If you can discern, from today's headline, what the subject matter of today's blog will be, pat yourself on the back and award yourself some sort of trophy. I can't promise it will make any sense, but those items are all part of the plan.

Hey guess what? Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. Just thought I'd throw that out there in case anyone forgot.

Okay, now let's immediately dive into the first topic, and it comes in the form of a question that will be preceded by an apology. I got this great question from a reader a few weeks ago, but then I did a huge purge of my email system, clearing out about 2,500 old in-bound notes, and I accidentally deleted the guy's original email. Therefore, I have no memory of who sent this to me, but if you're out there let me know and I'll give you credit next time around... Also, I'm 99 percent sure I didn't answer this right after I got it, but if my memory is faulty I apologize in advance. When you write as many blogs as I have, over the course of more than four years, it's kinda hard to remember everything you've written. You often get deja vu all over again, and I'm not all that sure what I wrote on Monday, to tell you the truth...

He (the now anonymous email writer) asked me why our team sometimes warms the car up with alcohol for a while, before we switch over to nitro, and other times we start it up and go basically right to the fuel pumps to create those nitro fumes everyone loves. That's a great question, and I actually hear it quite often so this is a fine time to answer it. We have our short blocks lined up in a predetermined rotation, and whenever a new block goes in the car we need to set the timing. Since it's a lot easier to have your nose and the timing gun right down there by the motor when the car is running on alcohol, rather than cackling, fuming, and nearly jumping off the jack-stands on nitro, we put a red plastic gas can full of alcohol on top of the injector, and run a couple of syphon lines from that. The little bottle that Rich squeezes into the injector to initially fire the car is actually full of gasoline, but as soon as it's fired it will start running on the alcohol. When all the settings are correct, the guys pull out the syphon lines, Brandon pulls on the fuel pumps, and away we go...

If, for any reason, Tim wants to give the timing or anything else a quick once-over on a subsequent warm-up, Rich will make sure he has the gasoline bottle absolutely full, and then it's up to him to be able to continue squeezing that little starter bottle for as long as he can, to give Tim enough time to check things out while the car is purring on gas. If his forearm cramps up doing that, it wouldn't surprise me but I also know Rich would never admit it.

Hey guess what? I'm back on wireless at home after being hard-wired and trapped at my desk for about a week. At some point last week, right in the middle of the morning while I was on a website, our wireless router went kaput. I recycled it a bunch of times, spent some time on the phone with our wonderful friends at Comcast, and then came to the stunning conclusion that the thing had simply died on me right then and there. So... Barbara and I were jolted back to what we dealt with a few years ago, with one little cable line supplying all the internet capability in our house. She couldn't work from her desk, and I couldn't take my laptop anywhere else in the house, because the blue ethernet cable was stuck right into the side of my MacBook. If she needed to get on-line for her work, I had to unplug and she had to take over my desk. How archaic!

Last night, an officially geeky guy arrived to install the pretty new Cisco router we bought at Target, and once again I'm glad we paid a nominal fee to have a real expert (and geek) do this for us, because after watching all the hoops he had to jump through to get three laptops and a printer all working together wirelessly, I can say for certain that I would've gone crazy trying to make it all happen myself. You get what you pay for. Had I tried to do it for free, that old cliche' would've rung particularly true. And that was the second time in this blog that I started a paragraph with the line "Hey guess what?"

Okay, next topic. Uniforms. I've been trading emails with Lisa Vanbeek, from Vicci, to get our shirts approved for next year. Analyzing artwork for shirts is sort of like analyzing and approving artwork for die-cast cars, because as "real" as it looks it's still a two-dimensional rendering, and the real thing will always come out looking a little different. But, since we're basically keeping the shirts almost exactly the same, this process is pretty easy. We've only had to make a couple of small changes. So far...

The trick is this: We continue to have some great discussions with a few potential new sponsors, and they would be of the level to most certainly earn a spot on the crew shirt for their logos. But, our deadline for making sure we have our shirts in our hands comfortably early (as in before the first qualifying lap in Pomona, 42 days from now) is basically upon us. As I wrote in my last note to Lisa, I guess the way to guarantee that one or more of these deals come through is to go ahead and start production on these shirts. Then, of course, we'll have to produce a whole new set when we need to add logos. If that's really all it takes, we should probably make these things right now.

People also ask me, quite often, what I think of these new-style shirts (they are technically called "sublimated" shirts) that are printed instead of stitched. Well, it took everyone a while to get used to these things, and for the manufacturers to fix a few early issues, but now they are the standard in the sport and I could never imagine anyone going back to the old embroidered days. This genie is officially out of the bottle and he ain't goin' back in.

