Races This Weekend

Unless you live under a rock in Topeka, you couldn't miss the coverage of the O'Reilly Auto drag races this weekend. This is another weekend when semi trailers are everywhere and almost all of the hotel rooms are full all the way to Kansas City. As I looked through the paper this morning, from the front page to the last of the sports pages it hogged the news. The front page had coverage of the accident in the parking lot where a couple were run down by a pick-up speeding out of the parking lot. An elderly woman was killed and the husband had to be extricated our from under the truck after the accident. Facts were mentioned that may or may not have been associated with the accident. The truck had a handicapped tag hanging from the rear view mirror.There was a nearby pile of beer cans. The editor of that article should be hit with a typewriter ribbon even if half of today's readers don't know what the hell that is.

What brings this up to me is the fact that the new managing editor of the local paper was on the local talk radio channel about six months ago and I asked him about the over-coverage of the drag races and the under-coverage of the spring regatta at Lake Shawnee. He assured me that he would work on the balance and do his best to make sure that Topeka had fair and equal coverage. I guess the newspaper reporters can't ge free beer and food at the lake. The days after the regatta not one line of print about how the local or the KC boat club performed. I am sure that the rowing cub and college team members far outnumbered the fans at the race. I'll bet they brought a lot of money to Topeka judging from the long lines at the Wanamaker restaurants on that Saturday night. I'm not sure what the hotel situation was like. It seems like a lot of the rowers camped out at the lake. (poor college students can eat but beds at a hotel are perhaps beyond the support of the college) Could be that some of the kids were there to guard the boats. Those little lightweight boats sell pretty high by the pound. If my memory serves me correctly Jenn could have bought a bass boat for what her little single cost. Perhaps not the motor and trailer but sure could have bought the boat.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Kids had their 6th anniversary yesterday. We had them and our other "adopted" daughter Mel over for dinner. I marinated and grilled chicken breasts and burgers. I did a spring vegetable medley of new potatoes, asparagus, broccoli and zucchini squash. Barb did a cake and made some carrot cake cup-cakes for dessert. I would brag about the sliced strawberries and fresh pineapple but somehow the sweetness of one just made the other taste bitter. Needed some sweetener and I hate to do that to fresh fruit. All in all it was a mighty tasty fare and no one complained about not enough or bad food. I guess if you try to make each part taste good, the whole generally comes together.

Barb put some of her Master Gardner skills together at the kids house and really made their front garden look nice. We put in some edgers along the walk and covered the bare dirt with some cedar mulch. Barb dug up some of her Kansas Native plants and added a couple of new plants from the local nursery.

Better run and see if I can get a few things done today.

MUD