"Out, Damned Spot! Out, I Say!"

Where's Shakespeare When I Need Him?


Well ladies and gentlemen, after surviving most of a week spent battling some sort of funk that snuck into my nostrils and spread throughout my household, things are returning to being close to normal (IF things are ever "normal" here on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.)

Missy the Turbo Pup, with her sleek, linear extended canine form, avoided contracting the malady but it knocked Pat on her behind for a couple of days and we're both still coughing and hacking the last vestiges out of our systems.

I'm severely distracted by a project deadline which was "aggressive" when first imposed last month and looms large on Monday, although the successful compliance with same lies in the hands of a subcontractor in Alabama.

We're also tasked with entertaining family guests for a long planned extended weekend visit, and with their arrival later this afternoon the house will be buzzing with activity including our first trip to Neyland Stadium to watch the University of Tennessee and Mississippi State struggle over a leather football.

Meanwhile I have to make mental preparation and pack my luggage in order to depart the scene of the local festivities in order to travel on Sunday with my sister to southern Ohio to pay our last respects to my Father's brother Tom who succumbed to the ravages of Cancer this past week.

Finally, after spending the past day in denial I'm realizing that my server PC here has early indications of having some funky crap spread by computer nerd criminals which is going to require a complete sweep of the system later this morning and a change in my "cookie settings" which I've recently relaxed in a fit of downloading and frivolous Internet cavorting.

Leave it to the Internet butt heads to continue to break into people's homes uninvited and screw around with expensive electronics.

Whether you enter my house through the back door , the basement window, or come in through a phone line or a cable connection I still wish a plague on your household and desire you are captured and tortured by a band of pillaging militant Pygmy Muslim terrorists.