another brief business trip, again to the Nashville area.  And instead of my usual pattern, I overnighted in Bowling Green, a city a bit less than an hour north of the metro Nashville area, so that I could join a friend and take in a baseball game (nice ballpark in Bowling Green, by the way). Then I did something very different from my usual travel patterns.  I had noticed on several recent trips to Nashville that the I-65 corridor between Elizabethtown (where I merge onto this highway) and the "cave area" of Kentucky (home of Mammoth Cave and other natural attractions) is rife with extensive construction due to lane additions to accommodate the massive amount of traffic on this road.  My friend from the Elizabethtown area explained that this has been in the "ten-year plan" for about twenty years, but, no matter, when it's completed, it will be much safer and better able to accommodate all of the cars and trucks zooming north and south. Anyway, I s...

As you likely remember, our son and his wife recently became the proud parents of a bouncing baby boy.  So now that he is the father of a son, I expect him to go through some of the same stuff I have in being his stepfather.  The interesting thing is that for every real experience we share, it creates a mental image of something else that I either wish I could do or would like to do with him. To wit: My beloved Cincinnati Reds (as with most every major league baseball team) operate a "dream week" fantasy camp, allowing regular guys like me the chance to spend a week playing baseball as though he were a member of the Reds.  I love baseball very much and still regret that I didn't get to play more organized ball when I was a kid.  Not that I was that good, I just loved it and still do. Anyway, for the last twenty years or so I've had this recurring dream that I got to go to the Reds' fantasy camp, but in the last five or more, that dream has included my son go...

With apologies to a friend of mine who once uttered the title phrase to me after a day of outdoor painting in extreme heat.... But it kind of fits today.  I don't have any great travel stories to tell, no famous people I've met.  The new grandson is growing and doing well, parents and big sister are adjusting to life as a family of four, so that's all good. But me?  Well, I said it earlier.  I got nothing. Oh, I've been fighting a respiratory infection or something that's caused me to cough and blow quite a bit, but I think I've just about overcome it.  My wife wanted me to go to the doctor for it after spending a tough weekend a couple of weekends ago, but I felt I was making progress and declined to go.  After all, I was going for a physical the following Friday (6/3) and if I wasn't better by then, well, I'd already be at the doctor's office, so why go twice? Pragmatism seldom trumps a spouse who's tired of someone coughing incessantly...