With absolutely no clearly defined theme to tie this Wednesday ramble together, we'll have no choice but to go with the "throw the spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks" theory of miscellaneous ramblings. And as the headline demands, we must define the word "miscellanea" before we proceed. Obviously, stuff that is categorized as "miscellaneous" is made up of material we can call "miscellanea" but the actual dictionary listing says "Collected writings, papers, or objects. Hash, hodgepodge." I'll go with hodgepodge.

I finished the day yesterday, and then began it again today, working on our hotel bookings for 2010. We work with Racing Circuit Travel (RCT), and Jerry there is my main man for hotel arrangements. Like all booking agents, they sign contracts with various hotels, blocking sections of rooms for the race weekends. We then work with Jerry to pick which of his hotels we'd prefer to be in, and then I have to make sure he has a correct rooming list, room types, arrival days, departure days, and whatever other information he needs to confirm we will have rooms, for the right people, when we arrive in every market. No one likes walking up to the front desk in the hotel lobby and hearing "Uh, nope. We don't have anything for you in our system..."

RCT tries to have at least three options at each race, so that you can go "budget" or middle of the road, or top-end crazy. Considering every hotel owner or manager knows when the NHRA races are coming to town, even "budget" inns can be pricey, depending on the available hotel inventory in that town, and since we try to watch our pennies carefully we sometimes get first-hand experience when one of those lower-cost hotels starts to get too seedy. You might recall the emergency move the whole team made after one night in the absolutely scary hotel (rhymes with Red Roof) in San Dimas, during the Finals last year. Well, that joint is no longer on Jerry's list. Thank you, Jerry!

It's kind of funny to go through the season, race by race, and reconnect the various hotels in my head. After so many years of doing this, in so many different hotels, the brain can get a little foggy when you're looking back and trying to remember where we stayed, during the previous year, in Bristol, or Charlotte, or at any other event (unless something particularly heinous took place, like in Pomona). Right now, due to some new choices, a couple of new sponsor opportunities, and a few "lessons learned" it looks like we'll be staying in different hotels in a few markets this year. I'd say Gainesville, Charlotte, Houston, Topeka, Bristol, Norwalk, Sonoma, and Dallas will all involve that initial "search mode" upon our arrival, as we find our way to a place where we've never stayed before. That's a hefty amount of change from one year to another...

I also spent some time this morning trading emails and information with a guy named Barry House, from Levi, Ray & Shoup. Barry is a writer in the LRS Marketing Communications group, and they're going to put together a cool little "customer card" for their clients and prospects. Their sales guy will conveniently drop a few of these with their customers, to get them dialed-in and excited about the 2010 season, so the card will have a picture of the LRS Shelby on one side with some cool stats and information about Tim and the team, and on the other side they'll have the full 2010 Full Throttle schedule. In my opinion, it's a good thing when your sponsor is proud of their race team.

And did you know that Tim's overall round record over the past two seasons is 73-39? I knew that, because it's one bit of the info I sent to Barry. And 73-39 is pretty stout, if you ask me. Not to mention the eight race wins that were a part of that record in the last two years...

Longtime blog reader Scott The Pilot (who is now flying the big jets for Korean Air) not only keeps in touch as he flies around the world in his Airbus 330, hitting such destinations as Melbourne, Brisbane, Bangkok, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur, Guam, and Bali, he also took it upon himself to have a couple of really neat bag straps made for me. They just snap around the handle on your bag, and the professionals use them because all of them use the same style of bags and they don't want to pick up someone else's stuff by mistake. One of them has my name on it and the Delta logo, and the other has my name in Korean, with the Korean Air logo. I have to admit, I have no idea which way is up on that one. Korean is not exactly what you'd call a strong language for me. Whether I'm reading it upside down, right-side up, or sideways, it's still pretty cool. Thanks STP!

Happy birthday to my brother Del, today! I sent him a Hallmark E-card, but since he's 11 years older than me he's probably as excited about additional birthdays as I am...

