Over the past 12+ months, I've been having some dental work done to remodel part of my mouth that broke in a messy kind of way.  We're near the end of the reconstruction, and so I was in the dentist's chair yesterday, gagging on putty in an effort to cast a mold for an implant.

Following that charming little adventure, it came time to pick, of all things, the color of said implant.  Despite the fact that this device will be pretty far back in my mouth, it was deemed desirable or necessary that we try to match the rest of my teeth.  What was unexpected--to everyone involved--was that the two sides of my teeth (left and right) are different colors.

D3 vs. D2, which was a distinction without that much of a difference, as far as I could see.  Certainly neither of those appear in the original Crayola 48-pack.

I opined that the left side of my mouth was a different color because it was closer to the sun.  My dentist agreed, noting that that's the side that's to the outside when driving.

I was joking.  I hope she was as well.  If the top left back side of your teeth* is exposed to the sun when you're driving, you have bigger things to worry about than the color of your teeth.

I went with D2.

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*--This new implant is in position #14.  In a full mouth (w/ wisdom teeth, mine of which are in a box in my closet and no longer in my mouth), that's the third one from the back.

Left to right:

1. The primary tree (MI), as evidenced by the cluster of college ornaments near the top.  There are 9 colleges represented on this tree, although places where I've merely worked, rather than attended, don't get involved in the race to the top.  This tree bears 405 ornaments--it looked pretty fully decorated at around the 250 mark, but we kept going.  (As I've said in the past, we own a lot of ornaments, which at least partially explains the multiple trees.)
2. The cartoon character tree (OH).  When Laurie and I first started dating, I expressed some alarm that her tree didn't have very many cartoon character ornaments.  Why that mattered then, I don't know, but I've been filling that gap ever since.  There are a number of older ornaments there that predate 01995.  The tree topper on this one is a wizard's hat that we found at the Excalibur in Las Vegas in 02012.
3. The handmade ornament tree (OH). This one spans a lot of years.  The infamous dodecahedron of 01978 is here, as are a candy-cane-holding horse and a couple of ornaments made by various Brennan kids and by Jif.
4. The travel tree (MI).  Mostly ornaments we've found in our travels*, including a coconut (lower right in this shot).  This tree started out pure white, but is aging over time and might now be called "antique white" if that were a color.
5. The red tree (MI). This was a gift to me from Laurie a couple of years ago, and isn't ever going to hold a lot of ornaments because it's a one-piece spiral and not too strong.  The one ornament is from the Riviera in Las Vegas and the train at the base is a product of Station Casinos, also in Las Vegas.  If we ever expand to a Vegas tree, this is where it started.

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*--There are 23 ornaments (15 pool balls [which sort of commemorate a game of pool we shot in St. Louis in 02010] and 8 blue spheres with snowflakes) that have been added in here to fill some gaps, as well as an airplane tree topper that's a local find.

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14 December 02016 (Happy birthday yesterday!): A Big Step For The Big Bang

Tomorrow night, The Big Bang Theory will be airing a birth episode without the customary delivery room scene, claiming that that's been pretty much played out in television comedy.

That is so clearly the right call.  Good on them.

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As the flow of bad Christmas music escalates, the quest for some hidden gems continues (okay, it's not like it ever really stopped).  For convenience (largely mine), these annual playlists have been compiled and posted as a single Web page here.

1. Gridlock Christmas, The Hollytones.  In pretty much every alternate universe where Christmas is a thing, the “Hollytones” are a singing group in the style of our 01950s or 01960s, probably called a “chorale”.  Surely they appear on television variety shows wearing matching crew-neck sweaters, and they certainly sing “Sleigh Ride” (ick**).

And yet in this universe, we have instead a stirring tribute to the idea, given us by countless Hallmark Christmas specials, that Christmas is wherever you find it.  Even if that’s in a traffic jam on I-5 in Los Angeles.

2. California Christmastime, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend cast.  Line 1 sets the stage for this should-be classic:


In Michigan, that sentiment would need only an extra “L”, but one letter makes all the difference.  In this case, it’s a very funny difference.  While the tune does stand up on its own, this one is nearly inseparable from its video.

