Saturday Slight

It's a quiet morning after a late night. Bill's reading the paper, what there is of it this morning. I guess the legal notices are interesting. Apparently Bob Gunter has run out of historical material or is taking a break cuz they don't even have his stuff in there this morning.

Annie's snoozing upstairs. I took one of my rare trips out of town yesterday to pick her up at the airport. It felt good to drive down bare roads and crank up the oldies but goodies.

I like doing that when I'm alone in a car. It takes me back to good times when our journalism groups would load up in vans while visiting National Convention cities like Denver, LA, Albuquerque, San Diego, San Francisco or Phoenix. We'd all go rocking down the road, listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beach Boys, et. al., having the time of our lives---even the adviser.

So, I did a little reminiscing while enjoying a rather pleasant drive to the big city. Annie caught the 6 p.m. flight from Seattle so that gave us plenty of time to stop at O'Doherty's for dinner.

It had particular meaning this time cuz of Annie's recent Irish adventure. It also had particular meaning cuz I'd read an exchange of ideas this week on Huckleberries Online about a "properly-poured Guinness."

Annie joined in on that one, even supplying a U-Tube video with complete instructions from an Irish master pourer. Other bloggers joined in, claiming that in the Northwest, Eichardts in Sandpoint, Moon's in Coeur d'Alene and O'Doherty's know how to pour their Guinness correctly, and that it tastes just as good as in Ireland.

Then, one of the bloggers generously announced that if you go to O'Doherty's, tell 'em, I sent you and they'll pour you a free beer.

Well, we sat down at a booth in the pub, Shannon O'Doherty came to welcome us, and I told him about the claim. He didn't know the blogger by name but said he'd properly pour each of us a free Guinness. So, he did----complete with shamrock in the foam.

That's my first Guinness experience, cuz I'm not a dark-beer fan, but it wasn't too bad. Pretty smooth, in fact. Annie and I had a great time yakking about her trip and watching the NCAA games on the overhead TV's. She was happy to see Siena win cuz that means her bracketology is still in good shape.

Well, today will rev up here pretty soon. The ZAGS play at 5:20 this afternoon against Western Kentucky who upset Illinois. So, we have some planning to do about where we're going to watch the game. We're thinking of inviting ourselves to the Colburn home of HD-TV. In addition to the game, Annie will be presenting a slide show of her trip.

I watched it at midnight last night. Yes, I'm her mom. Yes, I'm prejudiced in her favor, but, yes, the slide show is nothing short of spectacular and moving. She has set it to some haunting Irish tunes, and I know her Aunt Barbara (the photography instructor) is going to highly approve of the photographic artistry. Unbelievable, to say the least.

We made progress yesterday in the snow deterioration department and in the advent of mud, mud, mud. Today the horses will, no doubt, take many steps with long-standing barnyard ice caving beneath their feet. Water is no longer standing; it's running in dips and through culverts around the place.

If the warmer weather keeps up, we could be almost snow free in a week. Let's hope.

In the meantime, have a happy Saturday wherever you are.

GO ZAGS! One great story I heard about the Zag vs. Zips victory occurred in The Netherlands, where Zag alum Mike Flaim got up at 2 a.m. to watch the game. The Zags were behind. Mike immediately donned his Zag apparel, and the team took off on that phenomenal Zag-like scoring run.

Mike, it may be 3 a.m. when you get up to watch today's contest, so why don't you just wear your Zags costume to bed, so we can all rest a little easier during this game!