The kids are home!  After Courtney and Carter spent the last nine months and Clayton, since July 4, living in the Nations Capital they are now home for good.  Traveling to Washington DC, renting and loading a U-haul and being home within 56 hours of departure made for a whirlwind kind of a trip.  The U-Haul - $240.  Gas for the round trip of 1,888 miles - $360.  Looking in the rear view mirror just before midnight and seeing my three kids huddled together on the back bench seat with only their faces lit by the blue light of the portable DVD player – priceless.  Looking into that mirror and seeing their heads leaning together gave me a great sense of satisfaction.  It was as if the part of me that has been missing for the last nine months was now found.  Now if someone could just come over and unload that damn trailer for me while I went for a quick little Harley ride I could die a happy man.

          You won’t believe what happened to me on the way home.  This is a confession that causes me great pain and I am only willing to share it here in this space because of the warm and compassionate relationship I have with you, my readers.  I know that we can share anything and you won’t be judgmental and will forgive my transgression knowing that we are all human.  I don’t really know how to begin this, the horror of it all is just unfathomable so I best just come right out and say it.  I WAS PASSED ON THE RIGHT IN OHIO!  Yes, yes, it’s true and I apologize from the depth of my soul.  I feel so dirty, so cheap and like the biggest hypocrite since Jimmy Swaggert.  To make matters worse the driver gave me a Barney Fife look as he blew by while I obliviously cruised along in the fast lane.  We made definite eye contact as he went by.  All I could do to match his hateful glare was try to communicate through my eyes that I was sorry and horrified by my lack of consideration. 

          And now for the rest of the story.  As wolf packs are likely to do, once the agitated driver had made his way around me and I moved into the right lane the line of cars behind him quickly closed the gap.  I humbly let them all by.  We had just come past a large bottleneck of traffic and I am sure he had been as frustrated as I with the slow pace over the several miles it took for traffic to break free.  Once he got around me he jumped over to the fast lane and it appears that he was in no great hurry after all.  He just was operating out of some Ohio driver sense of entitlement to driving unencumbered in the fast lane.  Yes, he had Ohio plates.  I hadn’t kicked my cruise back on yet and once I recovered from my embarrassment I hit the resume button.  It was then that a warm feeling began to make its way back into my psyche.  I was gaining on the lollygagging Ohio driver in the fast lane.  I watched as the line of cars ahead of me were caught behind the indignant butt weasel before they were able to find an opening on the right to make their way around him.  My final regret of this incident is that once I had finally worked my way back through traffic he yielded the fast lane to the large GMC grill and logo that filled his rearview mirror before I was able to return the favor of passing him on the right. 

          The drive home was nice although it got pretty long before we finally pulled in the driveway.  Along the way I experienced a sense what purgatory must really be like.  Somewhere around Peoria we ran into a major thunderstorm that slowed traffic to about 25 mph.  Well, it slowed everybody else to about 25 mph.  I put on the four way flashers and slowed to fifty.  Once we cleared the heavy rains we were engulfed in a heavy fog that limited my vision to around 100 yards.  DAMN!  Even a Road Warrior such as me had to respect the problematic nature of extremely reduced visibility.  I actually had to drive the speed limit for most of the last 150 miles.  The purgatory nature of this segment of the trip came from the cocoon like blanket which wrapped around us and prevented me from seeing any familiar landmarks by which to attain any sense of progress towards home.  After thirteen hours on the road it was if we were sitting still and just waiting for our driveway to come under the longing search of our headlamps.  Our perpetual wait finally ended at about 3:00 AM and I have to tell you, “There’s no place like home.”     

 

Our Return to Semi-Normalcy

 

          After conquering the vast tracks of land between here and home sweet home, our Captain has decided to snooze a bit before tomorrow’s return journey. At around three o’clock EST I was sitting here typing away at the computer, saying a few final good-byes to my DC friends, when Clayton returned from getting the mail. He popped his head in the door and said that a guy had offered to do some gardening for us. Such an offer is not uncommon here in the city. Everyone’s always looking for work. I thought the suggestion was a tad strange though, taking into account that we live in a one-bedroom apartment and the only garden to speak of is a single potted plant on our modest balcony.

         

“Heyyyyyyy…” I hear my father’s sing-songy tone.

          “Heyyyyyyy! Dad!” I say in a stereotypical teenage-girl way.

