Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just passing 2:00 a.m. in "The City."

Whatever you may have heard about taxes, I can unequivocally state that here in MI, the real estate taxes we paid yesterday are about one-fourth of what Mary and I used to pay in Illinois. Do we get what we pay for? Yes, but we have very low expectations. In Illinois, we wanted everything and what we got was broken promises and excuses. Here in MI, we get potholes and limited service, the difference is that we pay a lot less for the disappointment.

But I digress. Yesterday was an interesting day of trainspotting. The southbound run happened at about 10:00 a.m. Locomotive #2019 was towing seven CHCs, six DBTCs, one WTC (white tank car), and one GTC (gray tank car), What made the day interesting happened later, when I was ready to watch the northbound run at 2:03 p.m. What I saw approaching on the tracks nearby, was good old locomotive #2019. However, that's all I saw, good old #2019 without any cars in tow. Go figure.

I got up a short time ago to find a severe weather alert in my email for Ottawa, County, MI. But like nearly always in GH, the storm was not slated to visit GH. Just about everywhere else south of here, but not here. I saw one flash of lightning, but it wasn't even enough to send STWD scurrying to her hide-e-hole. Alas, that means I'll be watering again later this morning. Plus, later today we'll feel a temperature of 81° with 82% humidity after the sun rises at 7:11 a.m. and before that same orb sets at 8:16 p.m. Every day through Saturday has a picture of  T-storm on the weather page, but like always, I'm not holding my breath.

In sports news, the boys in blue are back once again, losing to the Reds, 4 - 7. The Tigers were pummeled by the chicken pox afflicted/infected Kansas City Royals, 1 - 12. Ouch! My beloved Red Sox also got beaten once again by the Yankees, 8 - 13. Sigh. The Caps slipped by the Ft. Wayne Tin Caps, 1 - 0. The Caps season will end next Monday with a game against the Great Lakes Loons.

Tonight, the Wolverines of Michigan, under new coach Jim Harbaugh, travel to Utah to meet the Utah Utes and their long time coach, Kyle Whittington. Here's hoping that the Wolverines and Harbaugh can live up to the hype of the last eight months. The MSU Spartans, under their great coach Mark Dantonio, open Friday against the Western Michigan Broncos and their also great coach, P.J. Fleck. The Northern Illinois Huskies with first year coach Rod Carey at the helm, open Saturday against the Rebels of UNLV and their new coach, Tony Sanchez, The Huskies are expected to repeat as MAC champions. Right now, all the teams have identical records of 0 - 0.

Well it happened, the new book has hit my highlighting desk, all 473 pages plus the introduction. I'll be busy highlighting and commenting for a few days. I like the book so far, but it is a lot of work for this humble highlighter. As I said, so much for my personal reading time.

So there you have it gentle readers. My day will be walking with STWD, buying and reading the newspaper, highlighting, and watching the Wolverines defeat UNLV, I hope. Ciao.