NASCAR!!!

Hi all,

Sure sounds like us unNASCARized brothers and sisters missed some bangup action yesterday! So how did our local boy Matt Kenseth do? Was there partying up the road in Cambridge last night that I missed out on, or is he a goat by association now for having low-down, dirty pit crew chief?

I love your southern translations, Mo. I hear that all the time at truck shows. Why waste syllables on unnecessary sounds?

We had a nice night at home last night after the Lions Chicken Dinner in Big Bend--which was much better than the Chickens Lion Dinner we were expecting. And Dave's homemade beer went down a treat! It was good to have Domi home unexpectedly last night instead of in Illinois. It sounds as though she and the other kids made the best of their 8 hour road trip to Decatur, IL and straight back home, but we wonder how much trouble her teacher Mr. Engstrom will be in when the parents' group learns that the $400 registration fee for the choral festival was wasted... ouch. I may have to actually go to that meeting. He's really a good guy, and he puts thousands of hours into this program, so I hope he doesn't get much flack. I'm bummed that Domi wasted a day, but there was no harm done.

I'm having a nice day off here, working the phones for my various side projects. I just talked with GM's Manager of Retail Placement about getting one of their fuel cell cars here for me to use and write about for a year, and she spent 15 minutes telling me why it would just be so so so hard for them to place a car with me, even if I do get a hydrogen fueling station put in and have technical support lined up..... and then at the end of the conversation she said, "Of course, I'm not saying we won't do it! We're still very interested!" So who knows? Now I'm writing to Herb Kohl and Dave Obey, both of whom are on their respective Appropriations Committees, to see if they can give us a little earmark to get the station built. Why shouldn't the system work for the little guy? Wish me luck!

I'm sending photos of the scary animal tracks from our yard... anyone want to guess what huge beast made them? Matt, does this look like it could be a wolf? Whatever it was, it was big, and it ran fast... Man?? Beast??? Man/Beast??? I really wish we had seen whatever it was!

Love to all,

Mark