3. Silver Nights, Sabrina Carpenter.  Eleven months after being scribbled on the obligatory desktop Post-It, this one makes it to the official AVMX roster.  I've already got a few songs under consideration for 02017's list.  (Time on list counts for something when moving songs off the waiting list, plus I heard one of them for the first time today after this year's decet had been set.)

4. Christmas Tonight, Dave Barnes featuring Hillary Smith. Given the recent weather out this way, there's a powerful case to be made for the message of this tune.

5. Christmas Is Waiting, Betty Buckley.  Remember WENN, with its curious blend of the 01930s and 01990s, strikes again, this time with a variation on my notion that “There’s room enough in Christmas for everyone”.

6. I Want An Alien For Christmas, Fountains of Wayne. A mathematical model:

Definition: A conventional musician is a musical act primarily known for works that are considered mainstream by reasonable non-expert human observers.

Axiom 1: Occasionally, conventional musicians will dabble in comedy.
Axiom 2: Many (too many) conventional musicians record the occasional Christmas song or album.  (Around The Markives, we prefer the folks who record one or two original songs without filling out an album with pointless remakes, of course.)
Common Notion 1: Given enough time and circumstances, anything that isn’t forbidden will happen somewhere.

Theorem 1: Every once in a great while, a conventional musician will record a funny Christmas song.

As proof of Theorem 1, we have this number.  QED.

7. Be The Present, Imua.  A holiday tune from Hawaii, proving that Xmas tunes in the islands extend beyond Mele Kalikimaka.  For which we should all be grateful.  Not that MK is all that awful, but it's been done to death and beyond.

8. It Snowed, Meaghan Smith.  More of a winter song than a Christmas tune, of course, but “expansive view of the winter holidays” is a rule around here.

With this tune. Meaghan S. becomes only the sixth artist, and easily the most obscure performer, to appear more than once in this now-70-song set***.  (She’d’ve been #5, but Betty Buckley leapt in three slots ahead of her this year.)

9. Here’s Your Sign Christmas, Bill Engvall. This is a cut above Jeff Foxworthy's "Redneck 12 Days of Christmas", which is ineligible for consideration here because I don't generally list parodies of "12 Days".

If there's a "Git-R-Done Christmas", I don't really need to know about it.  Let this stand as the best holiday offering from the Blue Collar Comedy crowd.

10. Zat You, Santa Claus?, Louis Armstrong.  This year’s flashback tune. It also seemed very appropriate to end this year's list with a song starting with Z.

Io Saturnalia!

M–>

*–This goes up one day early, because I won’t be near my office tomorrow and so won’t be able to post this.  Click through before December 10 or not, as may be your wish.
**–I recently found such a version of that song that isn’t awful.  Since it was on a radio aircheck, I have no idea who was singing, though.
***–In order: Trans-Siberian Orchestra (the only folks with 4 among the 70), Dan Fogelberg, George Winston, Straight No Chaser (the only folks with 3), and the aforementioned Ms. Buckley.

Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that it's not going to happen*, I think it'd be fascinating to watch the Electoral College do something--anything--other than routinely ratify the popular vote on December 19.  Some of the arguments for electors to substitute their own judgment for that of their states' citizens have been illuminating reading.

This is in part because I continue to root for interesting things to happen in this world, of course, but in part also because it would be fun to watch the media reaction (almost more so that the politicos' reaction, which would also be truly entertaining).  I'm sure that the phrase "Constitutional crisis" would be splashed all over the place, for example.  This despite the fact that there would be no crisis--this is precisely one of the things that the Constitution is set up to address.

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28 November 02016 (1 year later, and Happy birthday!): An Oddly Reasonable Investment Opportunity

So the new NHL team in Las Vegas is to be called the Vegas Golden Knights, and Nevada being what it is, it is already possible to bet on, or against, the team.

Betting on the Knights to win the Stanley Cup in 02017-18 carries a +10,000 line, meaning that odds are set at 100-1 against: bet $100 to win $10,000.  One may also choose to bet that the Knights will lose the Cup in Year One, at a line of -50,000.  Bet $50,000 to win $100.

