In the PR world, where creativity is often the blessing and the albatross (it's great when you have it, and frustrating when you don't), it's always kind of interesting to me how some of my favorite themes infiltrate my brain and then become words. I was watching football yesterday (and yes, the Vikings did lose a heartbreaker but we all felt they showed how good they really can be by how tough they fought the Steelers, in Pittsburgh) and was thinking about how I'd be getting up today, to start a new week, and my first assignment would be to write our pre-Las Vegas feature story. As I watched the game, I was consciously thinking things like "I wonder what's going to fall from the sky as a theme, because I really don't have one right now..."

Then, perhaps moments after another Steelers' length-of-the-field touchdown after a fumble or interception, it hit me that we're still in the running for the Full Throttle championship, but it's highly likely we can't make it happen all by ourselves. We're gonna need some help, in the form of some upset wins over people like Robert Hight, Ashley Force Hood, Tony Pedregon, Ron Capps, and probably some others, or no matter how well we do at the final two races we'll probably come up short.

Look at it this way. We're 82 points out of the top spot. If we run the table and win both Vegas and Pomona, we could still finish more than 40 points out of the lead if, say, Robert went to both finals and we beat him there. So, we need some help. We can get by with a little help from our friends. Ding, ding, ding! No more calls please, we have a winner!!!

Within seconds of having that thought, I heard Ringo Starr in my head (always a sort of jarring thing, I'll admit) and rather than wait until this morning to put it all into words, I grabbed the laptop and wrote it yesterday afternoon, right there on the sofa with a football game on TV. Since the song I'm referencing is from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" I felt the need to position the lead paragraph in those retro terms, so I started it with the words "Drop the needle in the groove, crank up The Beatles, and cue Ringo Starr, if you dare..."  My twisted hope is that at least a few readers will think "Needle? Groove? Huh?" 

I actually heard Sgt. Pepper's for the first time on 8-track, but needles, grooves, and LPs are far more fun to remember... In college, I saved up the few dollars I earned as an usher at the old St. Louis Arena, to buy a top-of-the-line Pioneer turntable (totally manual, of course, because those were the best), a big powerful Marantz receiver, and Bose 901 speakers. We rocked! And, at the house we rented in Edwardsville, Illinois, we had to hang the turntable from the ceiling, with springs at the top of the chains we hung it from, to keep it from skipping. Those old manual turntables were VERY sensitive. Ahhh, those were the days. Listening to "2112" with the Bose 901s flexing their muscles. That album, and that stereo, actually provided me with my introduction to Rush...

Anyway, that "a little help from our friends" pre-race feature story issue is now taken care of so I'll turn my focus to getting a new blog written. Hey, lookie there! That's exactly what I'm doing.

Okay, so if you're going to be in Vegas, and you want to come meet Wilk and Tasca on Thursday, here's the scoop. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we're doing an autograph session and "meet & greet" at Gaudin Ford on Sahara Ave. from 5:00 to 6:00 on Thursday. Sounded pretty simple to me, but I realized that Sahara is quite a long road so I did a little research to specifically find the dealership. It's basically in the middle of Sahara, sorta half way between I-15 and I-515, although to be technically correct it's a little east of center. In other words, it's a little closer to the east side of town, and therefore I-515, than the Strip side of town.

That will be a good thing when we're done, because we'll be fairly close to Fremont Street for the Fan Fest. I've already alerted the NHRA marketing people that we'll be a little late, and there's not much we can do about it. The Gaudin Ford appearance is an important one, for some important people, so we won't be able to get to Fan Fest until we're done there.

Sounds like I might get to see my niece, Rhiannon, and her little boy Joe, at Fan Fest. Rhiannon and her hubby, JJ, live in Vegas due to the fact he's in the Air Force and based at Nellis. He's away on a training program right now, but Rhiannon and little Joe are going to try to make it over to Fremont Street on Thursday night. That would be terrific!

In terms of the racing we're going to see in Vegas (and Pomona, for that matter) boy it's really going to be different to see so many cars. We've been dealing with tough times and short car-counts in Top Fuel all year, but not this weekend. I just checked again, and it looks like 26 Top Fuel Dragsters are entered for the race. Add in 20 Funny Cars, and it's going to take some getting used to, in terms of how long the sessions last... It's been a while since we've had anything like this.

