Good early morning GH. It is just past 1:00 a.m. in "The City." Our current temperature of 76° makes me look like a psychic in yesterday's blog. I remember suggesting that we might crack the 70° mark Well, we made it. In fact, we made it into the 80s on Thursday. Today it looks like the mid 60s with an 80% chance of T-storms in the a.m. Sugar the Weather Dog will not be happy.

She was very happy yesterday afternoon. Once I had completed my housework, she and I adjourned to the "Bone Zone" for some recreation. During a very brief period, I felt some raindrops falling on my head. My thanks to Burt Bacharach for putting those lyrics in my head. So the intrepid weather dog and I came indoors. She initially left her bone behind, but that made her long all the more for it. She is after all, a dog. So I retrieved the bone and confined her to the mud room for additional "Bone Zone" time. She finished her bone while I finished my book about Wrigley Field in the living room. We could have stayed outdoors as the rain that fell was brief and inconsequential. Oh well, better safe than sorry. I doubt that once she had her paws on that bone, that she cared where she was chewing.

We are expecting those aforementioned T-storms to begin around 5:00 a.m. So Sugar and I may not get that morning walk in today. That's okay with me, because all of my housecleaning yesterday left me with an aching back. I suppose that the long walk that Sugar and I took in the morning before I cleaned, and the long walk that Mary and I took later in the afternoon, may have contributed. That's one of the reasons that I'm up now. My shoulder feels fine, but my back hurts. Here's hoping that the OTC pain pills that I took will help. I also suspect that the amount of time I spent in my chair reading be a contributing factor too.

I don't know if I"ll hear or see a northbound train this morning. The southbound run is happening right now. The usual twin EMD GP 38 locomotives towing 24 covered hopper cars. With the Weather Window open for the first time this year, that train sounded much louder than usual. The squeals and squeaks were reminiscent of an L train in Chicago. I loved it.

In sports, the boys in blue moved on up to 12 - 21 as they defeated that other team from Chicago by a score of 12 - 5. The 20 - 10 Tigers finally came back to earth, losing to the 11- 24 Astros, 2 - 6. My beloved Red Sox had the day off, so their 17 - 17 record hasn't changed. They meet the 18 - 17 Rangers in Arlington tonight. The Caps have moved to 21 - 13 following their win, 7 - 6, over the Lake County, IN Captains. Here in West Michigan things are good, at least baseball wise. Well, there is that warm-up that happened on Thursday too. We are still going to bounce around with temperatures this year, but for at least one day, all was good.

Today, I plan to finish Thursday's Grand Haven Tribune, and then I have to help Mary again. She has finished her preliminary work on her project, so I have to become an editor once more. This retirement thing is a lot more strenuous than I anticipated. I also need to remind myself that I am not getting any younger. Something about crossing that 60 plus age line that causes a person to have more aches and pains than when they were 20 or even 50. If Mary wants to go out walking again this evening, I'll have to strongly suggest that the car be involved. I don't have another long walk in my back today. Sorry about that. Thanks to Maxwell Smart for that catch phrase.

Kudos to Mary for her suggestion about my music stand. I knew that it needed a heavier weight on the bottom, but I couldn't think of a way to do it. She suggested concrete and I tried it. Success!

So that looks like about it for today. It will be about three hours before the northbound train run happens. Sunrise will be at 6:27 a.m. and sunset at 8:53 p.m. It is a good thing that Sugar the Weather Dog, Mary, and I enjoyed the day on Thursday. Those T-storms are forecast to last until just after noon today. It will get dry and windy after that. Ciao.