Some contingencies: If Tyrod plays, Tech loses. You know his ankle won’t be right.

If Glennon plays and the line doesn’t block, Tech loses. If it blocks, the weather will hamper the passing, where he excels, and emphasize running.

Branden Ore is not the old Branden Ore, and nobody is saying why. To date, he has provided no ground game.

Kenny Lewis has shown some flashes, but has played too little to develop a rhythm.

That said, BC has played an easy schedule.

Tech’s defense again is superb, though it has some injured guys.

Hope I’m wrong. But the media, especially the local media, tend to under-emphasize the downside, perhaps because Frank Beamer, like any coach, emphasizes the negatives for obvious reasons.

I would love to see Glennon continue where he left off last week. It may happen.

I would like to think Ore will make a meaningful contribution. I strongly doubt that he will. But I expect he will get most of the carries anyway.

I expect the Tech defense to be tough, and if this prediction pans out, I expect the crowd to be frustrated.

I would love to be wrong about this. Which is why I don’t gamble (plus, it’s illegal).

An unidentified motorist was caught in flames outside Santa Clarita, a city north of Los Angeles that summons the iconic suburban landscape of Steven Spielberg movies, its rows of almost identical freshly built houses snugged as close as possible against the surrounding tinder-dry hills.

That boundary defined the topography of the unfolding disaster. Two of the four counties — San Bernardino and Riverside — burning most fiercely this week are among the fastest-growing in the United States, bedroom communities that push what ecologists call the "urban/wildland interface."

The move into the hills is for homes that are more affordable, but they are also more vulnerable. An inventory by University of Wisconsin researchers found that about two-thirds of new building in Southern California over the past decade was on land susceptible to wildfires, said Mike Davis, a historian at the University of California at Irvine and author of a social history of Los Angeles.

"It gives you some parameters for understanding the current situation," Davis said. "Another way to look at it is you simply drive out the San Gorgonio Pass, where the winds blow over 50 mph over a hundred days a year and you have new houses standing next to 50-year-old chaparral.

"You might as well be building next to leaking gasoline cans."

That’s at www.washingtonpost.com. Some amazing stuff in that piece.

I’ve been in touch with the other two guys who play me and one has agreed, if necessary, to fill in for me tomorrow night. He’s older and without a personality, so just acknowledge him and go on with your conversations.

I pay him in 15-minute increments, the same as I do Andrew, so he won’t stay long.

If I didn’t have this darn possible cold that might be coming on, I wouldn’t miss the occasion for anything. Nor do I ever lie.

Any idea how many people will be there? I assume six, max. No fair bringing anybody who hasn’t read the blog. There will be a quiz.

I’ll be sure and tell my substitute that.

So my crew arrives and we prepare to leave for Carvins Cove.

I have planned meticulously: Life jackets, dry sack with all manner of necessary items, running lights should the sky turn dark, new boat battery, bottled water, gasoline obtained on the way, jacket, sweatshirt, hat and so on.

Out toward Hollins, left on Reservoir Road, tingling with the excitement as we approach one of the valley’s least-known joys — an afternoon in a little boat on the waters of the cove, savoring the fall foliage on the wooded slopes and ridges that surround us.

Down to the entrance, and the thrilling sight of an empty parking lot. No other boaters are there on this partly cloudy Monday.

Only then do we discover the reason: The lake is down 12 feet owing to a lack of rain. This puts its shoreline well past the floating docks and boat ramps that we’d launch from.

Somehow, I overlooked that detail.

That’s what six weeks of random behavior can do to you.

The fellow in charge tells us that those who can carry their boats from the parking lot to the water may launch at their own risk. Typically, this means kayaks, canoes or jonboats with two people to carry them.

My jonboat is 14 feet long, wide of beam, and equipped with a 9.9 horsepower outboard motor that weighs 90 pounds. Carrying it is out of the question. That’s why I bought the  motor — so I wouldn’t have to carry it.

My crew and I sigh. We discuss taking a cruise next week, starting at the Hardy Road boat ramp on Smith Mountain Lake.

Then we notice that it still is a beautiful day. We pay a buck apiece, and we go for a hike.

I will say that, yes, my new job director of development of CHIP of Roanoke Valley.

If you  want to know more about the organization, go to www.chiprv.com, or Google  the keywords. Everything is explained on the site.