While that seems like a bet not worth making, I note that that payoff represents .2% interest on a roughly 18-month investment, which is more than my credit union is paying on savings accounts right now.

Not that I'm planning on making that bet (not that I have that kind of money in the bank), but viewed from that perspective, taking the field against Las Vegas seems rather reasonable.

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For the last week or so, I've been studiously avoiding much of the worst craziness that the I'net has had on offer dissecting the election results.  Basically, if it didn't involve email, sports, comedy, or Las Vegas, there's a good chance that I missed it.  My flood of news update emails kept me at least in the vicinity of what was going on in the world*, but the whole "everyone has an opinion, and everyone's absolutely unbending on that opinion" was not something I wanted to dive into.

But now I'm getting caught up.  It would appear that I didn't miss much.

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*--I don't really need to be in the loop, just within commuting distance of it.  I was willing to commute a little further for a time.

Vote for Hillary Clinton so your grandchildren will be able to pass AP U.S. History without having to know who Donald Trump was.

7 November 02016: Second Time's Sometimes The Charm

Political satirist and song parodist Mark Russell, of the longtime series of PBS specials, has announced what may be his second retirement.  The first, in 02010, apparently didn't take.

The timing is curious, but maybe he figured that political satire truly did become obsolete this year.  Certainly an argument could be made for that.  And if this is to be his final joke as a performer:


--it's not a bad way to go out.

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6 November 02016: A Note From Mom

Mom notes the following re: SIriusXM and an early start to holiday tunes:


This is an entirely reasonable reaction.  Fortunately, the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, where daring souls compete to avoid hearing that song between midnight Black Friday morning and midnight Christmas Eve morning, doesn't officially start until 25 November this year, so this can be counted as, at worst, an exhibition-season loss.  The standings reset on the 25th.

It's nice that the rules allow an exception for intentional LDB-bombing, so relatives with less than your best interests at heart can't derail the challenge, and somehow heartening that a) so many people are entangled in this, and b) 24% of last year's participants won.  That figure speaks well of the honor of many players, as this is entirely self-judged.

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4 November 02016: One Day Behind The Satellites

Friend o' The Markives Steve from Allen Park, MI was kind enough to tip me off yesterday morning to WNIC's flip to all-Christmas music, an annual event that we keep close watch on around here but usually miss, on account of not always being near the I'net or metro Detroit when it happens.  Thanks for the catch.

For an utterly inexplicable reason, I was listening on Tuesday when SiriusXM launched its Holly channel, the first of its eight winter holiday channels to make its 02016 debut.  (Admittedly, several of these channels stream online all year, but there's a meaningful difference, to me, between online access and in-car access.)  The first holiday tune was "Holly Jolly Christmas", by Michael Bublé.

That being the case, I didn't stay with the song long enough to hear the lyrics.  Sometimes a title & artist indicator proves its worth early on.

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3 November 02016: An Inaccurate Indicator

Number of "breaking news" emails I received about the World Series ending very early this morning: 9.

This does not make that just as important as Antonin Scalia's death, as measured by this curious metric, because I've signed up for a few more breaking news services since February (Albuquerque and Houston, to name two).  I should have known better than to mess with the data stream.  Nonetheless, it seems clear that the Internet values the Cubs more than Ray Tomlinson.  Outside of Chicago and Cleveland, that seems backward.

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There are times when vast searchable databases such as we have here in the 21st century are an asset, and times when they're just a solution in search of a problem.

Case in point: Addison Russell's grand slam last night was the 19th in World Series history.  This we know because an on-screen graphic shortly afterward told us.

I submit that this represents an obscure statistic that added to the in-game viewing experience, in a way that "Player X has a .287 batting average with one out and no runners on base against left-handed relief pitchers born in the month of July during night games played in the Central time zone in the month of September"* does not.

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*--Not an actual example, but not that much more implausible than some things I've seen on screens.

