New Shoes in the Rain

I celebrated my 53rd birthday on Saturday (that reminds me, I need to update my profile for accuracy!) and must say that it was a very memorable occasion! My wife, son and daughter-in-law and I agreed that we should spend Saturday and part of Sunday in Cincinnati.  We had decided it would be fun for us all to attend a Cincinnati Reds game, but the weekend series with the Pittsburgh Pirates was experiencing high demand for tickets, and it was difficult to find a way to get all six of us (their kids, too, of course) into the ballpark into good seats.  So we initially decided to postpone. Then I learned that there was something special planned and that we all had to be AT the ballpark but not necessarily IN the park.  For the life of me, I had no earthly idea what that meant, but we determined that tickets for my son and me would be sufficient, and my wife, daughter-in-law and the grandchildren would do other things while we were at the ballpark. So we traveled north S...

Greetings, all....here we are, halfway through July already.  I suppose I'm showing my age in saying this, but the time certainly does seem to fly lately. Are you excited that Twinkies and other Hostess products are making their return to store shelves?  "The greatest comeback in the history of....ever!" is their slogan.  Not sure if I agree, but I'll pick up a package sometime soon.  I never loved Twinkies, but was a little nostalgic when it appeared that the brand was going away forever. Not a comeback, but how about Kentucky's own Kenny Perry, winning his second consecutive major golf tournament on the Champions Tour.  He was the winner of the U.S. Senior Open, played in steamy Omaha, Nebraska.  I didn't watch a great deal of it, but, as he often does, he looked pretty cool despite the weather and the pressure of the competition. My Cincinnati Reds could certainly use a comeback.  As it stands now they'd qualify for one of the two  playof...

Let’s spend a little time today posing some questions to which perhaps none of us knows the answer, but that doesn’t stop them from being at least somewhat interesting.... Does the media like reporting a potential scandal more than the facts of a given situation, particularly in Washington? How do Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Adam Sandler continue to work in motion pictures? Why is GOOD customer service so rare as to be considered exceptional, regardless of the industry? Can we ever successfully get money out of college athletics? Why are the long-term unemployed so insignificant to our representatives in Washington?  Is it thought that these people, or those close to them, do not vote? Does baseball really need instant replay, as exists in professional football? Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announced that she’s running for the U.S. Senate, and will oppose incumbent and Senate Minority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell.  Does ...

Happy almost-Independence Day to all. Tomorrow has added significance for me, because it's my wedding anniversary!  27 years ago tomorrow, my lovely wife agreed to BE my lovely wife, and my life has been immeasurably better since then!  She does not read this blog, but she'll hear this from me in other ways tomorrow (and the next day and the next....). Have I mentioned our next-door neighbor?  He's a retired Kentucky state trooper, a great guy and very exacting about how things should be around his homeplace.  So he's a good fit for us, as we're kind of particular about the appearance of our home, too.  We have this running gag about our trash cans....every Tuesday night we put our trash cans out for collection the following morning, and then it becomes sort of a contest to see who will get to them first to bring them back up to our respective houses.  I happened to "win" this morning and that prompted a phone call from our good neighbor, mainly to jos...

Friends, it's hot, DAMNED hot here in central Kentucky right now!  It's been that way for most of a week, that is, when it hasn't been raining.  I swear, I don't think I can remember a wetter spring and early summer! I have some followup items I wanted to touch on.... I believe I mentioned that on our auto trip to Colorado in late May/early June that our car, MY car, sustained a fair amount of hail damage when we stopped for the night in Kansas on our way west.  I didn't think it was that severe until I had the car washed and could really see all of the pockmarks.  There were MANY.  So when we returned home I called our insurance agency, just to get their opinion on whether I should file a claim.  It rested on the amount of damage, so I had an informal estimate done, and found that we were looking at a pretty good amount to repair all of it properly.  I filed a claim, the insurance company sent an appraiser out, and we had a check for a somewhat la...

Top of the morning, neighbors.  It's a good day to be alive, isn't it? It is.  Even though I was separated from my job last Friday. I cannot share specific details, but last week my supervisor and someone from our human resources department let me know that my position was being eliminated.  The details of this process were outlined for me, and that was that. So, as you can imagine, I've spent the past couple of workdays networking and contacting those whom I think can help me connect with my next opportunity.  Given the tumult in the employment market since 2007, I count myself very lucky indeed NOT to have experienced this until now.  After all, I'm part of that dying breed of "middle manager, " an endangered species, to be sure. Onward and upward, I say.  Companies do what they must, and while it is certainly personal to the affected parties, it cannot be to the company itself, as its actions are driven by an entirely different set of priorities ...

Friends, I'm back with my wife (and a granddaughter!) from the wilds of the Front Range of Colorado!  Great to get away, but also very nice to be back at home. Actually, we had an extremely nice vacation, although the time just flew by with various family activities and such.  Drove out on the last Thursday and Friday of May, and encountered some severe weather a couple of times (and my car has the hail damage to prove it, although it's not THAT noticeable).  Nothing like what the folks in Oklahoma and elsewhere have endured, mind you, but if you're driving, heavy rain and wind is no fun indeed. Speaking of wind, the wind farms that have sprung up along Interstate 70 in central Kansas and northwestern Colorado continue to be a source of fascination.  I read online that the Kansas "farm" produces enough electricity to power something like 77,000 households annually.  No mean feat, but since the wind apparently always blows on the Great Plains, that's a good...