There’s a feature story on the page, then several short hits of stories from around the world.  There are the quick facts from the Lottery and the stock markets, and just below those is the smallest section on the page, understatedly titled, “Skies.”

There are times for sunrise and sunset today (well, June 29th), moonrise and set, and sunrise and set for the next day.

In fact, forget describing it.  Here is essentially how it appears:

SKIES

Sunrise today: 5:18am

Sunset today: 8:30pm

Moonrise: 10:25pm

Moonset: 8:22am

Sunrise tomorrow: 5:19am

Sunset tomorrow: 8:30pm

Ah.  The days are getting shorter.  And even with the weather and historical high and low temperatures, the smallest section on the page is, in fact, the grandest news on the page, a telling of the cosmic movements of our planet in relation to the closest star.  It’s altogether fitting.

Since my good friend Frank bought a motorcycle in college, and shared with me the perils of riding a bike in a world of cars, I’ve tried to be especially cautious and aware of motorcycles.  Everyone should be.

The one objection I have is that the campaign, in blanket fashion, would make victims of some real idiots.  One has a strong impression that many of the “not seen” motorcycles are those whose riders have more gasoline in their brains than in their bikes.  These are the guys (I haven’t seen any ladies doing it) who fly through traffic jams along the dotted lines, where anyone may be changing lanes and quite reasonably not notice them coming.  These are the guys who come up so quickly on a car, usually one going 5+ the speed limit on a freeway, that you might not notice them before they’re cutting you off by fractions of a bike (not car) length.

I applaud the campaign.  Let’s also have one that says, “Start Riding Sanely.”

So it was in Philadelphia that the Hawks won.  The announcers noted that many Philadelphia fans remained in the stadium for the Stanley Cup presentation, which is indeed impressive.  However, I’m pretty sure I heard them booing when Jonathan Toews was awarded the playoff MVP.  Not that I need a villain to appreciate this, but those guys are idiots.

(I need to take a break right now.  I’m watching the 10:00 news on NBC, and it’s hilarious.  Christian Farr is reporting on the street in Chicago, amid cheering fans, and he was gradually being swept away from the camera as fans kept trying to get their faces on-screen.  He took it well, continuing to report on the excitement while the camera operator panned away, perhaps avoiding the appearance that Farr was suffocating under a mass of humanity).

Rocky Wirtz has a huge butt.

Patrick Kane basically wouldn’t sit still for the post-game interview.  He called his buddies over to be on-camera with him.  Nothing beats his immediate celebration, he who knew the puck went in right away.

Jeremy Roenick was tearful.  I was moved by that.

Annti Niemi had to wait to hoist the Cup.  I don’t know much about the etiquette, though I can guess, and he probably should have held it sooner.  Nevertheless, the crowd gave him fresh applause, and he deserved it.  He was incredibly poised throughout the series.  I’m not sure I saw any sign of frustration or even lack of concentration.  There was one replay, in particular, where a Flier broke open and had a shot on him.  Just before the shot Niemi coiled up, and sprung out at the puck as it came at him.  He looked like a wildcat.

(Christian Farr is back on.  He has a wariness in his eyes.  I think he might pull out a weapon if the crowd tries to carry him away again).

If I were to buy a Blackhawks jersey, it would be between Niemi and Hossa.  Kane is exciting to watching, jolting even, but Hossa is nearly poetry on ice.  He has the incredible balance of pouring all his effort into the game with minimal waste.  There’s actually a theological concept - I think it’s called Divine Economy - which says that God’s love and movement in the world are unimaginably abundant, and yet nothing is wasted.  Hossa is beautiful to watch.

Ultimately, as I related to Timmy O, I’ve enjoyed getting into the Hawks (admittedly late, barely catching the bandwagon) because it’s so refreshing to see a Chicago team winning.

And no, the ‘05 Sox don’t count.

On my sidebar today, along with suggested friends, is a picture of my aunt.  (By the way - why would they keep suggesting the same friends when I X them out, with vigor?)  The caption to this little widget is, “Help them find their friends.”  Then, of course, you can click on “Suggest friends for them.”

Not only do they make my aunt out to be a social incompetent, or perhaps a toddler, but they say it twice for effect.  Then, there’s the stupefying use of “them” for a pronoun.  Is it so difficult to reference a member’s profile in order to fill in the gender?  You can generate complex analyses of my “likes” and sell the results to third parties but you can’t identify my aunt as “her”?

Now tell me - is that the correct use of “widget”?