I received an e-mail, since deleted, stating that I’ve essentially already abandoned this blog. Certainly there was a drop-off in activity yesterday, but I’ve just been tired owing to my having had some overdue fun.

It would be nice to know how many people plan to be at Coda on Wednesday. That way, I could decide whether to show up myself or send a sub (as with the Hokie Bird, three different people play my role depending on the situation).

Do we have a time yet?

Otherwise, I’m still tired and possibly coming down with a cold. I’m trying to remember where I was when somebody sneezed in the past 72 hours. I didn’t wander far.

Feel free to participate in this thing.

 

In a continuing effort to show the Roanoke Times how to appeal to its desired demographic of mothers with children at home,

 

I’ve copped this Hannah Montana story from The Baltimore Sun to demonstrate how getting tickets to big concerts has become much more difficult than it used to be.

The Sun has additional stories related to ticket sales for the Montana concert. You can read them at www.baltimoresun.com.

I read The Sun online every day, just to see what’s happening where I grew up.

By coincidence, two nights ago a friend and I watched the video of the PBS documentary about Stax Records in Memphis during the 1960s and 1970s.

Stax was to Motown what jalapeno peppers are to a sweet wine — hot and rough versus silky smooth.

As a teen-ager I loved to listen to Baltimore’s black deejays like Kelson "Chop Chop" Fisher, Paul "Fat Daddy" Johnson, Diamond Jim Sears and the inimitable Hot  Rod Hulbert’s Rocketship Show.

Big soul shows came to Baltimore back then. A kid from our neighborhood named Bobby Curran took me to my first one, using the pass to the Baltimore Civic Center that belonged to his father, a longtime city councilman.

That first show featured 25 acts, including Stax stars Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, plus lesser stars like Garnett Mims, Mitty Collier and Howard Tate.

Later, on my own, I bought tickets to see all of the top Motown, Atlantic and Stax acts, including Otis Redding two more times.

Just by showing up at the box office downtown after school during the first several days after the tickets went on sale, I could get seats in the first five rows and sometimes in the first row.

The soul crowd was a walk-up crowd. But when the lights went down and the music started the play, all 12,000 seats were filled.

And that place rocked.

Nowadays, as the story below shows, just getting tickets to a concert can be a problem, no matter what price you’re willing to pay.

Things change. Bobby Curran is now a longtime Baltimore city councilman, as his father was. His brother was the Maryland Attorney General for years and years, and his niece is married to former Baltimore Mayor and current Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Otis Redding died in a plane crash 40 nearly years ago, and the magic of that time died a year later, when Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis, the home of Stax Records.

Suddenly, blacks and whites didn’t mingle joyfully at soul shows any more. America has never been the same.

In any case, here is the latest installment in the saga of Hannah Montana.

MONTANA FANS CRY "SCALP"

Federal judge bars computer programs that enable brokers to buy up tickets before the public

By Sam Sessa and Joe Burris | Sun reporters

October 16, 2007

First, Karen McVearry spent $30 to join the Hannah Montana fan club and buy presale concert tickets for her 9-year-old daughter Maddie.
Too late - they had sold out.
The 36-year-old Catonsville mom tried again the day the tickets went on sale to the public. As Maddie played soccer, McVearry stood on the sidelines, a cell phone in each hand, calling Ticketmaster, while a friend also called and tried ordering online.