File this one under the "hoping that something unusual and interesting will happen" heading (which describes a lot of my interests): I've been watching the political drama in Utah with an eye on independent conservative Evan McMullin's rise in the polls there, and the fervent hope that he'll pull off a victory and carry 6 electoral votes.

Not because I support his policies, but just for the entertainment value of seeing a third party take some EVs.  It's refreshing to find something to enjoy and look forward to about this campaign*, when there's been so much that's tedious or dreadful.

I'm guessing that television has prepared for this possibility by arranging the technology to light up Utah in a third color next Tuesday, which is less of an achievement now than it'd've been when those maps were new, back in the day.

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*--Aside from the end, of course, although if the elections go badly, the end may just be another beginning.

I'm looking forward to the literary purists blowing a collective gasket at Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize in literature.  Here, for instance.

I am slightly more interested in what the Capitol Steps, who have recorded multiple parodies of "Like A Rolling Stone" (usually "Like A Suburban Drone") over the years, will do with this.

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*--And Happy 5/6 birthday, to the extent that that's a thing.  I seem to know a lot of people born on the 13th of something.

Continuing Thursday's ranting...

3. The thing that strikes me about the "let's act defiant by not standing during the national anthem" crowd is not their actions, which of course they have a right to perform.  It's the fraction of these folks who seem to think that the right to do this carries with it the right to be immune from criticism.

That's not the way freedom of expression works.

4. In looking at the media coverage of this Presidential election, I find myself thinking back to 01998 and the Michigan gubernatorial election.  That was the year when Geoffrey Feiger was the Democratic nominee, and all the time that the media were decrying him as a less-than-serious candidate, one got the sense that they were privately rooting for him because he'd be more colorful to cover as candidate and governor.

The tricky part this time around is that the media's interest in a close race between equals, and their coverage with that in mind, may actually be producing their desired outcome.  Which is something that I find vaguely disturbing.

5. That said, tomorrow's first Presidential debate will, it seems to me, be a ratings monster--and yet change very few minds.  Seriously, how many truly "undecided" voters can there be at this point?

1. Any prominent Republican who really believes that their party's current Presidential candidate would truly be a bad choice for America has an opportunity to put country over party and publicly endorse the Democratic alternative.

I don't foresee a stampede, but I've been wrong before.

2. A problem I have with the Libertarian Party is that for every sensible idea they have, there are four ideas that are just off-the-wall nuts.  Example: Their candidate's latest statement that global climate change doesn't matter because eventually the Sun will go nova and engulf the planet.

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Takeaways from the Emmy Awards last night:

Apparently it's not necessary to be a comedy to win comedy Emmys.  Given that the Emmys do far better than the Oscars in recognizing funny stuff, this is disappointing even as it's not surprising.

The secret to Emmy success--nominations as well as wins--now seems to be liberation from broadcast standards and ratings pressure.  Those who are proclaiming the demise of the broadcast networks as the home for "quality" television appear to have forgotten that the playing field isn't close to level.

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*--That would be post-9/11 dysphoria.  Perhaps we could leave the remembrances in the hands of those directly affected for the next four years instead of reliving the events o' the day, as was often the case this (and every) year.  Seriously, MSNBC: There's no reason to rerun the news footage from 9/11/1.  Ever again.

I had planned to feature this footage on the day it happened, but something got in my way, as you know.  Farewell, old friend.

 

 

8 August 02016: A Hypothetical (For Now) Challenge

Here's something I almost discovered while on vacation recently:

This showed up in my email this morning:

Toward the end of last month, I moved into my mid-50s (by my definition).  Since I typically try not to act my age in any action-limiting sense of that phrase, Laurie and I spent last weekend moving her between two apartments in Findlay.  I'm reasonably sure that moving without professional help is the sort of thing that people of my age should probably not be doing, but a] it was a short move, totaling less than 7 miles as the U-Haul rolls, and b] moving a 2-bedroom apartment is a lot less intense than moving our Michigan house would be.

That said, there came a point in loading the truck when I was questioning our wisdom.

That said, Laurie is enjoying the combination of a ceiling fan and central air conditioning in her new living room (much more than one might have guessed), so there's a very real sense that this new place is a step up beyond simply not being adjacent to I-75.