 

          I love these reunions. Though I haven’t seen my dad in forever, he’ll always be familiar, unchanged to me. That’s comforting, what with college just around the corner along with the potential intervals of separation it brings. Considering the countless times that I’ve tried to disassociate myself from my father in public, mostly when he’s waving his hands above his head like a hooligan whenever cute guys approach, it’s good to know that we’ll always be buddies. He’ll always be a jokester. I’ll always have the opportunity to roll my eyes and laugh at his craziness. So after chatting with the boys for a bit, the same boys that I will be spending the next two months of my life with (DUN DUN dun…), it was requested that I write a blog for you all.

 

          As my brother and I noticed the other day, the word “impending” has a negative connotation. It seems to go hand it hand with “doom.” The phrase impending doom is nearly synonymous with imminent death in most cases. That being said, I very much look forward to our impending trip back to the Midwest.

          I’ve always been a fast-paced kinda gal. It’s been said many a time, mostly by my mother, that I think too much. Before I moved out here, I had it in mind that I was made for the city. My love of shopping and my fascination with all things foreign supported this inference. While I have loved nearly every minute of my time in DC, I’ve had the epiphany that I am an Iowan, through and through.

          Because I’ve been taking in every ounce of the city culture that I possibly could, I can better appreciate the finer points of living in the country, near a small city. For one thing, it’s nice to have an acre yard. For another, it’s nice to be able to walk to a best friend’s house, down the middle of the street if I so choose. It’s nice to have grown up in a place where the “Super Skate” offers the ultimate form of entertainment. It’s nice to have been cocooned in a world where innocence is a thing to be cherished, not merely a thing to grow out of.

          I’m excited to return to Kennedy, the home of the Cougars, where school spirit reigns as the most supreme of qualities. I want to meet everyone all over again. There are kids that I’ve known since I was four-years-old, but I haven’t had the opportunity to know them. Sarah has outgrown her love for The Spice Girls; what has filled that earth-shattering void? Levi doesn’t bring his tractor wrench to school anymore; does he prefer to tote his I-pod around?

          I’ve missed my room. I’ve missed my cat. I’ve missed El Rancho. But most of all, I’ve missed having us all together. When Mom moves back in October, our Return to Normalcy will have been fulfilled. Well, because we are the Wilcox’s, I have no choice but to hyphenate that noun with the word that speaks volumes: “Semi.”

          The road blogger is at it again although this time I’m lounging in the Yukon not hammering on the Harley.  It isn’t nearly as fun but it sure is comfortable.  I must be getting old because back in the day I could have worked all day and driven a thousand miles in a snap.  I was only good for 700 this first leg of this trip.  I managed to get out of town at 5:00 today after hoping beyond hope all day that I would be able to leave early.  I guess I was somewhat successful because I was literally out of town by 5:00 but only about two miles out of town.  It’s now 4:27 AM EST.  I paid a hundred bucks for a room at a Fairfield Inn and they didn’t even take time to make those little pointy things on the toilet paper in the bathroom.  The manager will certainly hear about the toilet paper in the morning!  Cranky?  Me?  Nah!  My normal stop in Zanesville, Ohio didn’t work out because they were sold out.  They did have a suite available but they were not interested in discounting it and somehow I didn’t feel like paying a premium price for a suite at a Super 8.  Talk about your oxy-morons. 

          I’m excited to see the family and if I can get up by 8:00 I should manage to stumble into DC by two in the afternoon.  My plans are to snag a lot of hugs and then nap until “she who must be obeyed” gets off work.  Hopefully she has full intentions of treating us all to a lavish dinner somewhere.  The old toasted cheese and Bac-O sandwich routine is wearing thin after having it for the last five nights.  Well, tonight I didn’t have a toasted cheese and Bac-O sandwich.  I had a gas station blister pack ham and cheese sandwich.  Do I know how to live or what? 

