New Shoes in the Rain

Good Monday morning to you. Perhaps I should state up front that it's a bit of a blue Monday here in the Big Blue Nation, as our beloved Kentucky Wildcats went down in defeat to the arch-rival North Carolina Tar Heels last night in a wild and highly competitive game.  Kentucky's team never really got going in the first half, owing to foul trouble for three starters, and that foul trouble and lack of rhythm carried over for the rest of the game.  Somewhat miraculous that Kentucky had the lead at a couple of points late, but Carolina's depth and experience won out. Though my wife doesn't agree, that's pretty much the end of basketball for me this year.  I don't watch much other college basketball except to see who Kentucky might end up playing, so if they're done, I probably am, too. My company is getting into a new aspect of business that you've probably seen and heard about, but because I don't talk in detail about work in this space, I won...

Happy Wednesday from central Kentucky, where it's a balmy 17 degrees as I write this.  Every year we seem to get what I would call a "false positive" with our weather, as spring seems to come very early and then we have our average temperatures plummet, just to remind us that it's not actually spring.  This year appears to be no exception! With our current President in perpetual crisis mode, there's been a lot of news coverage about the late former President Richard Nixon, who was in office when I was a kid, so that's prompted a lot of comparisons between Nixon and President Trump, and, in me, anyway, more comparisons of how things were back then and how they are now. For instance, I had lunch with a friend yesterday, and we had a spirited discussion about the proposed reforms to the Affordable Care Act.  My friend is a Libertarian, says that our government should be small enough to fit into the trunk of his car, and is definitely opposed to government sup...

Friends, it's raining cats and dogs here in central Kentucky this morning.  Well, not really.  And who came up with that turn of phrase, anyway? But it IS raining again this morning.  As someone who travels regionally for work, I tell myself how fortunate we are that this is rain and not snow, which tends to paralyze our area.  Easy to say that from inside the house, but when you get doused the first time you have to get out of your car and spend the rest of the day damp or worse, well, you get the idea. Speaking of plans, it now appears that the Republican plan to "repeal and replace Obamacare" now looks more like a plan to change it to better fit the traditional Republican narrative of tax cuts for those who largely don't need them and making healthcare more difficult to obtain for those in need.  It's telling that the House of Representatives plans a vote a scant two days after the details of this bill were made public, which will not allow proper scoring...

Good Monday morning to everyone!  If you're like me, and stayed up to watch the Oscars last night, you're a little sleep deprived.  I mean, after all, how often does an awards show end with a major twist in the ending? If you didn't watch and have not watched or read the news, then you don't know about the colossal screw-up that ended what was a pretty entertaining Academy Awards show last night.  The final and biggest award, for the Best Picture, was being presented by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, selected apparently because 2017 represents the fiftieth anniversary year of their vehicle "Bonnie and Clyde." In any case, after a brief political statement, the pair got down to business and introduced the nine nominees, then Beatty appeared a bit flummoxed by the contents of the envelope.  Dunaway laughed and said "you're impossible" and announced "La La Land," the odds-on favorite, as the winner. In the midst of acceptance speech...

Greetings, everyone.  Is the weather unseasonably warm where you are, or are you getting torrential rain in place of the years-long drought your area has suffered? It's been in the 70s here in central Kentucky recently.  New record high temp for yesterday's date.  I played golf in short sleeves on Sunday.  February 19. Common wisdom around here says we'll pay for this warm stretch with some heavy winter weather.  Much the same thing happened last year, as we had two major snowfalls in early March 2016.  Let's hope that we don't see a repeat of that. I suspect I'm a bigger baseball fan than many of you who visit this space regularly, but I'm pretty dejected over an announcement made by the leaders of Major League Baseball.  Starting with the coming season, a manager may signal from the dugout that he wants to intentionally walk an opposing batter, instead of the ages-old practice of actually having his pitcher throw four balls way outside to walk ...

Greetings to everyone.  More strange weather here in central Kentucky, featuring massive temperature swings, all manner of precipitation and forceful winds.  I won't say it's unusual for February, as there's hardly any weather pattern that's actually "usual" any longer. Had a recent oddity with our home telephone.  And, yes, before you gasp further, we DO still have a landline at our house.  I think I've mentioned here that it's easier to keep it as is for now, but as time passes, we have fewer and fewer compelling arguments for it to remain in service. Anyway, Thursday I noticed that the phone would ring, and on the other end would be what sounded like a call that I had dialed attempting to connect.  A lot of static and interference, but the unmistakable sound of a phone ringing was present.  If you hung up, you'd get a callback almost instantly. For some reason it stopped at the close of the business day on Thursday, so my wife and I wonder...

Friends, I really meant to follow through on my comments about NOT watching Sunday's Super Bowl.  I tried.  But ultimately, I failed, although only partially. Let me explain. My wife was in complete agreement with me, she also stated that she did not care to see the New England Patriots and more particularly their owner, coach and quarterback all receiving the Vince Lombardi trophy while acting as though their past behavior had not happened, as they had acted on four prior occasions when winning the game. We avoided the pre-game programs, watching a movie at home.  We decided to go out to see a movie, "Rogue One--A Star Wars Story," thanks to a Fandango gift card from our son and his family.  We even decided to have a modest dinner out before the movie. Aside--we really enjoyed this movie.  I'm not as invested in Star Wars as others I know, but found the original three movies highly entertaining and the most recent film to be very good as well.  Thi...