Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 7:30 a.m. in "The City."

I can't say you read it here first, that would be presumptuous, but I believe that I can say that you read if first this side of the Mississippi. What seems like forever ago, I predicted that the Sox would go all the way. Actually, that was just last January when I started to get baseball fever, but that's the way the baseball bounces. But, my beloved Red Sox are the 2018 Champions of American Major League™ Baseball.

What can I say, the ball bounced the right way for the beloved as they traded for 2018 World Series™ MVP Steve Pearce in late June. He was just coming off the DL and had hoped to settle into Toronto with his family. The last words he heard from the Blue Jays GM were. "Go win a World Series™" With stellar numbers in the series, Pearce got the MVP award and the Sox were champions. What can they do for an encore? Win the American League Championship again next season, but lose to the Cubs in the World Series™ in game #7! For sure, rookie Sox manager, Alex Cora will be returning to the Sox.

A basic fact. The Red Sox waited 86 years to win the World Series for the first time in the 21st Century in 2004. They have since gone on to win the series again in 2007, 2013, and now, 2018! The Cubs waited 108 years and I waited 58 years for the first Cubs series win in the modern era. So....

But I digress. Well, that was a pleasant digression. We have a current temperature of 48° under cloudy-skies. The NWS is forecasting today's high to be 50° with a cloudy morning and a sunny afternoon. Tuesday, the NWS is forecasting T-storms in the afternoon hours with an 80% certainty at this time and a high temperature of 56°! STWD will not be happy in the afternoon. The sun will rise today @ 8:15 a.m. and set later @ 6:40 p.m.

Speaking of STWD, we bought some fencing yesterday to keep her from wrapping herself around the roses in Mary's rose garden. Sugar is not happy, but Mary is, as she and I have had to go out in the cold and rain several times to untangle Sugar from the bushes.

We also did something crazy yesterday, to paraphrase Adam. He once told us he did something crazy, he'd bought a goldfish. Mary asked him if he also bought a bowl? He had, and the fish was with us for many years. What did we do that was crazy? We bought ourselves a new dishwasher. It will be installed in about two weeks. In days of yore, we might have bought that dishwasher and I would have installed it myself. But that was before I got feeble in my dotage. : - )

Also speaking of Adam, thanks for the shout-out on my new watch. It looks even better in person. When you get to a certain age, you start to indulge your whims more often. So, you buy watches and dishwashers, not goldfish.

Yesterday, I got get a 2018 Pictured Rocks National Lake-Shore with a "D" for the Denver mint. I had previously received a "P" quarter for the Philadelphia mint. Both are now in my collection. I still have several 2017 quarters to get along with some from 2018 that have been released. It takes time, but I've got that in abundance.

My shoulder is not perfect, but it feels better today than it did yesterday. Maybe this bout of surgery will be less invasive and require less rehab time. Maybe.

Otherwise today is a dry chance to walk the fur-children and also to read more of my non-fiction book about PATCO, that's the Professional Air Traffic Control Organization, nee union, that was the bane of President Ronald Reagan's existence. They had some valid concerns, but Reagan took the non-strike idea of federal law and used it to fire all of the controllers for what Reagain termed an "Illegal Strike." Are we better off today? I don't know. I'll let you know more as I get deeper into the book.

Otherwise, not much is happening. Ciao.