Interesting cat fact: Boofus is enthralled by the fax machine and my laser printer. I've seen YouTube videos of cats going nutty when printers spit out the finished product, but apparently this is not a universal feline trait, because Buster has no interest whatsoever. All I have to do is hit "Print" though, and Boofie will come running at a dead sprint when he hears the printer spool up and begin to operate. He doesn't really care if he knocks over my phone, modem, router, lamp or anything else on my desk, either, when he makes a beeline straight for the top of the printer, where he intently watches every page come out. He's a funny dude, what with his attraction to running water (he's about to the point where he'll just stick his whole head under the faucet now) and machines that make noise and spit things out. Buster would rather just sleep.

Buster, on the other hand, is the one we have to worry about when it comes to the great outdoors. We've gotten to where we won't even answer the front door before locating him and picking him up, because he's made at least a half-dozen "great escapes" in the past couple of months, dashing out the door between people's legs, and then turning right to head off around the house. He has no idea where he's going, and no good defenses should he ever accomplish his mission and run into a natural enemy out there, so the whole thing is worrisome to us. Just to be a little safer, Barb found some really neat little "do it yourself" name tags and we whipped one up for him.

I'm not sure how these things work, but they come out of the package feeling like they're made of thin cardboard, and they're about two inches square. That gives you enough room to easily write the cat's name and your phone number on it, then you put it in the oven for a few minutes and it not only shrinks to cat-size, it also hardens into a solid plastic tag. Kinda like a wacky science experiment, making it, and Buster doesn't seem to even be aware that he has it on, so safety first...

Weird how these two brothers are so different. Boofie goes nuts when the printer runs, while Buster could not care less, but if you open a door Buster wants to run right out while little Boofie looks at you with an expression that says "Would you please close that!"

I've decided to change one thing we do next year, in terms of how the team interacts with fans, and I hope you all can enjoy it. Back in the CSK days, the most popular part of our website was the photo gallery, and I'd regularly post from 15 to 25 pics after each race, mostly of the "people and places" variety, as opposed to the "race car doing burnout" sort. Right now, we don't really have the capability to do that on our timwilkerson.com site, so I'm going to fold that aspect into our TeamWilkerson Facebook page! I'll try to post a new photo album after each race, just to give everyone a better flavor for what it looked like and what we were up to. Of course, many of those pics will probably also appear here, but the more the merrier, I think...

I haven't mentioned the smaller hockey pool in a while, the one Phil Burgess puts together and is currently leading in the standings. This is the complicated league, where you trade, release, or pick up new players, and have to make sure you have the right guys in the line-up every night. Unfortunately, despite as much strategic roster shuffling as I can do, my team (Da Boyce, of course) is scuffling along near the bottom of the standings. I'll post the league in the photo gallery today, and you'll see that Burgess (He Shoots, He Scores) is in first place, just ahead of Neighbor Dave (Woodbury Royals) and my lovely wife Barbara (Cosmopolitans). In this league, you match up against one other team for a whole week, and you gain points by winning various categories (Goals, Assists, Saves, etc.). I'm matched up with Rob Flynn (CanAm99) this week, and so far we're about even, but I really need some of my guys to catch fire quick, or I'll have no chance as we near the playoffs... I have a good roster, but somehow all these good players I have never seem to all have a big week at the same time... For instance, here we are on Wednesday and I don't have a single goal yet this week. C'mon guys!!!

Oh, here's another sign of the proximity of the upcoming season. Yesterday, I started the process of booking my flights. I've just done Pomona and Phoenix so far, but it has begun. And, taking the advice of some other experts, I started right out making all my reservations on Delta.com, leaving NWA.com behind for good, I guess. Within the next month or so, the old NWA site will be disappearing anyway, so I figured it was best to get accustomed to the other site and this way I don't have to worry about any tickets or seats getting mysteriously lost in the final days before everything Northwest disappears from the planet Earth. So long, Northwest. It was, by and large, a pleasure to know ya...

Time for lunch... Tonight, I'm off to watch the Timberwolves take on the Golden State Warriors, and considering they just barely lost to the Warriors the last time they played, by only 41points (146-105, ever so close) here's hoping for a slightly better showing tonight. Maybe that 8th win on the season? Let's not go crazy...

Wilber, out!