This is my annual whine about College Football's BCS bowl system. The acronym stands for "Bowl Championship Series."

It is neither a "series" nor a "championship."

It's a meaningless batch of unimportant high-payout bowl games with one game chosen to provide a national champion.

But most years there's a team or two or six left out of the big dance, teams which could probably (and do) make sound arguments about why they should be in the championship game.

Sorry, gang. Your arguments don't matter. The computer rules. If the microchips say your team doesn't hack it, well those are the breaks.

The computer, or course, is infallible, right?

Here's what the computer rankings looked like early last week. Take a good hard look at the last column of Penn State's ranking (#14) and make up your own mind about computerized rankings.

And while I'm always going to root for my beloved Nits, how much do you want to bet that Penn State lands a big bucks BCS bowl while Iowa, with an identical ranking ...a team which beat my Nits earlier this year ...whipped'em soundly, in fact ...gets the Big Cruel Shaft?

The Lions will get that BCS bowl (and I'll be waiting to watch them play, armed with a big-ass batch of chicken wings and a foamy adult beverage).

Iowa will play somewhere forgettable against whomever.

Original? No. But this gives me a chuckle. And if it makes you lose your appetite for pumpkin pie ...well ...MORE FOR ME!

Last year I took out a fat, hefty PLUS loan from Citizen's Bank for my daughter's education through American Education Services (AES). I paid her loan, plus a PLUS loan for my son, on the 20th of each month at the AES website.

When I tried to make the October payments, only my son's loan was available on the AES site. My daughter's had vanished. Thinking the missing loan was a technical burp, I paid my son's PLUS loan and figured I'd wait a couple days before trying to pay my daughter's again.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I normally set up the payments about a week ahead of the due date. This time, I forgot. And to be doubly honest, even if I had remembered I was planning to schedule them for payment on the 22nd, two days past due. That was payday. I had other large automatic payments scheduled the same week and I didn't want to risk overdrawing the account. It was a perfect financial storm. When I realized I'd forgotten to schedule the payments, it was Saturday the 24th.

On that same Saturday, a letter dated October 19 arrived from the US Department of Education. It explained why my daughter's PLUS loan had vanished. Uncle Sam was now servicing the loan. A new payment schedule was included, with payments beginning on November 20. There was an "estimated unpaid interest" amount which I attributed to interest piling up until the new schedule went into effect. I figured it was Uncle Sam's backdoor income for taking on the loan. As I didn't have a payment due until November 20, I paid other bills.

As my readers have no doubt noticed, my posts have ebbed of late.

I could come up with a million excuses, some pretty good, some lame.

The truth is I've been happy. And when I'm happy, I can't write worth a dang.

After a pretty miserable first half of the year (and some really good writing, much of it not yet posted) things took a tremendous turn for the better when I got my hearing back.

I went from the isolation of living in a bubble to being immersed in sound again. How the heck could I possibly be miserable or pessimistic about anything after such an extraordinary turn of events?

So that's where I've been. I've been happy, and the fiction is a thousand times harder to write.

I promise to crank back up to full capacity as soon as life gets back to kicking me in the pants again.

--Jimbo

The IOC's Gone Rio!

There is disappointment in the White House tonight. Ditto in Chicago. The 2016 Summer Olympics will not be coming to the Windy City in 2016.

The Olympics have gone Rio.

There are some folks giving the President a hard time for leaving the country to try and bring the Olympics to his adopted hometown. Unemployment is rising, despite the massive stimulus that was supposed to stop unemployment in its tracks. The markets might be tanking again. Afghanistan could be going better. "He should be here," they argue, "...instead of diddling in Denmark while America goes down the toilet."

But I have no quarrel with the President making a pitch to bring the Olympics to America. You can't let an opportunity to snag the games slip by. And I don't mind a bit that he wanted those games in the midwest instead of Los Angeles or New York.

I just think he picked the wrong midwestern city.

Now there's nothing wrong with Chicago. I've been there. Great City. Fabulous pizza.

But I think he should have tried to sell the International Olympic Committee on a midwestern city that represents the new America, a city that could surely use the boost the Olympics could bring.

Detroit, Michigan. Motor City. Motown. The home of Gubbermint Motors.

Have you noticed the nights are a little cooler? The days still have their blazing heat, and the sun-softened asphalt keeps my boys on the lawn if they're outside playing barefoot. But I sat on the back porch late last night and almost went in the house for a sweater. When that starts happening, autumn is not far off. I notice all these little things that hint at changing seasons. In the early spring, I look for the arrival of tiny buds on our hedges. In summer, it is an unexpected evening chill. Come fall, it's that first tree with leaves turning color, or a flight of waterfowl heading south.