In the early days, the material they used to make these shirts was something that had the breathability of a plastic garbage bag. On a humid or hot day, you felt like a wrestler trying to make weight in the sauna. They fixed those issues a few years ago, though, and they're really quite comfortable now. In terms of design, you just can't beat these things, because if you can dream it up, they can make it. I think back, now, to how we actually had to count stitches to know how expensive our shirts were going to be, and it seems nuts. Plus, those old cotton shirts had to be thick and heavy, to hold all the stitching, and they had to be dry-cleaned. Even then, by the middle of the year the material would always be bunching up around the stitched areas, and the white material would eventually turn gray... Now, all of that is history.

Okay, moving on to stalagmites. You know what a stalagmite is, right? It's a big formation that forms on the floor of a limestone cave over an enormously long period of time, as mineralized liquid drips down from the ceiling and solidifies in place. Do you know how to always know the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite? It's easy. Stalagmites are "mighty." Stalactites "hold tight" because they grow down from the top of the cave. If a stalagmite and a stalactite meet, they can form a full column. I learned all this when I was a kid and our parents would take us to Meramec Caverns, not too far outside of St. Louis. And here's your Meramec Caverns trivia for today: Not only is it a fascinating place well worth seeing, but it was also used as a hideout by Jesse James. True that.

I know, in winters past, I've either mentioned or shown our annual stalagmite that grows just outside the door to our rear patio and the hot tub. A vent from our furnace system sticks out of the house directly above the door, and when that hot air hits the cold atmosphere, it vaporizes. Most of it floats away as steam, but a bit of it will condense into liquid and drip down to the ground. Right where it hits the ground, just outside the door, it begins to accumulate into a stalagmite made of ice. Well, this year it has three little brothers, for some reason, and this grouping of four ice boulders is a bit of a danger to bare feet. I know this first hand (first feet?)

Last night, when it was a deliciously crispy 8 degrees, I went out for a wonderful session in the tub around 11:00. I knew where the stalagmite was and was well aware of it, as I was coming back in out there in the dark, but I conveniently forgot about the three smaller ones that now surround the main monster. Bam! Let's put it this way, when I came in the door and noticed the odd red blotches on the tile just inside, my first shout was to Barb, to ask her if she could please bring me a couple of Band-Aids. It really didn't hurt much at all, but it sliced me open pretty nicely. Stupid stalagmite...

When I was in the tub, though, I was sitting there thinking that it was just about as good as it can get, last night. Just cold enough to create some haircicles and make the 101-degree water seem heavenly, but not too cold or windy to make it uncomfortable in any way. It was brisk, calm, and pretty much sublime, and while I was out there I kept thinking of an often-overlooked Rush song that fit the situation perfectly.

It's called "Time Stand Still" and was on the "Hold Your Fire" album, which came out way back in 1987. It's a beautiful song (I know, Rush songs are rarely considered "beautiful" but this one is), and the lyrics are all about learning and yearning to slow your life down to appreciate everything. Sometimes you just want time to stand still, so you can soak it all in.

Time stand still
I'm not looking back but I want to look around me now
Time stand still
See more of the people and the places that surround me now
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger
Experience slips away

Summer's going fast, nights growing colder
Children growing up, old friends growing older
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each impression a little bit stronger
Experience slips away
The innocence slips away

And here's the craziest thing about "Time Stand Still." The song features a guest vocalist, and a female guest vocalist at that! Yup, if you look back up at the headline you'll see the name of that guest vocalist, who sings the words "Time stand still" throughout the song. Aimee Mann! She was still the lead singer of 'til Tuesday back then, but has since gone on to a fine solo career. I can't think of any other Rush song in which anyone other than Geddy Lee is doing the singing...

Anyway, I kept playing that song in my head, over and over, in the hot tub last night, because I wanted to freeze the moment and permanently etch it into my mind. It was, perhaps, the perfect night in the hot tub.

And then the stupid killer stalagmite ruined it all... Stupid stalagmite.

Hey guess what? (Third time). I spoke with the Finkster yesterday, who is home in Indiana. He and his wife Tammy, however, rent a condo in Fort Myers, Fla. during the winter and spring, and they make regular pilgrimages down there to enjoy the sun and the beach. With that in mind, I had two ideas to run past John, and we're going to try to figure out how to make this happen. First of all, my actor buddy Buck and the Jersey Boys show will be in Fort Myers from February 17 to March 7, so I'd love to get John and Tammy to the show. Secondly, since the Minnesota Twins have spring training in Fort Myers, I checked to see if they'd be playing home games right before or after the Gatornationals, and sure enough they play the Cardinals on the Wednesday before the race, and the Orioles on the Wednesday after. So, maybe I'll either go down early or stick around for a few days after the race, so that John and I can go to a ballgame together. It's been a few years since I've been to a spring training game, and that's a situation that needs to be fixed.

Hey guess what? (Fourth time!) It's snowing. Again. Stupid stalagmite.

Have a SAFE and HAPPY New Year, everyone. I'll see you in 2010.

Wilber, out!