Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 3:30 a.m. in "The City."

I am once again listening to Coast to Coast AM and George Noory, as he and his guest, Joe Nickell, a featured columnist with Skeptical Inquirer, science magazine, talk about ghosts, ghost sightings, aliens, and Mary's personal favorite, Bigfoot. Too bad Mary can never stay awake to hear Coast to Coast AM. I may wake her to hear George's theme song, Listening to Coast to Coast, as performed by UFO Phil. Here is a link to Phil's video. https://youtu.be/XqWPCsNke24

My thanks to Ellen for some additional info regarding my Chicago area reminiscences. We live in a small world, don't we?

Trainspotting yesterday was OK, but mostly pedestrian. At 10:29 a.m., the regular cast of locomotives passed by on "The reality scale train layout." Locomotives 2057 and 2019 looking grand in their freshly washed Mid-Michigan RR livery, were towing 10 CHCs, seven DBTCs, two looking older and rustier than usual even for this railroad, and two GTCs, with one at the end.

At 1:40 p.m., I heard that lonesome whistle once again as the locomotives approached from the south heading north. I was poised and ready in the living room, and in spite of her protestations to the contrary, so too was my apprentice poised upstairs in her office. What to our wondering eyes should appear? The same complement of locomotives, but no cars. Zip, zero, nil, nada.

When Mary, Adam, and I took a trip to Glacier National Park over 20 years ago on Amtrak's "The Empire Builder", we listened to a retired Amtrak employee pontificating about many things, ad nauseum. He had a lot to say about "Deadheading", a practice of riding a train without working to get home. I guess that same phrase is used by airline employees doing the same thing. At any rate, two locomotives traversing the rails burning diesel fuel without towing any cars is an expensive and wasteful activity just to get the locomotives and their crew back to their point of origin.

In sports news, the boys in blue defeated the hapless Braves by a score of 6 - 1. That gives the Cubs a record of 17 - 5, to remain in 1st place in the NL Central. Some good news on the injury front. Kris Bryant has a minor ankle sprain, and will not need a trip to the DL. However, some bad news too. The Cubs' veteran catcher, Miguel Montero, is on the 15 day DL due to back pains. Not a good thing for a catcher.

The Tigers handily defeated the Twins 9 - 2, to move up to 2nd place in the AL Central, with a record of 12 - 10. My beloved Red Sox didn't exactly crush the Yankees with a winning score of 4 - 2, but a win over the Yankees is always a good thing, The Sox are now sporting a record of 13 - 10 and are in 2nd in the AL East, while the Yankees languish in 5th place in that same AL East, with a record of 8 - 13. Ahhhh, that felt good to write. The Caps fell to the Quad Cities River Bandits by a score of 1 - 2. With a record of 10 - 11, they are now in 6th place in the Midwest League East. Yesterday, I read a lengthy treatise about the Caps, their owner, their ballpark Fifth-Third Ballpark, and the team's record over the last 20 plus years in West Michigan.

We took an extended walk with STWD yesterday before she and I got around to baking those previously mentioned chocolate chip cookies. With the able assistance of STSD, the cookies turned out great. Sugar can help with the cleanup, as long as she doesn't get any chocolate chips, which are bad for her health. Here are the cookies in all their tasty glory.

Looking good!

I don't know what happened to the cookie on the upper right, but I have it on good authority that it tasted great.

During the morning, I played exclusively with Susanna for about 45 minutes. Then, my thumb said Stop!

Later in the afternoon, we walked downtown to have dinner at our favorite watering hole.

I learned something earlier this morning. When I sit on a pillow while in my desk chair, my Yak feels much better. I noticed when I was downstairs a bit ago, that Mary appears to be done with her poncho knitting project. Maybe she has some spare time so that I can get her to sew up a pillow for my chair, or at least go to the store to get one that will fill the bill. I know that she has a date with our IT Guru this mornig at 11:00 a.m.

Otherwise, not much on tap for today. Perhaps a romance movie on The Hallmark Channel this evening, and a baseball game this afternoon if the Cubs are on. That's after the morning safari with the intrepid one and Mary's IT session,

The current temperature is 37° that feels like 37° with no wind. My desktop weather station, with its porch mounted sensor, is showing nearly 41°. Later this evening and into early tomorrow mornig, rain is in the forecast starting at about 6:00 p.m. this evening at 50% and then increasing overnight to 100%. Temperatures are forecast to stay on the cool side for several more days.

The sun will rise at 6:40 a.m. and set at 8:46 p.m. Ciao.