Labor Day Ramble

The calendar has turned another page, I hope you are all enjoying a fine Labor Day. We are now at the unofficial end of summer.  (The official end being the solar equinox, of course. That won't happen for about three weeks yet.) Kids are back in school or will be in a day or two. The days are noticably shorter in the daylight department and there is a crispness in the morning air--when it's not raining.

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Terry, her sister and their mom should be landing in NYC any minute now as they return from their sojourn to Poland. Terry will stay at Mom's overnight and take Lucille to the airport so she can catch her flight to her lake house in Missouri. After dropping her sister off at 6:30 AM, Terry will be driving back to the Aerie and should be home before noon. [UPDATE: They're back! Got to Mom's around 6:30 PM.]

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I've been giving my knees a bit of a workout going up and down the stairs in the house. The TV and recliner are up in the loft and that's the best place to watch football and baseball. So, I've been going up and down the steps as I take in the games and come down to feed the cats, do some walking on the deck, feed the cats, and grab a bite to eat for myself.

And my knees have been doing pretty good going UP the steps. Going down is a little harder and I'm often doing it one leg at a time.

Tomorrow is another therapy session in the pool. The warmth and the exercises may give me even more bend in the knees making the DOWN portion of the stairs a little more likely.

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Every day we seem to be getting some rain--often in the form of T-storms. Thursday evening we got 0.43 inches. Saturday night we got 0.98 inches and one heck of a sound and light show. Last night we got a teensy 0.4 inches. And this afternoon we got a little more but that may be just the start. There's a severe T-storm watch on through 10 PM although the radar shows the worst passing to the south of our location.

The tempreatures have been nice though. The thermometer dropes to around 50 over night and rises to around 80 during the sunny afternoons. There's usually a nice breeze blowing in the afternoon, too, so those 80 degrees feel slightly cooler.

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One more college football game to be played tonight to wrap up the opening weekend. There have been some excellent games. There have been some dull ones. There have been blow outs and a few surprises. I'll have more to post on the results tomorrow.

For now, let me say that I was disappointed my Rutgers Scarlet Knights lost to Fresno State. Sure, they were 13 point underdogs on the road, but they played a great game--on offense. Defense? Well, they did not give up a play longer than 25 yards but they had some penalty issues in the end zone and at the goal line that gave Fresno too many opportunities.

Even then, the Knights had their chances. A missed field goal as time ran out and a missed two-point conversion in OT proved costly as the game ended 52-51.

(Could RU please not play a night game in California again. The final didn't happen until nearly 3 AM in the east and I've still not recovered.)