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When in the course of the lives of man, it is the case that one group of folks finds that they must break the ties which bind them to those from a far land, and to take in the midst of the states of the Earth, a place of their own which the Laws of the Land and of Land's God grant to be theirs, a fair view to the thoughts of all men makes it the case that they should set forth why they have come to go out on their own.

1. He has not seen eye to eye with us on Laws, the best and most key for the good of all the men.
2. He has not let his men pass Laws which we find that we need but for those times when these laws are not in force till he has signed off on them. When they are not yet in force, he has shown no sense of a need to act to bring them to full force.
3. He has not passed Laws for the use of large groups of our folks but in the case when these folks give up their right to have their own kind speak for them in the house of rule, a right of great worth to them and a fear to the harsh and to none else.
4. He has called the house of rule to meet in odd and rough spots far from their own house of those notes held by all, and the sole point of this is to make them sign on to his acts through sheer lack of vim.
5. He has shut down our own house of rule at more than one time and in more than one place, so that he may strike out at the rights of men.
6. He has, in the time past when he has closed down a house of rule, not let us choose new men by our vote, hence the force of the Law, which we may not shut off, has come back to the men at large to be run; the State in the mean time set out to the risks of raids from far states and from war from its own men.
7. He has gone on to try and stop those who wish to come to these States to live; to reach that end to block the laws by which men from far lands might come and join our state; to stop some men in their quest to come here, and to make it hard to add new land to our state.
8. He has blocked the rule of law; he has not signed off on the laws by which we might set up courts.
9. He has made those whom we call "Judge" fit to his will on its own for the length of time that they shall serve and for how and how much they shall be paid.
10. He has set up a lot of New Posts, and sent out lots of his trained men to hound our folks, and eat out of their food.
11. He has kept in our midst, in time of peace, Men of War, in spite of the fact that our men who rule do not back this.
12. He has gone on to make the Armed men free of and at the same time with more force than the shared group of men who lead in peace.
13. He has joined with men to see that we are judged in a way not in our bill of rights and not set out in our laws, and signs off on their fake laws:
    1. To place large groups of armed troops in our midst.
    2. To shield these troops, by a mock Trial, from fine if they should kill one of those who dwell in our state.
    3. To cut off our Trade with all parts of the world.
    4. To tax us when we have not backed such tax.
    5. To keep us, at times, from the boon of a group of our own men to judge us in court.
    6. To take us out of our state to be tried for fake wrongs.
    7. To take out the free scheme of laws in a land near us, to build there a Chance rule, and to add more land to it so that he may make it a means to do the same thing to our state.
    8. To take from us our Pacts, get rid of our most prized Laws, and change out forms of rule.
    9. To stop the work of our own house of rule, and to set them up as the sole judge of our acts in each case.
14. He has ceased rule here, by his words that we are out of his safe guard and by his start of a War on our men.
15. He has robbed on our seas, wrecked our Coasts, burnt our towns, and smashed the lives of our folks.
16. He has at this time sent men of arms from lands way off to kill us, wreck us, and hold us back; work that has been launched in most harsh ways which have not been seen since times long past when fierce tribes fought, and which are not the sort of thing that a King of his rank should seek to do.
17. He has forced our Men whom he has seized at sea to fight on his side in the war with our state, to kill their friends and kin, or to die of their own hands.
18. He has raised some of our men to take up arms and fight with their folks of our state, and has set out to bring on those men who were here when we got here, the vile red men, whose known rule of war has as its goal the clear end to all folks.

We, thus, those who speak for the folks of this state, here come to act as one, make our case to God to rule that what we do is right, do, in the Name, and by the right which the good folks of this Place have bade us have, in a grave sense write down and state that these lands are, and of right ought to be free States, that they are no more are bound by ties to the Crown of the far land which rules us, and that all link from them and that land is and ought to be closed, and that as Free States on their own, they may wage War, come to terms on Peace, set up Groups of those with whom they share goals, take part in Trade, and to do all things which Free States may of right do. And for the aid of this new way which we have set in force, with a firm hope that the Lord will watch us and guide us, we pledge one to the next one our Lives, our Wealth, and our Word in the face of God.

