New Shoes in the Rain

Good Monday morning, campers!  It was a beautiful weekend here in central Kentucky. The great weather began around Thursday and was spectacular all the way through to today.  Fall is indeed here, with just a little cool in the air.  Gonna be cooler still later in the week, they tell me. Today's post is so titled because I spent a couple of hours on my roof yesterday.  No, I haven't gone completely around the bend, I just needed to finish a project I started last weekend.  I don't like to paint, which I think I have adequately documented here previously, but I can do it and do a decent job of it.  Home ownership these past 25+ years has made me develop at least tolerable skills in this area (and others, of course), and I'm not about to spent $1000 for someone to do what I can do passably myself. So this painting project was the exterior trim.  Didn't need to paint the garage or entry doors, I had done those in the last couple of years.  No, we'...

Good morning, all.  A slight detour from my normal slice-of-life diatribes.  This morning my treatise concerns villains from movies and books. Why are we fascinated with villains?  Is it because we secretly wish that we could act that way, with no real consequences?  Or is it because we know that most, if not all, of the time, the good guys win out in the end of a movie or book? I don't know, but I find many "bad guys" from movies to be most interesting, possibly the MOST interesting character in a given work.  Without further introduction, and in no particular order, here are some of the villains I've found compelling in various movies and other sources: Sir Laurence Olivier enjoyed a long and distinguished career in acting on stage and screen, but may be known best to people in my demographic for playing the Nazi war criminal Christian Szell in the '70's thriller "Marathon Man."  The plot is somewhat difficult to explain quickly, but in it Du...

It's a rainy Tuesday afternoon here in central Kentucky today.  Hope the weather is a little more agreeable wherever you're reading this. Working my first all-office day for some time.  Somehow I thought this would be more common when I moved into yet another work-from-home position, but given staffing changes, ever-changing client expectations and, well, an endless pile of things to be done, it has not happened much.  Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend! Yesterday I was in the hills of eastern Kentucky for a meeting in Martin.  This is a small community in Floyd County, for those keeping score, but I have client locations based there.  It's a pretty drive from Lexington to Martin and yesterday was no exception, as there are many wooded areas along the hills en route to that part of the state and many of the trees have begun to blaze into fall colors Ironically, my wife and I spent most of three days in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in ...

Greetings, all.  Rainy Tuesday morning here in central Kentucky, but we appear to have escaped the more severe weather that has struck areas south of here thus far.  But we're under a significant chance of rain for the next several days, so not out of the woods yet. The cavalry has arrived in my job, as I now have three new folks who have received their initial training and are somewhat prepared to go out and do their new jobs.  This is great news for me, as I've been wearing a lot of hats over the past couple of months, just to keep things moving in a positive direction. Playoff baseball continues to be fascinating.  In the American League this year, we have no Yankees or Red Sox or Rangers, none of the usual players.  The Baltimore Orioles, who have not played in a World Series since 1983, will face off against the Kansas City Royals, who've not done so since 1985 (if you're interested, both of them won the last times they went to the Series) for the right...

Good Monday morning, everyone...hope you all had a great weekend! A few things rattling around pertaining to things ending, and I suppose I should start with my beloved Cincinnati Reds, who ended their baseball season yesterday.  162 games filled with injuries and uneven performance, ending with a record well below .500 that did not qualify the team to play in the postseason, as they had three of the past four years. But just in case you think that the last few games were downers, it's worth noting that on their way to wrapping up the season the Reds won Thursday against the Milwaukee Brewers, ending that team's postseason aspirations, and over the weekend won in come-from-behind fashion on Saturday with an extra-innings grand slam, no less, and then yesterday their wonderful pitcher Johnny Cueto drove in what would be the winning run to assure himself of a 20-win season, the first by a Reds pitcher since 1988.  As I am fond of saying, baseball is the greatest game of them...

It's fall, campers, as of around 10:30 last night.  It's felt more like fall in these parts for some time, so appropriate it's now official. And with that, I have my traditional fall cold.  I have been fighting allergies for some weeks, which is also characteristic of this time of year, but what I have suffered has morphed into a full-blown cold.  Congestion, some coughing (though thankfully not so much that I can't sleep) and general aches are its hallmarks.  How nice.  Using some over-the-counter stuff to fight back, but, as we all know, it generally just has to run its course. We had our twice-a-year neighborhood garage sale Saturday.  I put out a few things, plus a couple of pieces of furniture that we no longer wanted.  Made less than $50, but that's better than the last time I did it, when I made about $15.  Sold a blender we haven't used in years, a weed trimmer that does not run, and a soap dispenser that clogs at the drop of a hat. ...

Good Monday morning to all.  Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! Later today I'm going to be helping to orient a new employee (note that I did not use the non-word "orientate."  One of these days I'll do an entire blog entry on the fingernails-on-a-blackboard feeling I get from numerous very common grammatical errors.).  I'll be doing this each of the next three weeks.  I've done this many, MANY times, but I cannot say that I've done it when I myself have been this "new," having only started my current job in May.  But it will be good to fill out our team completely!  The only hiccup thus far is new hire #1 had difficulty finding our offices elsewhere for the HR portion of her orientation, but I was just advised that she arrived. Had a couple of pretty awful customer service experiences recently, and while I could provide endless details of each, let's just say they were totally different from one another and involved completely differe...