I am ready!

Go through the agenda, make decisions, and leave them a summary of what you decided. Then give yourself a bonus for being so efficient.

Today we are supposed to hear from the Big Boss just what cuts he plans on making (we have to cut about 150K from this fiscal year [ends April 30]) from the proposals we submitted. There's one payment of 43K due at the end of April that the publisher will accept after May 1st, but the campus might not allow us to push it back.

Oh man, this just gets better and better. There's conspiring to sell the Obama seat, "pay-to-play" schemes, and threatening to withhold state assistance to the Tribune company to induce a purge of critical editorial board members/writers. Wow.

I think it was Cindy who noted that the Little Tikes stuff will survive the apocalypse. Keith Richards and the cockroaches will be driving the coupes and living in the Cozy Cottages.

I'd also like to point out that Little Tikes is a fine Ohio company!

The cardboard rocket is definitely awesome. It'll live in the house for a while before it migrates outside.

Oh man. K and Noah left for Idaho this morning. Am sad.

I wish my nephews were still small enough to delight with that sort of thing, but there are two in high school and two in college, and even the niece is getting too old for dolls.

(I looked into black market drugs to slow their aging but no luck, damn it.)

Our local snow plower dude (he's the local jack-of-all-trades) saw me floundering in the driveway with the snow thrower. He told me he noticed Christopher's truck wasn't here and our driveway wasn't plowed so he offered to do it for me for $15. Gave him $20. Worth every penny.

WOOT! Gotta love that, Cash.

My feet are COLD. I do not want.

And apparently, he withdrew funding for a new Cubs stadium when the Trib refused to go along.

There's going to be a news conference at 11 central.

brenda, those shenanigans are amusing me to no end, although it should make me sad that people are so dumb.

Worth every penny.

When I lived in Buffalo, the housemates and I always contracted with a local guy, and waking to the sound of the plow scraping the driveway clean at 5 a.m. was a small bit of heaven knowing we didn't have to get out of bed to shovel ourselves out to get to an 8 a.m. class.

msbelle, thanks so much for the book advice. I'm passing it all along today.

I have to say -- how stupid is the Illinois governor? Assuming the charges are true, of course. Conspiring to profit from appointing someone to Obama's senate seat? Sure, no one will be watching *that* closely.