Still too late. The Jan. 8 Hannah Montana show at 1st Mariner Arena sold out in minutes.
Now, people are looking online for tickets originally priced at roughly $65 that are reaching $2,500 - and Ticketmaster is crying foul.
Yesterday, a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered Pennsylvania-based RMG Technologies Inc. to cease producing and distributing computer programs that Ticketmaster alleges allow brokers to digitally cut in line, buy thousands of tickets and resell them for exorbitant prices. These practices shut out customers hoping to buy tickets to high-demand events such as the Hannah Montana tour, Ticketmaster claims.
"We will not allow others to illegally divert tickets away from fans," Ticketmaster Chief Executive Sean Moriarty said in a statement.
The injunction comes as Arkansas, Missouri and Pennsylvania already have launched state investigations into online broker sites.
Fans and parents have been incensed at the difficulty of scoring tickets for the 54-city "Best of Both Worlds Tour," which launches Thursday in St. Louis. Based on the popular Disney Channel show Hannah Montana, it stars 14-year-old Miley Cyrus as Miley Stewart, a run-of-the-mill teen by day and a renowned pop performer called Hannah Montana at night. The show has been among basic cable’s top-rated shows and has resulted in two albums that sold a combined 4.4 million copies in the United States - setting the stage for high ticket demand.
James Kinstle was infuriated at the prices scalpers have been charging for a kids’ show. The day tickets went on sale last month, he spent several hours online trying to buy tickets for himself and his 8-year-old daughter Ruby.
"The biggest frustration to me is that Disney made this concert affordable and the scalpers have made it unaffordable," said Kinstle, the artistic director for the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. "I would have paid the price for two front-row tickets at what Disney was going to charge. Now I can’t even get back row seats for that price."
Kinstle said Montana is one of the few teenage role models in the music world. When he told Ruby she wouldn’t be able to go to the show, she was disappointed but understood.
"This is the first time she’s ever asked to go to anything like this," he said. "I tried to explain it to her, and I think she was the one who used the word ridiculous."
Some industry officials dispute Ticketmaster’s allegation that scalpers play such a powerful role in the ticket marketplace. Scalpers’ presence is undeniable but not overly influential, said Sean Pate, public relations director for StubHub, a San Francisco-based company that acts as a marketplace for buying and selling tickets.
"On occasion, some people have sophisticated software," he said. "But for the most part, you’re talking about a very small number of tickets available, maybe 10,000, with about 100,000 people trying to buy them. You’re going to get a crush of people looking to buy."
The demand for Hannah Montana tickets caught many in the industry off guard, but such demand is not unusual for popular events, Pate said.
"The insinuation that there’s funny business going on is unfounded," he said. "This is typical of the dynamics you see when Bruce Springsteen or Madonna or the Rolling Stones or Van Halen tickets go on sale. It’s just that with Hannah Montana, you’re seeing a whole new demographic."
That tween-age audience fueled similar demand last year for the Cheetah Girls, which outsold the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand in the resale ticket market, according to the TicketNow Entertainment Index.
In Baltimore, Hannah Montana fans were willing to sacrifice large measures of time and money for tickets. Some camped out in front of 1st Mariner Arena nights before tickets went on sale. The concert’s promoter provided the arena’s box office with a pool of tickets in advance - which rarely happens, said Frank Remesch, the arena’s general manager.
"They looked out for the people on the street," Remesch said. "If you’re nostalgic at all and you remember how it used to be, it’s kind of neat to see that someone that sits out there overnight can get access to the tickets."
At a 150th anniversary gala last weekend for St. Augustine School in Elkridge, a basket with two tickets to Hannah Montana and some other souvenir items was offered in a silent auction. It sold for nearly $1,600.
McVearry refuses to pay such large sums for Hannah Montana tickets. Instead, she said, she’ll re-create the concert experience at home.
"All my daughter’s friends and their parents tried, and none were able to get tickets," McVearry said. "We’ll probably end up having our own mini-concert here at home - rent a DVD or something."

A friend of mine wants me to re-send a story from an out of town newspaper because the first e-mailed version has gone missing.

She can’t remember what paper it was in. I check my usual sites — Balto. Sun, WPost — and find nothing.

I go on Google and find other stories but not THE story.

So I leave. My boat and I go over to Advance Auto for a battery check. Battery is very low, boat hasn’t been used all summer and soon the weather will rule out using it till next year.

I buy a new battery. Guy installs it. I watch.

While watching, my mind rolls to this blog. I contemplate whether to continue it, then my mind — which, as Jimmy Dale Gilmore said, has a mind of its own — touches on the Roanoke Times, and then Norfolk, the corporate headquarter$, and the next thing I know I’m in the driveway looking at my boat when I remember that I read the original story my friend wanted on the Website of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

I go inside, go to the Pilot’s Website and for a mere $1.95 order a copy of the story. I copy and paste it in an e-mail and and send it to my friend.

Here’s the weird part. If this had been a workday, and I had only so much time to get the battery, would I have been relaxed enough to make the connection between the Norfolk headquarter$ of Landmark Communication$ and the story I sent my friend, or would my anxiety prevent that train of thought from happening?

I doubt that I would have come up with the thought. Which reminds me of something …

Just kidding.

I got some new statistics on the readership of this blog. It looks pretty high. All I’m doing is goofing around. I spent 36 years working hard and not goofing around in an effort to find and keep readers, and now I goof around and people read the stuff.