Let me tell you about my travel Karma!  I was entering Indiana and finally was able to coordinate needing to pee and needing gas at the same time.  When I am on a power road trip I like to be efficient.   With adequate need confirmed I pulled off the interstate and no sooner than I hit the ramp the old Yukon was kind enough to display the huge amber warning on the dash telling me I was low on fuel.  Thank God they added that feature because the fact that the needle on the gas gauge pointing to 1/8^th would have never clued me in.  I pumped my gas and the $75 preauthorization limit was exactly the amount of fuel I needed.  That was cool. Having gassed and washed the dead bugs off the windshield it was time for that much needed pee.  As I reached for the door the previous occupant opened it and came out.  Perfect timing as waiting may have been a problem.  When I came out of the bathroom the service station attendant was just walking away from the coffee counter where he had just started a fresh spanking new pot of Columbian roast!  Typically at 9:00 pm you really take your chances buying convenience store coffee.  Fresh it was; skanky it wasn’t.  (Hmm, who knew?  Spell checker is unfamiliar with the word skanky.   Thank you Bill Gates for providing the option to add a word to my Microsoft Office dictionary!)

Two things about Ohio drivers and I have to go to bed.  First; I popped over a hill sometime after midnight and noticed a line of about 10 cars all driving in the fast lane.  There were no cars in the right lane for as far as the eye could see.  It was if they got stuck behind the front guy and everybody was waiting for the slower traffic to move right.  I think they were all shocked when the big black Yukon blew by them on the inside lane.  My second Ohio driver experience was similar in that I crested a hill to find nobody in the right lane but there was a sole car in the fast lane.  I always run with the cruise on and caught up with the car in little time.  I stayed in my lane and as I was about to pass the guy on the right he accelerated.  I guess he just wanted to be out front because he matched my speed and left me in his blind spot for about 20 miles.  Finally we were coming up on some out of state drivers, I could tell because they were in the right lane, and I couldn’t take it anymore.  I jammed on the gas pedal and cut in front of the Buckeye so as not to be trapped behind the slower moving traffic.  Hey, I had to do it because you and I both know that if I hadn’t he would have slowed once he got beside the other car and I wouldn’t be here writing this post for another three hours.  I don’t suppose I need to remind you that every time I drive through Ohio I get the impression that they all drive like retards.  Ohio is behind me now for at least 36 hours.  Coming home I will be dragging a U-Haul.  I can’t wait to see what fun that will be.  Have a great Thursday!  I’m hittin’ the sack.

 

http://www.lifenews.com/nat2488.html  Read this!  Say it isn't so!  A Republican presidential hopeful has seperate priorities when it comes to his convictions and his financial affairs.

 

 

          I heard an expression today that I thought you might like to add to your repertoire of perfect little comebacks should the opportunity ever present itself.  “Thank you for caring.  Screw you for sharing!”  The thing about the expression is that I cleaned it up a WHOLE LOT to be suitable for publication in this family values website.  Oh how I wish my conservative friends understood the true meaning of family values.  Funny how they get all pompous and righteous about all kinds of issues that effect other people's lives, not their own, and then they make an abortion of the meaning of family values every time they bring the subject up.  (Wow, I hadn’t even planned on that little conservative slam so early in this post.  It just came to me!  I’m getting good at this!)  But I digress.  I was having lunch with a couple of friends when one of them dropped the, “You drink too much” bomb on the other friend.  And that is when the famous quote was heard.

          The thing is everybody knows that the guy is drinking way too much and in private conversations I have had with him he lets me know that he is very cognizant of the fact.  The thing about alcoholism though is that it is a very jealous lover and woe be it to anyone who tries to come between an alcoholic and his drink of choice.  It is the rare occasion that any sort of meaningful discussion can result from anybody telling an alcoholic that they may have a problem.  Instant defenses come up and typically the alcoholic mind will use a best defense is a good offense strategy.  Suddenly a well meaning friend will have the entire conversation turn into an attack on everything that could possibly be imagined in character flaws of the accuser.  Once this begins the alcoholic will not hear a single word the concerned friend has to say.  Medical literature recognizes alcoholism as a disease and the first step for anybody who has the disease is to recognize that they are powerless over alcohol.  Until they understand that first fact they will never be able to quit.

          I have had conversations with various people in my life who are in any given stage of alcoholism or recovery and I am thankful that I don’t have to fight that fight.  (I wonder if there is a 12 step program for Bac-O sandwiches.)  One thing alcoholics are good at is lying to themselves.  It isn’t so much that they are purposefully deceiving themselves but alcohol plays such a significant role in filling a missing element in their lives that their subconscious will do anything it can to keep from being exposed to a life without the numbing effects of their drink.  I have a great friend who had been sober for three years and has recently begun to have trouble with staying sober.  I suggested that he get in touch with his sponsor, he had been through AA, and he told me not to worry because he was going to quit.  He knew what he had to do and claimed the last beer I saw him with would be his last.  The next day I saw him at a convenience store buying beer.  I asked him what he was doing and he evasively assured me he was only getting a six pack and then hurriedly went deeper into the store.  A couple days later when talking to him on the phone I could tell he was well on his way of another binge episode and reminded him that he knew he was powerless over alcohol.  He said he knew and that this was all temporary.  I’m praying for him.

