The good news is that my totally worthless every-other Wednesday morning meeting has been cancelled. The bad news is that I have a different totally worthless meeting this afternoon. Even worse, it’s not at my location, and I have to go downtown to get there (I realize that the idea of “downtown” Syracuse is amusing to those of you who live in real cities, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic to me). In short, I will be very happy to get this day over with.

I also seem to have developed some kind of “thing” on my face by my nose. I would guess it’s in the zit family (at my age – is there no advantage to being old?), but maybe it’s a cold sore kinda thing? I dunno. Not an expert. Whatever it is, it appears to be forming very deep and wide, and is red, but barely a bump at this point. Sore, though. With a very wide, hard, swollen footprint. The type if thing that feels like you’d like to squeeze and pop it (kinda like this; warning, don’t click on that link if you are easily grossed out), but you know it wouldn’t pop and all you’d do is make it angry and spread. So I guess I’ll try some topical oil of oregano, and just live with it.

Another warmish day today. We’ve had .7″ of snow so far this season (last year, we were up around 50″). I credit the difference to my having gotten my snow tires put on early this year. I doubt this’ll last, but I’m enthusiastically ready to cede the Golden Snowball and Golden Snowglobe awards to somebody else.

According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, Newt would lose rather handily in a general election against President Obama. I don’t know if this is the WSJ’s attempt to talk some sense into Republicans or what. And I’d find it comforting news (in that I think a President Newt would be pretty f*cking bad) if Newt’s campaign hadn’t been declared all but dead back in June.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the average American.

You may have heard that our local circus has now been bolstered by the addition of Gloria Allred (an attorney whose reputation is not exactly on par with Atticus Finch), who announced a lawsuit on behalf of two clients who are apparently suing my alma mater and its basketball coach for defamation for his initial reaction to the charges, where he angrily expressed his opinion that this was bullshit, and two individuals were looking for money. So, in other words, they are looking for money.

Not named in the suit, of course, is the person who has been alleged to have molested the two complainants (and – so far – no criminal charges have been filed against anybody).

On the face of it, and assuming no new facts come to light, this suit would seem dead on arrival (as I understand it, in order to win a defamation lawsuit in NY, you need to demonstrate that the person knew at the time that the statements weren’t true, that this person acted intentionally or recklessly in making these assertions, that the plaintiffs suffered damages as a result, and that this damage came as a result of these assertions). But of course the end game here is to drag this out and be as annoying as possible until there’s a settlement. So this circus could conceivably go on for years.

Oh boy.

Happy Birthday to Patty Duke, who turns 65 today (I wonder if it’s her cousin Cathy’s birthday, too; you ever wonder why nobody questioned those kids’ lineage? I mean, identical cousins?). Also Morey Amsterdam, who would be something like 97 today, and Nostradamus, too (who’d have predicted that?). It’s Ronnie McNeir’s birthday today, too.

And, of course, Ernie Davis. Happy Birthday, Ernie.