Morning all:

Zinzinnati is panic zity. The bread has flown off the shelves and there is nary a drop of milk to be found. An amazing snowfall of 2 or so inches came crashing in last Thursday. For hours on end TV stations dutifully scrolled all 12,478 closings and delays along the bottoms of our screens. And yes, once again, news-babes smiling with million dollar caps stood in the middle of I-75 to announce that; a) it was cold, “duh”, and b) that traffic was operating at near normal speed. Looking a mite foolish they then proceeded to inform that; “it is the side streets we really have to worry about.” I love this circus that comes to town every winter.

Let me let the cat out of the bag before Marcia broadcasts it anyway. Last Saturday, due to old age, I had to replace the kitchen faucet. First stop was Lowe’s. So far so good. The uncoupling of the water was not a chore either. However the old one was pretty well corroded into place. Many of you would now say to yourselves, “Ok, all he needs to do is remove the sink and work from underneath.” I agree, that that would have been most practical. However, I chose to march to the beat of a slightly different drummer. Marcia walked into the kitchen to see what the noise was all about just as I was finishing hack sawing the old faucet from the sink. Realize that I was actually able to convince her that this technique was SOP. In point of fact it worked, and I did get a nice new single handle Phister Phauset installed and operational. Only later, talking with a neighbor, whose jaw dropped when the removal technique came up in discussion, did she sense that the replacement was managed in this unusual fashion.

If you have not seen Vince and Kirstin’s blog it has been updated. Also, through a very clever hyperlink you can get to something called “babies r us”. Looking at the list I figured out that Vince and Kirstin had the equivalent of a paint-ball fight with scanners while roaming the aisles and managed to scan every tag. Actually I had not a clue just how many various “must have” items these clever merchandisers have to offer these days. When our gang came along it was the perfunctory rattle, pacifier, cloth diapers, and a wide array of unisex hand-me-downs.

Cathy and Jason are now re-packing and their new home is waiting for them. Hopefully the heat is on. Jason has taken advantage of the Asheville area by hiking in the mountains during every spare moment. When a shower event becomes Cathy’s turn I suspect that they’ll be registered at either “camping r us”, or “wilderness r us”.

Adrianne, we can tell, is in her senior year. This week she was over for dinner and all of a sudden I realized that the conversation, in the immortal words of Janice Joplin, had taken on one of “great social import”. Great fun.

As an aside, I have taken the music off from the start up. This was done at the request of some with slow connect modems who experienced a lengthy delay whenever there was a change. Now if you want some background music, just click the button at the top of the page. Isn’t that great, finally you’re in charge. Have a listen to what’s loaded this week. A different rendition of a Beatles classic in honor of those fine and crack British and Dutch gendarmes, who, after 33 years broke up a piracy ring and recovered 50 priceless, and unheard, Beatles tapes.

Have a great week,

Cheers,

Dirk