          Hey, none of us are perfect and I’m not even suggesting that these guys need to quit drinking because of any perceptions I have.  Only they can determine if their lives are manageable or not.  It they are happy I’m cool with them but if they in any way feel trapped or have feelings that their lives could be better if things were different I will be there for them.  In the meantime I hope they don’t get too upset with me for checking in on what the drinking is doing for them.  If I didn’t feel in the bottom of my heart that they would prefer to be free of that chain of addiction I’m sure that they would not have given me glimpses into the dark struggles that they face.  When that door opens you always hope you can shed some light in and help.  The problem is that that door can close in an instant because alcohol is a jealous lover.

 

Gimp at Harley-Davidson GPS Blog asked me to tell you his computer is baked and he will catch up on his postings as soon as he gets it fixed!

          I never have really minded Mondays but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are my favorite days.  One redeeming feature of Mondays, this time of year, is the return of Monday Night Football.  I always look forward to Monday night games but I was NEVER a fan of Frank Gifford so I was relieved to hear that this year the games would switch networks to ESPN and Gifford would not join the team.  I watch Monday Night Football to see the action on the grid iron, not to hear some over privileged pompous ass interject his political comments into the play by play.  Yah, millionaire Frank is a regular guy and his famous ex-wife Kathy Lee is not annoying.  But enough about that let the games begin!  Are you ready for the Bears VS Colts Super Bowl this year?  Yeah baby!

          Weekends are a great thing and if judging body language on the office elevator where I work is an accurate indicator of such a claim I think I have a strong case.  On Fridays everybody has a bounce to their step, they look you in the eye and there are smiles on their faces.  On Mondays the workers shuffle on and off the elevator, ride silently and stare at the floor.  I don’t particularly buy into the Stormy Monday outlook, not yet anyway.  I have a good gig where my work is appreciated, the workload is busy but rarely overwhelming and the people I get to work with everyday are reasonably pleasant.  Don’t get me wrong, we have our share of nutcases but they are lovable whacko’s so that makes it okay in my book.

          My office is the last in a long hallway on the 9^th floor that has a window overlooking the Cedar River.  In the fall and winter months Bald Eagles nest in the trees across the river and that rocks my world.  The local cop shop also sits across the river and our local PD has a helicopter air force to keep tabs on all the high crime in this vibrant corn surrounded metropolis.  Many of the local taxpayers hate our chopper fleet but I think that is because they don’t get to watch the mechanical birds take off and land from the vantage of a ninth floor window.  I don’t care how much it costs because I think it’s cool and I live in the county, not the city.  Oh that wasn't nice was it?

          There is talk of moving my department to the basement of one of our branches this coming May.  Oh wait!  I am not supposed to say basement.  There is talk of moving my department to the “lower level” of one of our branches this coming May!  That makes it all better.  Cripes, it may be time to dust off the old resume.  I love my job but I ain’t no basement critter and I sure as heck do not want to give up a private office to work in a cubicle.  I will find a way to weasel out of that move or I will have to consider all my options.

          I talked with Carter, my dynamic six year old, on the phone tonight.  The kid is wired to get home.  I can’t wait to have him here.  He loves to be outdoors and we have plenty of that around here. 

          Clayton had his second performance at the Comedy Spot in Arlington last night.  He thinks his debut was better but I guess we will have to wait for the video.  He wasn’t aware, or chose to not consider, that you could reuse material in your second performance.  None of the others came back with an entirely new routine and opted to keep what worked, refine what almost worked and add new stuff for areas that didn’t work out.  Live and learn!

          Courtney, my brilliant and beautiful daughter, is cause for great anticipation for her return as well.  She is passionate about learning and about making the world a better place.  I miss our conversations and can’t wait to hear all her stories about interning in Senator Harkin’s office and her embracing of the cultural diversity of urban life.  So I got that going for me.