The big question is: Why do I find it so hard to give this thing up and become just another Joe, a person with a job, a house, kids within reach and an ordinary life? Why don’t I just ride into the sunset, greet the sunrise of my new job and forget there ever was a Cuppa Joe? I mean, like, big whoop. I never even liked being known. Why is this so hard?

Joan, you need not answer. We’ve been all through this, which is a big reason why we don’t speak.

A friend of mine runs a non-profit agency that provides financial help to women who have breast cancer and need money. My friend was having a classic bad day when this transpired:

"About that time, I got a call from a breast cancer survivor who had called a couple of weeks ago. I returned her call, then she was out of town & this was the first time we could catch up.

"She was a single mom who had had to qualify for the indigent program at the Regional Cancer Center (which I imagine is a pretty humiliating experience). Her friends had gotten together to raise some money to help her cover her outstanding costs & then, out of the blue, a friend of hers died of lung cancer & the family asked for donations to her as a memorial to their mother.

" She was thinking that she wanted to donate what she thought was some leftover money (about $2,000) to us. Turns out, she had just received a $900 bill  … & while we were talking, she opened another $600 bill which she did not understand.

"She wanted to give back. [She thought] She was through with treatment …

"I told her that I knew that it was much harder to receive than to give but that maybe she might want to wait until a later time to take that step. I suggested that she look into the most recent bills & decide whether or not she might need the leftover money. There will be time in the future to give back.

"After that call, I cried for about an hour. How petty are my problems compared to hers & how fortunate am I to work with people like her. Perspective, just in the nick of time.

"I think you are going to find that you have moments like these in your new job that will make you thankful to be doing something worthwhile."

Life never stops giving us opportunities to appreciate what we have, does it?

I give it three stars out of five. A movie about Lawyers Without Consciences and Bad Corporate Executives has to present truly creative ways of getting to its conclusion, especially when the hero is another person who does Bad Things.

That would be George Clooney, the law firm’s officially unacknowledged Fixer, who, in this story, graduates from Damage Control for an SOB who ran over somebody with his car and Didn’t Stop to getting a situation under control for UNorth, a Bad Chemical Company, and his firm, which is full of portentous people in white shirts who spend their harried lives in conference rooms working Feverishly to accomplish an Important Merger with Another Law Firm while Hiding the Truth about one of UNorth’s agricultural chemicals, which is Killing People.

Clooney, as Clooney-Clayton, has a Bad Gambling Problem and a Bankrupt Bar brought down in no small degree by his Troubled Brother, who Uses Drugs. That brother is not to be confused with the Good Brother, who is a New York Police Detective.

If I were writing this movie, I would get the Good Brother to help the Fixer Brother to bring down the Chemical Company and create havoc with The Merger. Of course, both the Good Brother and the Fixer Brother have to bend the rules to accomplish this, the first by providing Clooney-Clayton with an illegal means of entry to the loft apartment of the Brilliant but Bipolar Lawyer who wanted to spill the beans about UNorth but got murdered by the UNorth’s People first.

Clooney-Clayton merely took $80,000 in Hush Money from The Firm so he could pay off his debts related to the bar before Messing Things Up for The Firm by turning up Alive when he should have been Dead with the Evidence that will Ruin the chemical company’s Good Name.

UNorth’s president is a Middle-Aged Woman filmed in Unflattering Light who crumples  to her knees when Clooney-Clayton confronts her. She undoubtedly is Retching on the Floor as the camera pulls away, which is Better than She Deserved and Not as Bad as she’s going to get.

Clearly the Only Way to begin this story is toward The End, when Clooney-Clayton’s car gets blowed up at dawn after he He gets out to look at The Pretty Horses standing stock still in a Pasture Without a Fence he’d have to climb over.

Then it jumps back Four Days, in which he demonstrates an Inhuman Ability to Go Without  Sleep and eliminates any need for a Love Interest.

The Fixer has Enough Problems as it is.

It’s 1:46 a.m. and I’m still in Roanoke, and I’m not planning to leave — not on such a long trip, and not until I settle down and take care of this house.

It’s no big deal, I just feel that in the remaining three weeks before I resume working I ought to get some of my responsibilities in hand. I may go away for a day or two to the beach or West Virginia when I feel more comfortable, but why go to Cooperstown (a) when we have perfectly good leaf colors here and (b) when my kids can’t go with me?

I want to finish painting my bedroom (begun last spring), use my boat a bit, save the $1,000 the C-town trip would cost me and read up on my new field of endeavor.

