Streaming from my consciousness ...

... Kates and I didn't make to our Ash Wednesday church service tonight ...

The reason: I landed an interview at 3 this afternoon with a family grieving the death of their mother, who had earned quite the reputation in this region for running a quirky goat farm on a cramped 1 1/8-acre lot alongside the interstate ...

All the time I'm interviewing the family and listening to the stories of their childhood growing up on this farm, I'm watching the clock, knowing my deadline is looming. But how do you explain that to a family of greiving kids who want to share all their stories about their mother ...

So the interview goes on.

By the time I got back to the office, wrote up my notes, tracked down and then scrolled through some microfilm to find a story we wrote about the woman 17 years ago, and finally wrote the story, it was almost 8 p.m.

* * *

Kates had sandwich fixings and seafood salad waiting for me when I arrived home ...

And then I turned on the TV to find the 1975 All-Star game playing on FoxSportsNet. Nice!

To my chagrin, the network has been showing classic Brewers games the last few weeks, and I've managed to catch parts of some of them. I watched all of this one tonight, though ...

... Pete Rose was such a great player -- and every time I see games or clips of his playing days, it makes me sadder about his ban from baseball. Though I don't at all condone what he did to receive that infamous ban ...

... Johnny Bench was darn good too ...

... I never realized Jim Kaat had such a crazy delivery ...

... and I just watched Carl Yastrzemski hit a homerun off the first pitch he saw from Tom Seaver to tie the game at 3-3 in the sixth inning.

... I keep trying to find my father out in the crowd. He was at the old County Stadium that night in July (lucky man ... ), but I'm not having much luck picking him out from the other 51,000 people jammed in the stadium ...

* * *

I haven't watched any of this week's American Idol episodes yet. So don't tell me what happened ...

* * *

I finally started feeling as though I was healthy again yesterday ...

It's probably helped that our weather has been gorgeous here this week ...

The snow will be gone by the weekend ...

As frigid as it was a couple weeks ago, it seemed like spring was never going to arrive ...

* * *

Watched the Badger game last night ...

Can't say I was surprised by the outcome ...

I mean, I'm thrilled! watching the Big Red this season, but as soon as I saw the headlines proclaiming they were ranked No. 1 in the AP poll, I figured they'd be heading for a loss. It always happens that way. Being ranked No. 1 in the AP college basketball poll is worse than being on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

PS. I received my copy of SI today. The Cubs' Lou Piniella and Alfonso Soriano are on the cover. And the subhead reads "Enjoy it while you can, Cubs fan." ... Perfect.

Here's two more good reads from this week's SI ...
a End of Dodgertown may be near, but no signs of gloom in clubhouse
a Cards' Wainwright has look of future ace