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*--One may find this here as well, should that be their wish.

I saw Book of Mormon yesterday in East Lansing.  Excellent show, with a lot of sharp satire such as one might expect from the minds behind South Park.  However...

There was a problem that is, in all likelihood, inherent in theater technology, and probably not limited to the acoustics in the Cobb Great Hall at the Wharton Center.  That is that the kind of clever and intricate wordplay that Parker and Stone put into the lyrics and book gets muddled a bit in passing through the theater's sound system.  As a techie of sorts, this matters to me.  As a long-time fan of clever wordplay and good comedy, this matters more.  Theatrical amplification is no friend of musical comedy as performed by an ensemble.

H.L. Mencken described the universe accurately when he said that "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong."  For this problem, I have just such a solution:

Laurie and I took in an organ recital there when we were in Utah in 02012, and to say that the acoustics of that venue were amazing doesn't even remotely tell the story.  There is a standard demonstration, conducted before the performance, that involves dropping a couple of pins and tearing a piece of paper to show how well-engineered for sound transmission that room is.  No doubt one could pick up on all of the comedy without anything being lost in the amplification.  Indeed, you might not even need microphones.

While the phrase "homeopathic fraction" is almost certainly an overstatement of the probability of the Mormon leadership taking an interest in this idea, I note that bookofmormon.org took out a full-page ad in the program, with the tagline "You've seen the show, now read the book."--so there's a least a little peace that's been made between religion and culture.

*--Also known as America's #1 Day For Collect Phone Calls (which are apparently still a thing).

I took a page from Supertramp's playbook last Thursday and meandered about the Midwest a bit rather than taking a direct path back to Albion after 10 days in Kansas City*.  In part, this could be written off as research.  I'm working on the successor to BGM:NBN, which is going to be a book about the mathematics of lotteries and keno.  It turns out that the state of Nebraska has an unusual stance toward keno, in that it's left to individual communities rather than the state lottery commission to regulate and run that game.  It follows that traveling among small towns in the Cornhusker State has the potential to turn up a lot of interesting game variations.

So that's what I did.  It could be a long time before I get that close to Nebraska again, which made this an opportunity not to be missed.  It also meant that I could add a 45th state to my life list.  I dropped in on four different keno bars, and took home enough material to bulk up the keno chapter of this book-in-progress.

It meant that I didn't get home until 3:30 AM, but it's not like I had a need to rush back.

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Up here in the northern branch of The Markives, we've hit the start of Week 3 of college summer.  To the south, the reckoning is a little different, because librarians have a slightly different job classification than "teaching faculty".  In practice, this means that I have fewer hours in any given week when I'm required to be in-office than Laurie does.  It probably also means that I'll be spending more time in Ohio on the weekends, but there's enough else going on that that could shake out differently over the next 12 weeks.

In a more big-picture sense, an unusually exhausting semester has ended, and before I make my annual road trip to Kansas City for the AP Calculus reading (motto: "Because We Don't Get To Grade Enough The Rest Of The Year"), there's a bit of--well, if not exactly "down" time, then certainly "less up" time.

In the news: This is why I continue to believe that the Guinness Book of World Records has lost its way, and I say that with no small amount of regret.  Records involving fast eating of mass quantities of food (or food-like things, such as a bicycle) are out, but extinguishing blowtorches with your tongue gets you in?  I can't quite wrap my brain around that logic.

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It only mattered for about a week, but "Cruz/Fiorina" sounded like an Italian travel agency to me.

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1. Someone recently made the cogent statement that the only thing that really unifies Americans anymore is when a famous musician dies.

While I agree with that sentiment, I am at the same time one of the 11 or so Americans who was not affected in any meaningful way by Prince's death* last week.  I certainly would have wished him no ill will if asked, but my primary memory of his work is that it was music I didn't care to have to listen to when it showed up on my schedule in my mid- to late-80s radio days.  Especially "Sign O' The Times".  (Satellite radio seems also to be heavy on his material, but I can change the channel there.)

