Barring any delays at the track on Thursday (seriously, those NEVER happen) that's how long it is before the first Funny Car qualifying session in Pomona, at least based on the data I have at hand and the time it is now. 75 hours and counting.

The NASA-speak headline must have been planted in my head because I watched "Apollo 13" on TV last night. I love that movie, and remember the mission like it was yesterday, including how many of my female classmates at Mary Queen of Peace grade school were crying, and how Miss Costello brought a TV into our home-room so we could watch what we all hoped would be a successful splashdown.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is right at the end, when the real Jim Lovell greats Tom Hanks (who is playing the part of astronaut Jim Lovell) on the carrier deck after they somehow miraculously got back to Earth. Great stuff, and a fantastic film. Roger that, Houston. And, did you know that during the scenes in the movie where the three astronauts appear to be floating around weightless, they actually are floating around weightless? It's true! Ron Howard directed the movie, and they built a complete set of the interior of the command module and lunar module, right down to the tiniest and most accurate details, and put it inside the big jet lovingly referred to as "the vomit comet" by astronauts in training. The jet flies elliptical up-and-down patterns in the air and the passengers then get a few minutes of actual weightlessness each time the jet goes "over the top" of the flight path. Pretty cool idea, and it makes the movie all that much more authentic, since faking weightlessness never really looks right.

Anyway, Tom Hanks, Jim Lovell, and Ron "Opie" Howard aside, I finished most of the yard work I had planned for the weekend, actually getting quite sweaty doing it since we had a gloriously warm Saturday and Sunday (highs in the 60s!!!) and by the middle of the afternoon I was rewarding myself by doing nothing more taxing than watching football from the living room sofa. It then struck me that this is going to be a very short week, since I not only fly out to LAX on Wednesday (a day earlier than other races) but I do so pretty much first thing in the morning. I'll be on the road to the airport by 7:00 a.m.

Once that thought hit me, my next reaction was that I didn't want to spend Monday and Tuesday in "thrash mode" trying to catch up and get everything done, so while I was watching the Buccaneers beat the Packers (what a stunner!) I grabbed the laptop and wrote my Pomona preview press release. I rarely do work like that on a Sunday, but the short week and the fact my wonderful wife is on the other side of the globe were reasons enough to get ahead a little bit.

I saved it as a draft until this morning, which is also rare for me. Usually, I write and then hit "Send" almost at once, but that often does lead to some slight remorse after the fact. Can't tell you how often I've read something I wrote and thought "Rats, I should have written that differently" as it finally dawns on me how a convoluted sentence should have been constructed, as opposed to how I did it in the first place. Sorta like that sentence I just wrote... Well, I had the chance to read it again this morning, made a few slight adjustments, and sent it off to the world. Now, my checklist for getting ready for Pomona includes getting a haircut, picking up my dry cleaning, doing some more work on the end-of-year projects, and getting packed.

The packing part won't be as easy as usual, because I'll be gone for nearly a week and have to take my tuxedo with me. I dug it out of the closet and tried it on yesterday, taking note that tux pants are great because they're adjustable. Fortunately, it still fits just fine and I noticed I must've even had the foresight to have it dry-cleaned after the last time I wore it. I thanked myself for that, and now I have to figure out a way to get it and an extra pair of black shoes out to the left coast, without mangling or wrinkling everything too badly. The last time I wore the tux must have been on a formal night aboard the ms Zuiderdam, last winter.

If you haven't seen my pre-Pomona story yet, it's all about numbers. Including the actual numbers that each team gets to put on their race car each year. As I mentioned in the blog last week, the top 10 teams all have the option of running with their finishing position as their number for the whole next year, so our LRS Shelby was sporting a 2 FC decal on each side this year. Right now we're 6th in the points, but we're only 27 points out of 2nd place, so we're still in the hunt for a nice low number.

To answer a question nobody asked, no you do not have to run the points number as your car number the next year. It's optional, but almost all teams do it. Every driver has a permanent number (Tim's is 347 FC) so you're allowed to either run that, or the Top-10 number you earned the year before. This year, the only driver to stick with his or her permanent number was Ron Capps, who is 28 FC. Ron has always stuck with 28, but one might suspect he'd change that up if he wins the championship one of these years. Can't imagine anyone wouldn't want to run that 1 FC for a season.

