Ups and Downs of the week.

  Dad – Home again. Hopefully for good this time.

  The Gates Affair – Will it ever end?

 Vacation – We just booked a trip to Germany for October (after Oktoberfest). We’ll be doing the Munich, Nürnberg, Prague, Vienna loop. I am so looking forward to it. 

   Red Sox - Playing a little better. They picked up some talent today with Victor Martinez and Casey Kotchman. I felt bad for poor Adam LaRoche, who barely had time to unpack and probably didn’t dirty a single Sox uniform. I know he was psyched to be on the Red Sox and now he’s in Atlanta. Still, it’s his former team, so he’s come full circle, I guess. Sox are now just one and a half games back (1 game in the loss column).

 Decent Summer Weather – July has come and gone and not one day above 90. I can deal with 80s all summer long.

  Illinois Highway Department – I guess I shouldn’t expect much out of a group who believes the best way to repair a highway is to pour some tar in a hole and then fill it with peastone. It keeps the same crew employed filling the same holes week after week and it helps keep the windshield and autobody folks busy repairing glass and paint. Still, today I had to deal with stop and go traffic for 9 miles because they closed one lane of I-57 for that distance even though there was only one small crew working at the very end of the stretch. Why they needed 9 miles of lane closure for a single work crew is beyond me, but I guess I shouldn’t be looking for intelligence or consideration from this bunch of morons.