Here in beautiful Woodbury, the trees are giving it their best shot to give us some color, but there are still a lot of them simply dropping their leaves (everywhere, I might add!).  This beauty is the "little tree" we planted between our house and the Jacobsen's, after the big oak that was originally there sadly died and had to be taken down. This maple was selected because it grows fast and is a hardy tree, and man we are constantly surprised by how big it's gotten in just a few years. It has to be closing in on 30-feet, I'd bet, and it consistently provides us a nice show in the autumn.

Meanwhile, I also figured I better get some more winterization done this weekend, and Saturday was the day to do that.

The first ceremonial act, signaling the end of summer, was the disassembly of the hammock, out back. Not a lot of hammock lounging going on when it's 10-below zero, I promise you that, so I always take it apart and stow it in a storage room downstairs.  Sniff...

The next key "drum roll please" ceremony is the annual "pounding-in of the snow sticks" which you may recall from prior years. Usually, early November is the time when the bright yellow or orange marker sticks start to pop up on curbs and along driveways around the neighborhood, but we've already had a couple of fluke snow storms, and I'm going to be traveling two of the next three weeks, so I went ahead and did it. They are all straight and parallel for now. Wait until the city plow comes screaming by, throwing up a wall of snow. You're lucky to get through a winter without completely losing a few, and all the ones along the street end up crooked and bent, but they're cheap and easy to replace (unless the ground is frozen solid).

While I was at it, I grabbed the thermal blanket for the air conditioner unit, and wrapped it up for the winter. I have no idea if that thing does any good at all, but if you feel better having done it, well... Go for it. Ergo, I went for it.

With the sprinkler system already blown out, the only real big winter-time move left to make will be turning off all the outdoor water faucets, to clear the pipes from any water that might freeze. We still have a few reasons to leave them on for now, so I'll probably hold off on that until I get back from Sin City...

As you'll see in the little photo gallery today, we're also in a really active wildlife mode right now. Lots of ducks, geese, eagles (sorry, no new pics of the neighborhood eagles), and other critters, all in a sort of pre-migration frenzy. They're very active, all day long, and I make a point of keeping lights on in the living room to help them spot the fact our big rear windows are WINDOWS, not passageways. It's always a little scary to have 24 mallards take off at once and fly within four feet of the back of the house as they move from the back pond to the front one. We've had two big splotches on the windows this year, but no dead birds in the yard so they must have survived the impact, as did the windows...

I mentioned the neighborhood eagles above (as in plural) and the new one is really kind of neat. We have a regular and majestic Bald Eagle, who has made this area home for quite a while, and he flies by looking for snacks on a regular basis. A few days back, though, I spotted what I figured to be an enormous hawk, circling the back pond and swooping down on the panicked ducks. He's brown, with darker brown splotches on his body and wings, but the grace with which he flies and the sheer enormity of him had me wondering, so I did a little bird-watchers research and discovered he's a "juvenile" Bald Eagle. He's as big as an adult, and just as hungry, but his head and tail feathers haven't turned white yet.

I didn't see him grab any ducks (a fact I'm sorta happy about, because I wasn't really all that amped up about seeing one get carried away) but he sure had them all in a tizzy.  Just another reason to make sure Da Boyce stay inside!!!

Speaking of the fur balls, and for all of you who consistently ask about them, they're doing well. Boofus is finally starting to fill out and get a bit bigger, after being so much smaller than his big brother since Day 1. He's still crazy and flies around the house at Mach 3, but he must finally be maturing enough to gain some weight. We even get them confused every now and then, if we can't see their collars, and that hasn't happened since they were really little. Of course, when Boofie gets really wired and crazy, he likes to run down the hall all stiff-legged, kind of bouncing as he runs. He looks like a little miniature newborn colt, all gangly and excited but not quite sure how to make those four legs work in conjunction with each other.. Crazy cat.

I guess that's about all I have for now... Time for lunch!!!

Wilber, out!