From the blustery city, good morning all:

“Fidelity is a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed” — Ambrose Bierce (19th century satirist)

I thought about this morning’s wisdom after watching Tiger Woods prostate himself before the nation. Normally I don’t watch such stuff but last Thursday our little family kicked off a very special TV watching week. Marcia is spending the week keeping a television watch log for the Nielsen Ratings folk. I don’t have the heart to tell her that not every blank space in her log booklet needs to be filled in and that TV watching is not expected to be an around the clock vocation. In any case I made a larger than normal pot of coffee this morning—she should be good to go.

Also, if you have a favorite show let Marcia know and she’ll happily enter it in her log. Two AM till 5:30 is already filled in with the Jewelry Sales Channel.

Last weekend with the grandkids was all I had hoped for. The weather cooperated and we had snow-aplenty. It was Charles Dickens who characterized English writing (illustrated by Shakespeare) as being like “streaky bacon”, ie: comedy with tragedy. I was fully prepared for the two little guys from the sunshine state to behave like “streaky bacon”; three minutes outside, ten inside, to be followed by another three outside—you get the drift (pun); snow clothes and boots on, wet snow clothes and snow-covered boots off, ad nauseam.

I was hopelessly wrong. They were outside hour after hour. Have you ever had a serious snowball fight with a three year old? “OK Opa, my turn.” “I got you, now your turn.” “Wow, you got me too!” Isn’t that just too cool! We had more fun than should be allowed.

Monday morning we woke to falling snow (something they had never seen). Squeals of laughter filled the house. A quick breakfast of waffles and Maple syrup and we all piled out the door and outside. Four to six inches of fresh snow turns our little side street into the perfect place for sledding. Being a hill, that little street is virtually impossible for cars to navigate so it’s a totally safe place to play.

Naturally I thought that the highlight would be going up and down the hill. I was quite wrong. The highlight was their running around with tongues hanging out trying to catch snowflakes.

We did take all of Sunday afternoon to spend at our Children’s Museum. The place is a wealth of activities. Whether a kid is an engineer, water rat, climber, builder, artist, or target shooter, they’ll stay entertained and learn about stuff to boot.

To manage the economics of the weekend Kirstin had booked the flight home out of Lexington, KY on a discount airline. Lexington is only 89 miles from here, no big deal. However, it became a bit of a thrill ride driving on a snow covered interstate highway with visibility a hundred or so yards.

The final forty or so miles saw a warming and easing of traffic. It also meant that some idiot truckers viewed this change as a golden opportunity to make up for lost time. One semi passed us going about 75 mph when prevailing traffic was doing about 55. The wall of slush that hit our windshield had me driving absolutely blind until the wipers began to create slits through which I could see—5 or 6 passes from wipers set on high speed. That was a very tempting moment for me to test fire a XM320 side-loading H&K; 40mm grenade launcher. Kirstin, riding shotgun, told me to just leave it be under the seat.

By the way, the Red Tailed hawks which nested in our front yard last year are back. The new nest is being put together as we speak, only now in a neighbor’s tree. For us it means we’re watching constant back and forth low altitude flights carrying twigs and the like. Oh, I did see one dangling a mouse for their snack time.

Derek, have a great birthday party this afternoon. Enjoy the wall-climbing with your friends. And to everyone, make it a great week.

Cheers,

Dirk