          I’m on the road again to DC this Wednesday after work.  I hope to power through and make the trip in one night but that may be a bit to ambitious.  That would have me rolling into the city at about 8 in the morning.  Inbound traffic at 8 in the morning with no sleep might not be the smartest thing I have ever attempted.  But what the hell, my Yukon is farging huge and it has air bags so I’m gonna go for it. 

         

          The first 260 miles of today’s ride were fantastic.  It was a beautiful Iowa summer day that was not to hot nor too cool.   A group of six of us on four bikes left Cedar Rapids for Manchester almost on time and we hooked up with some old buddies from Sparkle City in Manchester Iowa.  My Cedar Falls buddies did a better job of rounding up troops as they were a gang of 8 bikes.  So all told that made, um, let’s see, all fingers and both big toes…TWELVE!  Sometimes groups that large are on the verge of cumbersome and you get the feeling you are herding cats.  I was designated line leader today and I must say that the homeboys did us proud!  When it was time to ride, we rode.  When a series of curves demanded some adrenaline inspiring throttle, they got right on it!  There were no laggers, no one allowed themselves to be cut from the group by traffic and nobody whined!  It’s like we were in heaven!  Oh wait, with the exception of about a half an hour on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi we were!  (Think James Earl Jones & Kevin Costner – Field of Dreams:  “Is this heaven?”  “No, it’s Iowa.”)  http://www.fieldofdreamsmoviesite.com

          Krech, the friend who put together the group from Cedar Falls, brought some new faces for us to meet, John, Mike and Rick - great guys.  I thought that it was going to be just Krech, Jay and Gil who are all good friends from back in the day but an added surprise was that he brought along Jeff and LeRoy Jacobis!  Okay LeRoy Jacobis is not Mark’s real name but that’s what we always called him.  LeRoy restores old Norton’s and today he was on a vintage 1969 750 Commando.  What a sweet ride.  There were eleven very nice Harleys on the trip but LeRoy’s bike was the class of the group.  Arrgh arrgh arrgh!

          The Cedar Rapids group was made up of longtime riding friend Mike and the always sidekick Gimp and we were joined by my old boss Chad, his girl friend and my girl friend Sara and Terri.  Terri was a blind date set up for Gimp by another mutual friend.  I think she had a good time.  She was smiling a lot.

          We hooked up at a little biker friendly diner in Manchester and after a quick coffee break, Mike, my friends from Cedar Rapids, burst in from impatiently waiting on the street and asked us if we were going to ride or sit around all day.  Damn!  He didn’t need to say it twice.  We were all out and mounted up in moments.  The great thing about meeting in Manchester, besides being centrally located to start our trip, is that HWY 13 is a designated scenic highway from Manchester north.  So the ride started out great and just got better.  Shortly after leaving Manchester, as you near Elkader, Iowa hills and valleys begin to replace the more typical rolling landscape of Eastern Iowa.  The roadway is often cut through limestone hills which offer the sensation of canyon riding and the highway crosses several scenic rivers.  Recent rains had the countryside exploding in various shades of green.  It was all good.

          As we made our way north and east we found our way to county roads X16 and B25.  Both roads afforded plenty of Mississippi Valley scenery, hills and turns but County Road B25 was a special joy as it snaked it’s way along the Yellow River and was surrounded by hills and bluffs.  There are two best places to ride in a group ride; the front and the back.  Not being one who likes to have his speed dictated in a curve I prefer to lead.  The reason these positions are most desirable is because a group of twelve bikes is just a neat thing to see.  When I would round a big uphill sweeper or begin the climb on the far side of a valley I could look back in my mirror and see the line of bikes coming up behind me.  What makes that meaningful is that you know you are having a good time and can safely assume that everyone behind you is enjoying the day as well.

          I mentioned that the first 260 miles of the ride were fantastic.  The last 70 miles of the day was dampened by the early arrival of Midwest thunderstorms.  We managed to arrive home safe before the rain got to heavy but one thing is for sure.  There is nothing gentle about a gentle shower at 70 miles an hour.  If you have no comprehension of what I am saying here the next time it is raining; jump in your car, accelerate to 70 mph and stick your face out the window.  Then imagine feeling that for an hour.  Okay, you don't have to stick your face out the window.  Put your hand out.  You will get the idea.  I was set up with a stripped down version of my bike today.  No windshield.  I guess the stinging face was a small price to pay for having 11 hours of wind in my hair with a great group of guys. 