Besides, I’ve been having fun around here, being anonymous and having the occasional Harp.

Day of rest, children. No cheating.

Check the column to the left for some funny responses to the four-word-guy game. The two Rons have it down to a science.

It reminds me of the time Sissy Spacek went on David Letterman to promote one of her obscure, later films, and acted completely clueless about it and everything else.

Letterman said, "We sound like two dumb people on a date — ‘Wanna get a pizza?’"

Win, that’s a beautiful philosophy. I don’t know what you’re taking, but I’d like to borrow some.

Oh, that’s right, you’re in love.

P.S. This question has come up before: Are the two Rons two Rons or one Ron?

Da do Ron Ron. Four words.

It’s OK, men, to chime in even if it’s with only four words.

You can even hit on the women, but then you have to use no more than four words — and we’re rated PG-13 here, with some slipups, true, but, you know, stay clean.

Went out today and interviewed people for the story and it was fun. Saw other people, too — couple of folks from the RT, Ken at the Fret Mill, Ed the developer, and so on.

Kinda cheered me up, and the interviews were interesting and fun. Then I came home and got that old feeling. Lots of talk and laughs off-site and then — bom ba bom bom — the Empty House.

So I yoga’d till my ankle hurt, then went through some journals from this month in previous, tortured years. It sure made this part of life seem better. Except for my ankle.

Then, after dinner, I bought two books to take on my trip and two CDs — one by the Frames, the band of the guy in "Once," and one an entertaining new Frankie Vallie CD of ’60s songs — "Spanish Harlem," "Then You Can Tell Me Good-Bye," and so on.

He doesn’t seem to do falsetto any more, and he sings like a little kid, but there’s something about that hood’s look he has (he had a small part on the Sopranos a few years ago) and the memory of "Sherrie" when it first hit big and I, at about 12, was at the beach, that hooks me every time.

It’s amazing how our moods can change. It’s amazing to me to realize that the accounts of the months before and after my wife died, and the later demise of a long and troubled relationship, teach me different things at different times.

I wouldn’t wish torture or trouble on anyone, particularly anyone with kids, but there are lessons available to those who have the patience and strength to discern them.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. Anybody else done anything interesting?

Guys?

 

At home on Sunday, taking care of bills and the like. Too hot to enjoy the outside, as some have noted. Plus, tired from watching the Tech game Saturday night on TV in Bburg with my son, daughter and their friends.

(Yes, I was allowed to mingle with the young people, owing to my ongoing hipness. That’s my guess.)

Today, I was at the dentist’s office while my daughter had two wisdom teeth extracted. Then Kroger, for soft foods she can eat, and then, for the longest period of the three, I’ve been reading up on materials for my NEW JOB.

There is much to learn, and I’m going to training early next year, but it seems learnable and manageable and challenging and, potentially, extremely rewarding in the psychic sense.

No, I’m not training psychics. I mean emotionally rewarding.

So there you have it.

Somebody mentioned meeting at Coda on Oct. 24. That might suit me as I may be returning from my brother’s place in NC that day, and the drive will give me an excuse to make a brief visit to the BlogFans before going home and resting up for the Tech-Boston College game on the night of the 25th.

I’m just kidding. I’ll show up. But things are kind of unsettled, what with the NY trip on the books and the free lance piece I’m writing and assorted other responsibilities to handle.

I must say, the blog hasn’t suffered in my absence. Y’all are doing good.

I have to pay my bills.

Carry on…

Well, shut my mouth.

Still, no O line and, until the end, Tech’s offense overall didn’t do much. And the defense wore down, as predicted here, because they  spent so much time on the field.

That said, here’s today’s relevant paragraph: OK, I’m Frank Beamer. I have this solid-gold young quarterback who can pass, run and toadly confuse opponents’ defenses.

This guy could be lights-out (who doesn’t love a good sports cliche?) for the next four seasons.

Why, oh, why, would you risk his health by giving him DESIGNED running plays?

I’m not talking about the rare option or the timely QB draw. I’m talking about, you know, a half-dozen opportunities for him to gain four yards and for the opponents to line up and try to knock him into the stadium concourse.

This is the kind of kid you keep in bubble-wrap between games. Why jeopardize him with unnecessary hits on the field?

