Let's Put On A Show!

Julie Andrews, as Mary Poppins, once famously said that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. More precisely, she sang it. Along those same lines, I put on some music today while I was transforming dirty dishes into apparently clean dishes.

My music of choice today was Steve Tyrell's "A New Standard". It is a fine collection of old standards, songs that have stood the test of time and, while one may not know every word of every song, almost everybody recognizes something about them.

One of the songs on the album is "I'm In The Mood For Love" and it makes me smile when I hear it because the reason I know the song is not because I heard Frank or Bing or Dean do it. No, it was another well-known crooner who taught me this tune. Maybe he taught it to you, too.

Also on the disk is "I'm Through With Love" which I learned from the same source. I apologize in advance for poor video quality, but the fond memories will probably serve to compensate for it.

Give It A Rest

It is way too early to start talking about the Super Bowl. And it has been too early to start talking about it since it was determined last Sunday who would be playing the game a week from this Sunday. It takes two weeks to get there and for two weeks there are no games, but the talk is everywhere.

This bothers my internal clock. Since early September, the NFL has conditioned us for a steady stream of football delivered in regular, weekly doses. They come on Sunday. Oh, there's the odd Thursday game to accommodate a network and there's the Monday night game. But they only serve to prove the point. Those games feel different and odd and out of kilter because they are. They aren't on Sunday. Some playoff games are on Saturday, but that's OK because it's the playoffs and you expect the schedule to be different for the playoffs.

But now the flow is interrupted. There will be no NFL football on this coming Sunday prior to the Super Bowl. But you are thinking about the Pro Bowl Game and saying to yourself, "There is a game, the Pro Bowl." Yes, well, the Pro Bowl, the all-star game for football, is just not the same. I asked a friend today, who is perhaps the most enthusiastic football fan I know, if he watched the Pro Bowl. I assumed I would hear a resounding yes. Instead, he made a face. "Ray Lewis can't sack the quarterback!" he said as he shook his head. To keep players from getting hurt, they change the rules a bit and it turns the game into something other than a real contest of football. It's more an exhibition. He doesn't watch. So, like I said, there is no football this weekend.

Down Time

Tonight I was reminded why I gave up on Sudoku games. I fired one up on the computer because I've been burning the candle at both ends of late and felt the need for just a bit of "down time".

Just writing that makes my mind start to churn with other possibilities for "down time". Could I have done something refreshing and relaxing and restorative that ALSO edified? In other words, something that wasn't a total time-waster? Undoubtedly. But I didn't think of that question then. I thought of it now. And so it goes.

Back to my point, such as it is - Sudoku. I had a book of these puzzles a few years ago and worked through it and discovered something. They are not hard. Nor are they especially mysterious. They are simply fill-in-the-blank tests with clues. The only thing we don't know is how long it will take to solve it.

And it will get solved. This is why they are less than puzzles; less than mysteries. We know the answers, it's just a matter of time. And I finally decided I don't want to spend a half an hour finding 9 sets of numbers that run 1 through 9.

So, how do you spend "down time"?

Staggeringly Dangerous Deficit

From an IBD Editorial by Rep. Kevin Brady -

"Under President Obama, the U.S. has one of the worst budget deficits in the developed world. Our federal debt is exponentially increasing by $54,373 every second.

At this dangerous rate, our debt will be $18.6 trillion at the end of the president's term — an unimaginable explosion of 75% above and beyond the debt accumulated by all of his 43 predecessors combined."