Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 3:00 a.m. in "The City."

I was outside @ 1:15 a.m. with the fur-children. It was/is cold, quiet, and mostly cloudy, but not unpleasant. That much-ballyhooed storm that the NWS had predicted for the counties and communities on the shores of the "Big Lake" was mostly smoke. We may have gotten about one inch of snow and that will be melting later today as the high temperature reaches 43° with only a 20% chance of additional precipitation, We won't see a return to the 30s until Thursday's high of 33°. Unfortunately, precipitation is in the forecast from the NWS for Tuesday @ 70% and Wednesday @ 80%.

Mary made a tasty lunch of her famous mushroom gravy that topped smashed garlic potatoes and her extraordinary beest. Then we read for a while before we finally made it out yesterday to the big-box home center in Muskegon to get that aforementioned humidifier. We chose one that uses evaporation rather than a cool mist variety that produces humidity by heat. This one does have a pad that will require replacement each season, but that is a small price to pay when compared to the pink mold that was produced in the old cool mist humidifier that we had before.

We also made it to the Sherwin-WIlliams™ paint store near that big-box home center to buy what should be our last gallon of paint for a few months. Maybe we can get the manse back into shape after that last room is done.

In change, I got a 2016-P Ft. Moultrie quarter that was issued to represent S. Carolina in my National Parks collection. We usually get "D" series quarters produced at the Denver mint, whereas the
"P" series is minted in Philadelphia. There are many quarters that I still need to procure, but I'm getting there.

I never watched the various first spring training games yesterday. The Cubs split two with the Oakland As and are now in 8th place in the NL Central with a 1 - 1 record. My beloved Red Sox are also sporting a record of 1 - 1, but they are in 5th place in the AL East. The Detroit Tigers also have a record of 1 - 1 which is also good enough for 5th place, in their case in the AL Central.

At this early point in the spring schedule, the big name players are not playing much. This is a time for the younger players to showcase their talents and maybe earn a spot on the bench of the major league team. However, it is hard to earn a major league roster spot, especially with teams like the Cubs or the Red Spox who had good seasons in 2016.

Speaking of sports, today is the first NASCAR race of 2017 @ Daytona. Unfortunately, we don't have a car in the Daytona 500 this year, as our favorite driver, Leilani Münter, drove in the ARCA race @ Daytona on February 18th, finishing 19th out of 40 starters driving a car sponsored by VeganPowered.org/Plants4Hunger with the words "Vegan Powered" emblazoned on its hood, for the Venturini Motor Sports Team. I guess that we can root for Junior instead, just because.

The Venturini team will be manning a vegan foods tent outside the Daytona 500 this year, distributing vegan food samples to thousands of race fans. A tough row to hoe @ a NASCAR race attended by people who will be tailgating and grilling tons of meats and ribs. Small steps as they say.

I was downstairs but I forgot where I was going with that reference. We plan to stay in today and watch the Daytona 500 in the Media Room while eating vegan snack foods. Otherwise, we have no specific plans for the day.

The sun will rise @ 7:25 a.m. and set @ 6:31 p.m. Ciao.