And winter?

Well, there's the solstice, I suppose. True, the worst winter weather still lies ahead, but the days slowly start growing longer and that makes the cold and winter's pervasive grayness bearable. And at some point each winter I'll get in my car on a bright, frigid day and notice that it's warm inside. The sun's rays have finally strengthened enough to toast up the interior a bit. That's a harbinger of winter's demise and the coming of spring.

My Joe doesn't notice any of that. These are his seasons: snow shoveling, grass-cutting and football. Just three seasons on his mental calendar, and that's all he needs. As long as he knows when to buy salt for the sidewalk, when to tune up the Craftsman, and when to start planning tailgate parties, he's as oriented to time and space as he needs to be.

He may not be in tune with nature, my Joe, but there are things that get his attention immediately, things I'd ignore or walk right by. Crabgrass attacking our lawn. Cracks in the driveway. An unfamiliar rattle somewhere under the car. An odd vibration when he's pushing his mower. A faucet that drips just once-per-hour. If it's mechanical, structural, or involves plumbing he laser beams right in on it. His brain and mine are just wired a little differently, but I suppose it's a good thing because we cover all the bases that way.

Still, I am amazed at some of the things which slip by him unnoticed. We were married for two years before Joe discovered the scar just above my eyebrow, that little love-bite I got from a honey locust thorn. Think about that. We also dated for nearly three years before we closed the deal. In all that time, all those nights staring into each other's eyes, he never saw it.

Folks....the next thing that gets posted will be another installment of From The Sky. The ending is actually written, but I'm still in the piece that precedes it. It looks to be at least two installments to finish the story, and I hope to have something ready soon.

I have also made a deliberate decision to cut back on my e-mails. I average about two e-mails monthly to my subscribers. Some months will have more ...other months, nada. But even that light volume somehow put me on the blacklist with Verizon and Comcast as a spammer. Likely, this was because my e-mail server is on a "shared" server with my hosting company, and some nimrod is probably sending out Viagra spam from Rumania...and I got blacklisted.

Both Verizon and Comcast say I'm Okey-Dokey now...but I'm not tempting fate. I will send a mailer only when I post new fiction. I'll also list any number of Random Thoughts posts. So...there'll be less of me in your e-mail ....but what does arrive will point you to plenty to read!

...Jimbo (Dynamo)!

I finally went back to work today for the first time since my bionics surgery.

My wife wasn't thrilled.

Last Thursday, as I snoozed in the recovery area, Doc gave my wife some simple instructions:

Put Antiobiotic cream on the surgery site daily.

Okey Doke.

Make sure your husband takes all the prescribed medications.

Piece o'cake.

Come back to my office for a re-check on Friday the 21st.

No Problemo.

Oh...one last thing: Don't let him go back to work until I see him next week.

Yeah. Right. Put the State Police on alert. There will be an escape.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 5AM. After five consecutive days of mind-numbing vertigo, I could move my head without setting the Universe all a-whirl. I went to the PC and wrote fiction for two hours.

Yup. I felt great. Just a tad woozy, but 100% on my game. Fit as a fiddle. It was time to tunnel out and make a run for the office. I shaved, pulled my clothes out of the dryer, and got dressed. A thorough inspection in the mirror confirmed I looked sharp.

My wife wasn't thrilled, but I had the perfect argument.

"Hey," I said. "I feel terrific. I'll just drive you nuts fidgeting around here all day. I'm better off at the office. Besides, I think the doctor's instructions were more a guideline. Why stay home? I'm hitting on all cylinders. Would Henry Ford or Bill Gates lollygag in my shoes? I think not!"

"One thing, Mr. Gates," said my wife.

"Yes?"

"Reboot your outfit. Your shirt's on inside-out."

They always get the last word, don't they?

Pre-surgery Mugging...

I am now the bionic man. Or, at least, I have a bionic right ear.

On Thursday, August 13th I had a cochlear implant successfully performed at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. An array of electrodes was placed within my cochlea, and these electrodes will pass signals gathered by a processor to my auditory nerve. The processor, which will be hooked up for the first time on September 4, looks a lot like a hearing aide.

While there is no way to be sure just how much hearing I will regain, I had several factors in my favor: I have a functional auditory nerve. I understand language. I lost the last of my hearing fairly recently. All of these are pluses.

While I will blog in much greater detail about this when I have a bit more energy, I have to take this opportunity to say how impressed I have been with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) during every step of this process so far. I have always had a deep respect for those who work in health care. Over the course of my life, I have seen, first-hand, some incredible medical teams at work. HUP has been phenomenal. From my first trip down to HUP for an initial assessment through the surgery itself, there hasn't been one bump in the road. It's a very, very special group of people.