Good morning GH.  It is just coming up on 4:00 AM, and I don't plan on staying up for long.  But, I just had to get up for a while and listen to some music.  In this case, I have programmed the internet music service to play traditional Irish music, just because I like it, and because it gives me a chance to hear the music as it should sound.  I enjoy our local jam sessions, but I don't always know what we should sound like.  So far I have heard The Chieftains doing "Brian Boru's March", Gaelic Storm, doing "The Park East Polka", and "Tell Me Ma."  I have also heard The Dubliners doing "Rocky Road to Dublin," and many more bands/songs, including the Irish Experience playing Rocky Road to Dublin/Tam Lin."  I have always liked traditional Irish music, so maybe I have an Irishman in my woodpile somewhere.  As a mutt, you just never know.

Currently the temperature on the desktop display is twenty-four degrees, and given the temperatures I have been reporting lately, that's downright balmy.  No new snow has fallen, and that is important for my Baking Yak.  A nice little play on words that I once heard in an old joke that went something like this:

A guy is climbing a mountain in Nepal with his buddy.  As they near the top, they are getting really hungry, so the first guy says, "I am so hungry, I could eat a horse, but I haven't anything to eat except these energy bars that taste and smell like sawdust."  Just then, they smell something cooking, and it really smells delicious, but not like anything they are familiar with. So the friend asks, "What's that smell"  The first guy says, "I don't know, let's ask our guide." They ask and the guide says, "Oh that, that's nothing special,."  "I asked my wife to make something tasty for our arrival, and so, what you smell is just my Baking Yak."

Maybe you had to be there.

Mary and I spoke with a young lady who will be traveling to Las Vegas later in the coming week and she was excited because she had found her lucky scarf.  She had this scarf the last time she was there, she won a handsome sum that time, so what the heck, why not try again?  She hadn't seen the scarf in about a year, and she believes that it is an omen that it has resurfaced at this time.  I hope she is right.  I believe that we make our own luck, but it never hurts to have an "Ace in the hole."

Otherwise, not much is happening with us.  We got out late yesterday, after I had cleared the aforementioned snow.  Sugar believes that we need to get out more, there's a surprise.  But I was too tired after all that snow removal to walk much, even though Sugar was raring to go.  Mary had been taken for a short walk earlier, but Sugar didn't think that was enough, so she made me go for another round.  I felt like my shoes were filled with lead.  By the time I got back. I was too pooped to pop, as they say.  So later, when Mary said it was time to go, and suggested that we could walk, which I just didn't have in  me, I made Mary drive.  Am I lazy, possibly.  Am I getting older, probably.  Did my muscles ache when I was walking with Sugar earlier, Oh yeah!  I don't think I have moved this much snow in several years.  But, that is a good thing about being retired, you do it on your schedule, when it is convenient for you.  One of our former neighbors who passed a few years ago used to use that system  He took a whole summer to paint the window on his house one year.  When I was in my 40s I did all of ours in one day.  It is all about time.  Now, I think Marshall was a very wise man.  After he passed, I used to clear the driveway and sidewalks for his widow until she moved.  She too has passed now, but I am still moving the snow for my neighbor. I like to think I am paying it forward.

Anyway, for  a guy who wasn't going to be up for long, I have been up for too long, and speaking of up, UP with Chris Hayes will be on in three hours.  So I'd best get back to bed and get ready for...Tea time and then I'll let Sugar take me for a walk.  Ciao.