Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 3:00 a.m. in "The City." We Have a current temperature of 33° that feels like 28° as we attempt to reach today's high of 43° under mostly sunny skies.

I think it's a good time to start with sports news. Yesterday we watched the wheels come off of the college basketball season for the MSU Spartans. They were upset by Middle Tennessee State, 81 - 90. While not the first upset of the tournament, the Spartans were expected to go deep into the brackets and make the Final Four. Oh well, what's that famous saying in Chicago, "Wait until next year!" Ouch, the Cubs lost to that other team from Chicago yesterday.

Speaking of next year, it's almost here, as the Major League Baseball™ season opens later this month. The boys in blue are favored to win the World Series™ this year. The Tigers should be improved and my beloved Red Sox should also have a shot. How's that for optimism?

Trainspotting yesterday was interesting. I awoke @ 8:45 a.m. to the sound of a train approaching from the north as it headed south. What to my wondering eyes should appear, but EMD GP38 locomotive #2019 soloing without any cars in tow. We were in Holland when the train may or may not have headed northward. I'll never know.

In Holland, we stopped at the doctor to learn that Mary is getting older. Even that proved difficult, as our GPS "Hal" told us to turn left when we arrived at the doctor's office when we needed to turn right. Oh well, Doctor Who, the fictional Time Lord, once noted that, "The more complex the technology, the more prone it is to being easily fouled up", or words to that effect. For those of you in the know, we named our GPS "Hal" after the computer "HAL 9000" in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey, co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Perhaps HAL's most famous line in the movie is "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that." when he was asked to open the airlock doors on the space station. Hal had literally lost his computerized mind and was rebelling against his human masters.

Keir Dullea, in his iconic role as Dr. David Bowman, manually opens the emergency airlock doors after a spacewalk to first replace HAL and then to rescue his fellow astronaut, Dr. Frank Poole, played by Gary Lockwood. Poole had attempted to replace HAL due to his erratic behavior as HAL insists that any problems are due to human error. The plan was to replace HAL if it could be proven that HAL was wrong, HAL read their lips as they were in the EVA pod trying to discuss their plans without being overheard by HAL and that led to his fatal actions.

While Dave and Frank were on their spacewalk, HAL disconnected the life-support system for the other three astronauts who are in suspended animation. HAL had caused the death of Poole due to a very human like paranoid fear that Poole was jeopardizing the mission with his attempt to disconnect HAL. Perhaps that is TMI, but this seemed like a good time to add some details about HAL.

Oh, we had also gone to Holland to pick up the things we'd had framed. That part of the journey went without incident, as we didn't need our Hal for that.. I also got in some reading time in the doctor's office as we waited.
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Today, I have my Irish Jam session with Leilani as my primary instrument, in the afternoon while Mary has to get to work on the latest index. Tomorrow, I will be hanging the pictures that we picked up along with the ones we purchased in Pensacola. I first have to check if I have enough hangers in the box in the man-cave. If not, I'm off to the big-box hardware store.

The sun will rise at 7:50 a.m. and set at 7:57 p.m. Ciao.