I don’t have anything to write about tonight so I am just going to write about what I think.  I wonder where this will go.  I think music is a great thing.  Music is somewhat quintessential in its appropriate adaptability to any situation or condition we might find ourselves in.  Music is both motivational and soothing, it demands our attention or it works unobtrusively in the background.  I bought the James Blunt album (Doh, old school rears its ugly head) I bought the James Blunt CD today and am listening to it at the moment.  The guy can flat out sing and is motivational in that while I am playing it fairly loudly at the moment I am using it for background while I gather my thoughts.  Hold on, I need to go grab a Port glass.  Ahh, that’s better. 

          I tried another visit to the neighborhood pub this evening.  It’s now 10:15 P.M.  The kids can’t get home soon enough because I am feeling a little lost in this empty house.  I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have the requisite personality to be a barfly.  The thing about the neighborhood bar that strikes me is that the cast of characters in there hasn’t changed much over the years.  They are good enough people but I get an empty feeling when I spend too much time there.  I wonder if they get that feeling and opt to drink to fill that up.  If that is what they are doing I think that is kind of sad.  I like to go out and have some fun as much as the next guy but there is a long list of things I would prefer to do other than sit on a bar stool.  So, I got that going for me.

          It just occurred to me that it might be a bit selfish to be melancholy with regards to having a disappointing evening.  There are people all over the world suffering from poverty, violence and grief.  It won’t do me much good to dwell on that in my present state of mind so why don’t I just shift gears and think about what I am thankful for.  I’m thankful for my family.  Hell, how could I not be thankful for those who must endure my rants, antics and obnoxious behavior?  Think patience of Job.  I’m thankful for my spirituality and I’m especially thankful that I can have that without the “brother-better-than-you” attitude of the conservative Christians.  It’s funny but every time they bring up that idea that they want the 10 commandments tacked up at the courthouse or in the park or at the school and I suggest, as written by Kurt Vonnegut, that the Beatitudes would be a much more beautiful message to post I get blank stares and witness mouth breathing.  I don’t know why the “moral majority” does not understand the Sermon on the Mount.  The revisionist interpretation of “when you were hungry I tried to repeal the estate tax” just doesn’t cut it for me.  I don’t buy into, “when you were sick I gave Pfizer a tax credit” mentality.  Give me your tired, your sick and your hungry as long as they are English speaking Northern Europeans is indicative of how far we have come from the Judeo-Christian values our land was founded upon.

          I’m thankful for my ability to jump on my Harley and get some wind in my hair from time to time.  I’m thankful for laughter and the people in my life who bring it to me. 

I’m thankful for living in Iowa in the United States.  I think we forget too easily what a crap shoot it was that we ended up being here, being who we are.  Could we not just have easily of been born in Lebanon, Iraq or Syria?  What would we think of our extremist militant ideals then?  Would having the crap bombed out of us everyday enlighten us as to the folly of our ways?  Wouldn’t we make that obvious jump that we are being bombed because Westerners love us and want us to have a better life?  And while I am on this line of thought, if I were black wouldn’t I be smart enough to know that police officers only pull me over for the smallest of reasons because they know that it isn’t easy being a minority and they just want to make sure I am safe?  Perhaps Gay people are beat up, persecuted and denied the rights I enjoy because we know that it is hard to be different and we just want them to have an easy life.  You know, if it is so easy to change your sexual orientation why don’t we just all become gay so that nobody is an outsider?  We can all do that, it’s a choice, isn’t it?

Hmm, for not having anything to write about tonight this all came pretty easy and it seems I could go on and on if I don’t knock it off.  One of the things I am really enjoying in my life as of late is doing this daily writing.  So my final thankful thought goes out for you who are reading this.  The site is averaging 65 visitors a day now and I remember being excited when it hit 20, 30 and 40 readers a day.  In July I had six days with over 100 visitors and have seen more of those this month already. The fact that the site is continuing to grow is very rewarding.  I’m still getting regular visits from Sweden and the Netherlands but frequent requests for them to shoot me an email have gone unanswered.  Whoever you are, Welcome, glad you’re here and keep coming back!  Thanks for coming, or however you reacted!  LOL, sorry, couldn’t resist that.  Have a great day!  See ya Monday.