April 16th

Well…it was a lazy recovery day yesterday and I think it was what I needed to start to feel better…the allergies have started to act up again but I think I can survive it….a disappointing Wings game with another loss but I’m not ready to give up yet…I do have the playoff beard going, after all, and that has to count for something….I really haven’t been into politics lately with Keith getting fired and not going out for the newspapers every day but I will try to get one of those out today…I do have to do the taxes today, too, but that is about a 10 minute process with how simple my return is…not much to do today…I do have lunch with T today and then meeting up with G later for a couple but that is about it….unless the wind calms down, I won’t be riding for a second day and my legs are thanking me….but, the rest of me needs to get out but I may have to wait until tomorrow…who knows? More later…

April 15th

Well…it was a recovery day yesterday and I feel much better today but still warm so I think the process is not complete yet…the coffee tastes crappy and I’m just in a lousy mood right now…so this one will be short and I’ll try to at least be civil…it looks like the rain is going to move off later this morning so I may be able to get out on the bike later…but that will have to be after the Wings game at noon….and there is a Man U match on at 11 so I need to get everything done before that…yeah, I laughed at that one, too…this is really the only thing I have to do today….so I guess accomplishing that is going to be easy since I am done…more later…

April 14th

Well…it was a long day yesterday and I planned to feel pretty crappy today…and the plan worked so this one is going to be short…it was pretty cool that Bertuzzi stepped up and pummeled Weber in the Wings game last night…okay…not feeling it so I am going to go back to the couch and wait for the temp to come up so I can ride…

Okay..it’s later in the day and I have gotten the bike ride in and I am starting to feel better but I think it will be a long term project….I do need to remember to eat more since I think that is part of it….and my right thigh is acting up with that same burning sensation that I’ve had for about a month and it is starting to concern me a little….not much to do today…I think I’ll just lay low here and try to heal up some…might even get the day off from riding if it rains tomorrow…oh, one last thing…last year, the 14th of April was the first day out on the bike…and this year, I’ve already gotten 700 miles in..so, maybe 4000 is possible this summer….

A day of 5′s….

Well…this one could have been titled ‘more trail weirdness” but I just thought the 5′s thing was a little more catchy…out on the bike today, the strangest thing happened…riding through the woods…I saw 5 deer running in a row through the trees…then, further up the trail, I saw 5 ducks in a row paddling down Plaster Creek….then, a little further on, 5 turkeys crossed in front of me…not sure what any of this means but it was pretty cool…

Punks and thugs on the ice…

Well…I wanted to cool off for a while before I wrote this one given the events in the Wings game the other night…and I wanted to wait to see what Shanny was going to do before I weighed in…but, now’s the time to get in my two cents…in case you didn’t see it, after the end of the game Wed night, Shea Weber…the thug defenseman for the Preds, slammed Hank Zetterberg’s head into the glass so hard that he broke his helmet…the kind of nonsense that I thought the league was trying to take out of the game to protect the players…unless it is a Red Wing getting hit, I guess. The worse thing about it was that Weber didn’t get anything but a paltry fine…no suspension…oh, they did give him a 2 minute penalty….that can never be enforced…and they said “bad boy, don’t do that again”….that punishment will keep him from doing that again….yeah, I laughed at that one, too. Then, in practice yesterday, we see Weber and one of his thug teammates joking and laughing while re-enacting the hit. One of the themes that has been repeated in this series is that the Preds wanted to build themselves to be just like the Wings…and they may beat us in the series, but these no class punks will never have the class of the Wings players and organization….that is something that is earned by being classy and respecting the other players and the game of hockey…

One last thing…keep your head up Weber…payback will come…maybe not tonight, but hockey players have long memories…where is Darren McCarty when we need him?

April 13th

Well…yesterday was pretty much a lost day…I did accomplish a couple of things but not enough….but, what is enough? I did forget to do the Red Wings update but that will come later this morning….the car is still running with no noise and that confuses me some…does a car fix itself? This one seems to at times….okay…I’m not feeling it right now so I’m going to stop here and come back later to make some sense…

The republican “war on women” continues in Wisconsin…

Well…are these repubs great liars or what? On the day that ole Mitt comes out and says that it is Obama and dem economic policies that are hurting women, we have our old buddy Scott Walker in Wisconsin signing the repeal of a law that made it easier for women there to hold employers accountable for wage discrimination. This was not a law that intruded on the “rights” of corporations to do whatever they want, but it was a law that tried to rectify an insidious result of discrimination against women that had been proven time and again…that women performing the same job with the same qualifications were usually paid from 20 to 30% less than the men doing the job…something that is just wrong no matter how the repubs try to explain it away in terms that further demean women…like “women leave the workforce to have babies so they have lesser skills than men” never mind that 40% plus of the women in the workforce never leave it to have children. Nonsense, all, but this is the type of policy that ole Mitt has said he supports when he says that he supports Walker and his agenda “completely”….just another example of what the US will look like if these idiots take control…geez…

April 12th

Well…it was a disappointing day yesterday with the Wings losing the first playoff game….but the rest of the day was okay and I have to stay positive…and today will be a good one, I hope, but I need to get the coffee going and load up the slow cooker for later so this one is going to be short for now….I did have dreams in the later part of the night that included travel to either Canada or England…and undercover police….not much else so I don’t know why I’m sharing that. Going to get back to the slow cooker part…be back later for more now that I’ve caught up for the month….

One more thing about jobs…

Well….I was going to append this one to the last one but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it deserved its own even though this one will be short…..does anyone else smell a rat with the precipitous drop in new private sector jobs last month? I think there was just too much good news coming out of the labor market, which would undoubtedly help Obama in the general election…so what do the friends of the repubs do that run most of the business in the US? They take one for the team and stop hiring to support the repub line that the economy still stinks and Obama should not be reelected. I normally don’t really support conspiracy theories, but the repubs are well known for rewarding businesses that give them money and support the party line (think Halliburton) and I would not put it past them that they are using all of the coercion and reward that they can to win the election…and those in business that will benefit the most from a repub president are all too happy to comply by hurting the economy and the middle class for their personal gain…geez…

A couple of things…

Well…have been watching some sports this aft so I haven’t really gotten my brain into the political gear that I need to make some sense of the things that I see happening…but, a couple of things have come up that I wanted to comment on…first, I thought it quite clever today when Obama described behaviors of Saint Ronald of Reagan that would have prevented him from even getting the nomination in today’s repub party…under full disclosure, I voted for Reagan… a mistake that I have had years to savor…what Obama was getting at was Reagan’s pragmatic approach to governance, and the fact that he advocated raising taxes on the rich to have them pay their “fair share” and this was at a rate that was more than 25% higher than it is now….if any repub these days even hints at wanting to do the sensible thing and combine budget cuts with tax increases to help decrease the deficit, they would be run out of town by the rabid tea partiers aided by ole Grover Norquist….it is kind of neat to see the shapes of the general starting to appear and I just can’t see how Romney can win after lurching so far to the right in the primary…alienating women, hispanics, independents, and everyone else except the extreme righties…..and there just is not enough of them to win a general election….can’t wait to see Karly Rove and his super pac spend a 100 million dollars and lose….geez…