That said, I think that Weird Al Yankovic gave a great sendoff to someone who was noteworthy for not granting him permission to parody his work:


2. As some of you might know, Laurie has adopted, on principle, a stance against voting in primary elections.  In light of all the whining commentary surrounding this year's Presidential election process so far, I'm beginning to suspect that she might be on to something.  Here's an article making a good point toward that conclusion, relayed from this site which has a lot of interesting stuff beyond politics.

From that article:


This is, I think, kind of a summary of Laurie's thinking.  It makes a certain kind of sense.  This whole thing raises some issues about the two-party system and the outsized position it holds in the USA these days, but that's another matter.

On the other hand,. I enjoy voting, so I'll not be adopting her position.

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*--Only 6 emails, putting the Purple One behind Nancy Reagan.
**--Also known as "the road less traveled".

This thought has been taking up space in my mind for quite some time now, and in an effort to set it free and fill up some space in these parts (Seriously, it's been a very intense semester, ergo the lack of posting hereabouts.), here we go:

To my mind, one of the most thrilling times as a sports fan is at the end of a hockey game when your team is ahead and the opposing team pulls their goalie for a 6th skater.  The excitement level of the game invariably ramps up, but the urgency isn't quite as strong as when your team is trailing and playing sans netminder.  They still, after all, are winning, and with limited time remaining for the opponents to change that.

Plus, there's something that I find appealing about empty-net goals.  Maybe it's the added deflation they induce in the outnumbering opponent.

And on that note, I'm off on a field trip for the rest of the day.

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I am obsessed with time and space, so it was a major irritant for me when, last week in Nevada, both my watch and cell phone stopped working right, which left me relying on my rental car (either the clock or the radio) for an accurate clock.  The challenge carried over into the second half of my spring break, in Ohio.

This may seem like something of a first-world problem, but disorientation--in time or space--is not a color that I wear well.

In other news, I hit the limit of 99 renewals on another book from Michigan State's library last week.  Really, guys, I'm taking good care of it.

"I never thought he'd actually win."

I changed the family photo on the main page to a very lightly edited version, which includes not cropping out the top of that picture--the part that's full of empty.  As a result, the aspect ratio is that of the original, and everyone looks a lot less...well, elongated.

You may judge for yourself whether or not the increased accuracy is an improvement.

(The rest of the prints from that day have finally been ordered, incidentally.)

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It's been far busier than usual at the northern home of The Markives. So much so that it probably doesn't matter as much that Laurie's holding down the fort at the southern home, because I seem to be spending more time than usual in-office, and thus not at any home, this semester.

While I've not seen a lot of daylight, I have tried to keep up with the universe and what's in it.  A few random thoughts follow:

1. I got 9 emails in one batch Saturday, from various news organizations, delivering the breaking news of Justice Scalia's death.  If number of "breaking news" emails is a measure of the significance of a news story, and it might well be, then this one was pretty big.  I haven't kept a lot of records over the years, but this sets the mark going forward.

2. I have been following the post-closing life of the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas quite closely, with an eye toward possibly being present for its eventual demolition.  But that keeps getting delayed as people find new uses for the building.  It's spent some time hosting practice for firefighters, and recently had a car crash into it as part of a movie shoot for the next Jason Bourne film.  Details, including a video clip from the shooting, are here at Vital Vegas.

3. I was rooting for Denver in the Super Bowl, because Carolina is from a warm-weather state.  That said, I wasn't particularly invested in the outcome, and didn't watch all of the game.

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While I am not buying a Powerball ticket for tonight's drawing, nor have I bought any in the runup to this point, I am rooting for the jackpot to roll over twice more, so that it's still active when my Perspectives on Gambling class starts next week.

I don't like my chances...and that puts me in company with every ticket holder.

Or at least it should.

Somewhere I read that your chance of finding a winning Powerball ticket on the street is only slightly less that your chance of buying a winning ticket, and far less expensive.  So I'll have my head down for a day or two.

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*--Curious fact: So far this year, I have spent exactly two nights in Albion.