Random perspectives from Cleveland

Lots of stuff has been going on this week, and I've been too busy to talk about any of it.

The bailout plan was shot down on Monday and the market tanked. Then on Tuesday the market rebounded. Now we have new talk of a revised bailout taking shape. Regardless of what happens, it appears that my companies stock will continue to erode and plummet even though there's talk of yet another record profit this quarter. So far we're only down about 60% over the past year and have only grown our profits by 25%. Usually when you make more money, your stock price goes up. Not us. Welcome to the exception. It's great, let me tell you.

CC Sabathia almost single handedly pitched the Brewers into the playoffs. Good for him. I like seeing him feast on the inferior NL.

The Browns are still terrible. They struggled to beat one of the worst teams in the NFL and therefore have shown themselves to merely be a shadow of their expected selves. Of course, having a ridiculous schedule doesn't help either.

My grandmother was moved to the hospice care center last Friday. She's due to come home today, but all signs point to her passing not being far away. Her spirits are as high as can be expected, and it seems like we've come to grips with the near future, but it's still going to be very rough on all of us.

We tore out our deck this past weekend in preparation for repairing our back yard and hopefully ridding ourselves of the water problems that have plagued us the past two years. Within the next few weeks the rest of the work will be finished and we'll have a new french (aw-haw-hawn) drain taking water away, a re-graded backyard that funnels to the french drain, newly seeded grass in the back, a new patio with pavers, a filled in front swale, re-seeded grass in the front, and buried downspouts. I'm pretty excited about seeing the finished product. I'll be more excited if we get through a 20 inch snow storm followed by a week of rain and don't have a single drop of water in our ducts.