Which gets to Tech’s offensive line, for which I, at 5-9, 170 pounds and enough years to count on nearly all of three people’s fingers and toes, am about to volunteer. I’ve seen about enough of Tyrod getting up gimpy after some 320-pound defensive lineman, or worse, some 200-pound safety traveling at warp speed, smashes him as he lets go of the ball

I still have four years of NCAA eligibility remaining, and then I can start drawing my Social Security. I’ll sacrifice my life and health if it’ll keep Tyrod  hale and hearty. Everybody wins!

That’s my pessimistic view of this evening’s game between Virginia Tech and Clemson.

And I really dislike Clemson.

But geez, bad offensive line or improved offensive line, Branden Ore doesn’t look like last year’s Branden Ore. Which means one of the howitzers that Tech desperately needs is, for some reason, misfiring.

The offensive line continues to be pathetic. The defense, while impressive last week, has been known to lose its cool in big games when the Hokies fall behind, and against Clemson it could once again succumb to weariness if the offense can’t keep itself on the field.

In other words, Tech still has a lot to prove. Clemson hasn’t been sterling, but I suspect it will be much more tenacious, and a lot faster, than North Carolina was last week.

Initially, I thought Tech would lose by 10. After reading the standard puffery from the RT’s Hokie coverage staff, I’ll cut the margin to three and hope I wind up excoriated tomorrow for having displayed so little faith.

Tyrod Taylor already is a terrific quarterback, but the last time I counted, they played football with 11 to a side.

Just as I was turning from the ticket booth toward the doors of the Grandin Theatre this evening, I heard a familiar flop-flop sound and looked back at Grandin Road in time to see a barge-like Cadillac limping along with a flat right front tire.

After watching "Eastern Promises" or whatever it’s called — a good but graphically violent film — I was sitting outside of the Coda coffee shop having an Orange Dreamsicle drink with an M&M-covered brownie when I heard a ka-pow and knew immediately a car had struck something.

My view was blocked by cars parked at the curb. All I could do was hope that no person had been hit or otherwise hurt. Then, again, came the flop-flop sound, this time from a little blue car with a flat right front tire.

This, friends, is the downside of traffic calming. Traffic calming is the controversial method that Roanoke introduced a few years ago to slow cars in areas rife with people.

Grandin Village has been reborn and is rife with people. The extended curbs and pedestrian crosswalks don’t work like charms, because some drivers still whip through there the way they did in the bad old days.

Those who don’t know about the calming curbs, or don’t see them in the dim light, are apt to pop tires the way those folks did tonight. I felt sorry for them. I remembered all the protesting e-mails I received when I wrote for the RT from people who hated the traffic calmers on Grandin and in Southeast Roanoke, especially.

I also remembered that it was not a cause I rallied around, because cars are killers and in my mind, people come first.

Now that I’ve written that, I know my flat is coming, probably late at night, in the rain, when I have to get up really early the next day.

It’ll be worth it. I like slow traffic in busy places, and busy Grandin Village just might be my favorite part of town.

If you read it today you saw Les saying he was keeping busy because otherwise he’d start asking himself if he did enough to save Lisa’s life.

This could be the most valuable part of the story line — what the people left behind go through, the questions they ask themselves, the people they encounter, the decisions they make.

Grief is greatly underestimated by those who’ve never experienced true loss. Here’s hoping that the strip is able to break through the misconceptions and really start people thinking about what they, too, will go through one day.

We finally start talking about actually doing some things — guys are doers, not talkers, right? — like drinking beer and volunteering, and suddenly they all have their eyes closed and their heads on their desks, as if this is nap time.

We have a social movement building here. We’re going to need more linear, unimaginative, structured, rigid thinkers like me to offset the notoriously creative, inventive, ingenious ideas from the female side. And to get us moving rather than just talking … and talking … and talking.

Oops, was that sexist? I apologize. I was using stereotypes to make a larger point. We need male thinkers and doers to complement the welcome number of women who are ready to go.

Please, guys. Please.

From my meeting about my new job. I can’t reveal what it is yet, as there are other announcements to be made, but I am excited to start it, especially because much of it involves plowing new turf. That’s a figure of speech. I am not becoming an apprentice landscaper.

Now to take a walk, pay some bills and get to work on my chore list. Much to read, as well, about my new profession. Sigh. And here I thought I could be aimless and pointless and jobless and enjoy it.

Everybody told me I’d be sick of it in a month, and I sort of am. But the blog will roll on. You have my solemn, um, whatever on this.