Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 4:00 a.m. in "The City" and the current temperature is 50° as we continue our free-fall towards the low of 48°. Strangely enough, the low won't happen until after the sun rises at 7:20 a.m. Unfortunately, to get to today's high of 57°, we'll have to endure a 40% chance of morning showers, which are forecast to give way to partly cloudy skies around 1:00 p.m. By that time, Mary and I will be at the annual Michigan Irish Fest in Muskegon. We can dress for the cool weather and the cloudy skies, but too much rain will make life a little more difficult to endure.

Speaking of Mary, I encourage each of you to visit her blog at http://marygoeswalking.blogspot.com/. There you will find her pictures of the recent waves on the shore of the "Big Lake" as well as some pictures courtesy of the Grand Haven Tribune. Plus, there are pictures of the recent tree removal process that scared Sugar the Weather Dog when she was out the other day. I'll let Mary's blog tell you the rest of the story.

In sports, the boys in blue put another loss in the record books, as they lost to the Pirates, 3 - 7. My beloved Red Sox are on a roll, helping the Tigers by beating the Royals 4 - 2. As the Red Sox were winning, so too were the Tigers, 7- 2 over the Indians. That gives the Tigers a one-half game lead over the Royals in the A. L. Central. Today's college football games include tonight's appearance by the Northern Illinois Huskies at Las Vegas at 7:00 p.m. The Spartans have the week off following their loss to Oregon, while the 1 - 1 Michigan Wolverines host the Miami of Ohio Red Hawks this afternoon. Michigan is hoping that their 0 - 31 loss to Notre Dame was just a fluke.

Otherwise, not much is happening today. We'll take the morning walk with the intrepid weather dog if the prediction for rain turns out to be wrong. If not, Sugar will have to go out on her tether. Then Mary and I will be off to the Irish Fest. So many bands, so little time. Several favorites will be performing, including personal favorites, Blackthorn from the Detroit area, Kennedy's Kitchen, a band from Indiana, Seamus Kennedy, originally from Belfast, and Gaelic Storm, a band from Southern California. For those of you who are fans of the movie Titanic, Gaelic Storm can be seen as the "steerage band" who entertained the third class passengers on that ill-fated voyage. Here is a link to a performance by Kennedy's Kitchen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAOS3TNkv28, followed by this link to a performance by Gaelic Storm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNzKueMsfCQ. I hope you like/liked their traditional Irish instrumentation and sound.

That looks like enough for one morning. The sun will set on our day at 7:57 this evening. I stayed up last night to watch a move on the Hallmark Movie Channel. I managed to convince Mary to stay up with me to watch this fantasy or romance or whatever genre/name Mary assigned to the movie. In any case, the story had a happy ending, as girls meets boy, they have a squabble, and then in the end come to love each other. A traditional romance to me. Mary told me there is a name for this genre, but I can't remember. Ciao.