A good Saturday morning to everyone.

For a political/news junkie like me, these are glorious times. With the Iowa and New Hampshire caucus and primary at the doorstep this year is amazing.

Without much hesitation, my prediction is that within eight weeks Hillary will be done. That leaves Bernie and I don’t see the Democratic Party allowing his ‘coronation’. They might allow some influence of his to creep in, but that’ll be it.

Similarly, the Republicans have a migraine which is just as bad. Trump.

What’s happening? 193 million adult voters is what. These voters have come to despise the world of all-talk-and-no-action politicians. There is not a one “Moses” leading his people out among them. And this attitude runs across Democrats, Republicans, and across all socio-economic classes. Bernie and on a larger scale Trump have thundered into that feeling.

As I read the other day; “For political cats like me, Trump dumping on all politicians is pure catnip!”

“Voters don’t have time to ponder specific issues. We just want a strong person to take care of us and keep us safe. Hence Ike. Hence Trump.” ~ Denny Hatch

Traveling the friendly inept skies – It had been a long time since Tevita had seen his family. Additionally, a new house had been built for his mother and Tevita absolutely had to get a “hands on” feeling of just how well the project had gone.

Two weeks ago he flew out, celebrating New Years while crossing the International Date Line somewhere over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. All went well. From what I hear the family reunion was as good as it gets,

Finally, homeward bound. And Adrianne, Vai, and Vili were all beyond excited. Last night at 11:45 pm I was to meet him at the airport. That did not happen!

Just so you understand, the trip home meant taking a small “island-hopping” plane to Tonga’s capital. Then Fiji’s national airline to Fiji and a transfer onto the long-haul trans-ocean (10+ hours) flight to Los Angeles. Customs, security, another building, etc. and a long wait before an unnamed airline we’ll just refer to as UA would take him to Chicago. That UA did.

Finally, all that was left was just a short ride on the last UA flight of the day. The weather in both Chicago and in Cincinnati was just fine, what could stop Tevita now? Guess again, for some reason UA canceled that flight. This morning Tevita is still stuck at O’Hare airport.

Last year UA, by itself received 43% of all customer complaints filed at O’Hare. Last year Vince made a number of trips all requiring multiple transfers. Twice, and a week apart, his first-of-the-morning early morning UA flight was cancelled. No weather issues and each time the flimsiest of excuses.

Am I being a bit of a curmudgeon when I surmise that possibly (just conjecture mind you), that possibly it’s cheaper for them to ‘dump’ a not-full flight? The impact on their passengers seems to be of minimal concern looking at that 43% number.

Seems to me that a long, long time ago I’d hear a little jingle with the words; “fly the friendly skies…..”

Tevita is scheduled to arrive at 2:00 pm today. Welcome home guy!

Found it! – Several years ago I was in the library with one of the grand-kids. While they sang songs and listened to story time I scoured the shelves for a few books to read to them at some opportune time.

One of the books had the title “Blueberries for the Queen”. The time was not that far away from their summer visit to Northern Comfort which had them experience a Blueberry picking adventure. Bam! I signed that one out.

When I finally read the book to one of them I discovered that it was based on a true story from the author’s own youth.

After the start of WWII Dutch queen Wilhelmina escaped to the US and stayed in upstate New York for a summer before moving to Canada for the duration of the war. That same summer the author was staying with an uncle at a farm adjacent to the estate the queen stayed at. And, thus the story begins.

Because of the fact that it was a true story, that the characters are ones I could relate to, and that in a sense it pulls forward a (very slight) bit of connectivity to my own history, I began to look to see if I could purchase a copy. Alas, it was out of print.

I tried to see if my local bookseller could procure a copy. No. Tried e-Bay and Amazon. No.

Then I forgot all about it.

Over the holidays I took Vai to our main library. While she was busy rummaging a light went on. Checking with one of the librarians she finally began to smile and said yes, downstairs buried somewhere deep in the stacks was a copy. I related my story and she came back with; “have you tried the half.com division of e-Bay?”

I now have in my proud possession my very own copy of “Blueberries for the Queen”. Not only that, but if any family member wants to borrow it, just ask to borrow and I’ll mail it out. And so it could begin to make the rounds. It’s a treasure!

Fini – Now a little more coffee before heading out for a trek to Findlay Market. Our haul, aside from fresh veggies and fruits will be Farm Fresh free range eggs. Then a few stalls away to snag a craft bread from the small Blue Oven wood-fired bakery housed on a family farm. Steaming on the wooden shelves will are over 30 different hand built varieties of bread each weighing between 1 and a killer 5 pounds. Want to go heavy? Try their 10-grain mild sourdough. Us, probably the 2-pound Bad Boy V.

Tonight Marcia and I will head out to enjoy our annual neighborhood Progressive Dinner. This year it’s three houses; appetizers, dinner, and desert. I’ll pull one of the coolers designated to hold adult beverages. So life at the corner of Chaos and Mayhem continues–happily.

Make it a great week everyone, stay safe.

Cheers.

Dirk