Rambling on...

Speaking of numbers, don't you find it pretty hilarious that a pro football player would legally change his name to the spanish version of his uniform number. Every time No. 85 catches a ball for the Bengals, the announcers have to say "Caught by Ochocinco..." and that always makes me laugh. Of course, Senor Ochocinco, that actually means "eight five" not "eighty five." Eighty five is actually ochenta y cinco. It's still funny though... I'll give the artist formerly known as Chad Johnson props for creativity.

And speaking of football uniforms, how 'bout those Tampa Bay Bucs! Not only getting their first win of the year, and beating the Packers to do it, but also wearing their "throwback" uniforms, complete with the orange "creamcicle" jerseys. The whole stadium was decked out in the retro look, right down to the big logo at midfield. I thought that was pretty cool...

I got a few great photos from blog buddy Kim, up in Vancouver. Kim's an avid photographer, and living in beautiful British Columbia affords him plenty of wonderful vistas to shoot, but the two I'll include in today's photo gallery aren't natural scenic wonders. One is a hilarious photo of a bunch of dogs tied up outside a coffee shop, looking a little mournful that they've been stuck out there while their owners sip overpriced beverages inside. The other is a field absolutely full of snow geese. We rarely see snow geese here, and when we do it's usually a single flight of a dozen or so of them, so it was interesting to see such a huge gaggle of the big birds, gathered on some unfortunate field in BC. According to Kim, snow geese may look prettier than Canada geese, but they produce the same obnoxious amount of you-know-what.

Speaking of geese... My wife was walking through Hyde Park in London over the weekend, and snapped a pic of some British geese. You have to wonder if they honk with a Cockney accent.. Whether they do or not, her caption cracked me up. The photo came on an email that simply said "They followed me!" LOL

Barbara had such a good time in London over the weekend, she wants to go back, so we're actually looking at going over there around Thanksgiving. I wonder if we can find turkey and dressing in London, on November 26? I bet we can if we search hard enough... I haven't been to London in a long time, probably since 1990 or so, but I've been there a number of times and always enjoyed the city and the United Kingdom, so I'm amped up to go if she really wants to. Plus, the way Delta awards elite Sky Miles levels, you get to roll-over all the miles you have in excess of the level you've earned, and since I'm already Platinum for next year, a trip to London and my trip to Pomona will put me about 11,000 miles over. I'll have that in the bank when I start flying in 2010. Yeah baby!

I got a call from Barb about an hour ago, as she and her CEO finished their last meeting in London and were heading for Heathrow to fly to Amsterdam. I think they're staying in The Hague tonight (a city that gets extra credit for the "The" in its name). She still has a whirlwind week ahead of her, with more stops in Holland or, more formally, The Netherlands (a country that gets extra credit for the "The" in its name) then Switzerland and Scotland... She's going to be exhausted when she gets home next weekend, here in The Woodbury.

And for the countless number of you who always want more pics of Da Boyce, I'll throw a couple of those in the gallery as well. It was so nice all weekend we had windows open all over the house, and they had free run of the porch. I don't think they get it, though, that they better be soaking all of this up now, because they're not gonna want to be out there much in a few more weeks... I keep trying to tell them but they don't listen.

I did get a great shot of them taken just a split second before Buster pinned Boofus in one of their patented wrestling matches. It always starts out innocently enough, but you can see it in their eyes that they want to go. Pretty soon they're lining up a few feet apart and then running at each other full-speed, wrestling and fighting until they're exhausted. It's pretty much a scream to watch, and despite the weight difference little Boofie gets the better of it a lot of the time. The Big Fella won this match, best two out of three falls.

Well, what little hair I have on my head isn't going to cut itself, so I guess I'm off to Great Clips... Then the dry cleaners. The I have to eat something. Sounds like a Subway day to me...

Next stop, Pomona...

Wilber, out!