Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It has just passed 4:00 a.m. in "The City."

As expected, no trains yesterday. However, I expect some later today.

We did get a surprise yesterday. The previously mentioned installation of the replacement pipes for the gas mains was proceeding apace. The crew seemed to feel a need to tear up a great deal of the sidewalk along the street just west of the PE, and to do that required a tremendous amount of pounding with a pneumatic hammer. The entire PE was shaking and the noise was such that Mary couldn't open the window in her office.

We needed to get out of the driveway as the men were working, and that meant that they had to move their truck and lift the pipe so that we could drive the car underneath. Mary surprised me and drove right under. Mary was assured by the workers that the pipe would be in the ground yesterday. However when we returned, they were gone and the pipe was above ground. Apparently they had failed to account for the loss of daylight. We traveled to the grocery store in Spring Lake to exchange something and to pick up a few additional items. The entire process at Orchard Market went smoothly.

By the by, with help from our IT guru, my new computer is up and running. It is terrific. There are no conflicts with the sound output from the various programs.

Speaking of Mary, she made a new dish using baked tofu for lunch. It mimics egg salad only it is tastier and healthier. Accompanied by the the steamed broccoli she had prepared the day before, it made for an excellent luncheon. I'd recommend both.

I did get in some time playing with the girls, and that is always a good feeling.

We didn't make it out with STWD until about 1:00 p.m. Sugar is fine with that as long as she gets her morning quotient of biscuits. However, our plans to get her a pawdicure had to be put on hold.

More on Mary. She accepted another indexing job. It looks interesting. In addition, she turned down another job for which she didn't have time. She is also awaiting some updates on another job that seems to keep getting pushed back.

Today, rain/T-storms are expected, and in fact, it is raining outside the Weather Window (WW) right now. I don't have any plans for either outdoors nor indoors today. Mary has a chat session later this afternoon. Before that, we should be able to get in a morning walk with the intrepid weather dog, weather permitting. I can't wait to see what Mary has on the breakfast menu. Maybe I'll get to that felt on my puzzle table today too.

A sports update. The Wolverines of Michigan square off against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights at 3:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon. The MSU Spartans face the Cornhuskers of Nebraska at 7:00 p.m. later that evening. The NIU Huskies won their last game 32 - 27 on Tuesday night over the Toledo Rockets. The play again on Wednesday 11/11 against the Bulls of Buffalo.

The high temperature today will be around 52°, which with that aforementioned rain and wind will undoubtedly feel chilly, after yesterday's high of 66°.  That's part of the forecast from the NWS.

The sun will rise today at 7:25 a.m and set at 5:30 p.m. Ciao.