The Jamaican gold medalist won another world championship in the 100m dash, winning by .29s for a time of 9.86s.  He’s right over 23mph.

It’s too bad, for him, that he wasn’t alive around the time of Homer.  He’d have a big part in The Iliad.  Seriously, think about the feats of speed and daring Bolt could have been said to accomplish as the fastest human in the world.  And what a fabulous name.

“He struck like the very hand of Zeus from the sky, hardly visible at a distance before he was upon them, cutting their violet blood loose onto the ground.”

Here, in 2010, he has to settle for the BBC.

Where I work, there’s an adult with autism who comes in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  He spends most of his day doing computer and desk work, which he is both inclined to do and remarkably skilled at.  Someone, wanting to diversify his work experience, decided he should also work with the maintenance department, work which he is happy to decline.

For my part, I’m mother-lovin’ busy.  It can be difficult to find the patience needed to teach someone how to vacuum when there are 6-7 things hanging over my head.  Patient I was, however, and this young man has become a proficient vacuumer.

While I can now set him up to work alone, I still have to be present so that he can report to me.  This appointment is sometimes easy to forget.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate the importance of the program, but it’s the 6-7 other things that occupy my mind.

Enter Google Calendar.  I set up appointments to be ready for our vacuumer on a continual basis for every Mon., Wed., and Fri. from here to Kingdom Come.  Not only that, but the beauty part is that I also set up e-mail reminders for myself, timed to arrive in my inbox when I check my e-mail first thing in the morning on those three days.

The reminder function is also terrific for one-time events which are planned more than a few weeks in advance.  I think my mental calendar stretches 3-4 weeks, then things can get foggy.  But the e-mail reminders keep my mental calendar fresh.

That’s only the reminder function.  You can also synchronize your Google Calendar with another Gmail user (in my case, Marcy), so that events entered by one user will appear on the calendars of both users.  Way better than a written calendar, in my opinion.

Do you use Google Calendar?  What functions do you find most useful?

Watching me do this, Adam Sikora commented that he had trouble swallowing pills when he was 9.  But, his mother reassured him, and he overcame his difficulty.  (If the tone doesn’t transmit through the text, the abrupt end of his story is his way of punctuating how ridiculous it is that a 29 year old man would crush his pills for apparently the same problem).

If I wasn’t busy shrugging it off, I might have asked, “Oh, you were rushed to the ER because of a pill you tried to swallow?”  (If the tone again does not transmit, I would subscribe to a different blog).

In any case, the “migraine” version of Excedrin crumbles fairly easily, spreading in chunks and powder as I split the pills up.

As an eventually related tie-in, I’ve been reading a book called “Attached Parenting,” which is peculiarly comforting.  One of the main points is that parents should be as responsive as possible to a baby’s cries, especially when it’s not easy.  As I’ve learned, it’s one of the hardest things to do persistently in the first year.  Particularly when Papa has a migraine.

A few days ago, this was the case (along with symptoms of my allergies), so I set Amelia up to play while I would be at the table crushing my pills.  She would be able to see me just a short distance away, and not feel “detached” by my action.

I was just about finished with the crushing when Amelia began to complain, and she crawled over so that I would pick her up.  Not wanting her to get in contact with the medicine, I typically would ask for her patience and finish taking the pills.  Since getting into the Attached Parenting book, it seemed more appropriate to pick her up.

There will come a day when she’s looking back on her earliest memories.  She’ll be 8, maybe 9, and trying to think back as far as she can.  There will be a vast reserve of beautiful memories, of playing and hugging and singing and eating.

Being a curious girl, the first thing she did when I picked her up was look to see what I was doing.  And on that day when she’s recalling her babyhood, she’s going to see the image of her father, working fastidiously on a small pile of white powder, sniffing and wiping his nose.  She’ll have no other conclusion to draw than this:  Her Papa was a coke-head.

When the Bears were abysmal and the Bulls looked about the same…after another disappointing Cubs season…I thought, “Hey, the Hawks are doing well.  Maybe I’ll follow them!”

I did nothing at first.  I figured they’d start to crash and burn immediately after I began toying with the idea of devoting my sports fan energy to them.

They kept winning.  Impressive!

So I began to loosely follow them, treading as gently as I could.

They began to self-destruct!  I withdrew from that courtship, not wanting to be responsible for another Chicago sports team disaster.  Remember the Cubs in 2003?  That was probably one of my most passionate years.  Epic disaster.

(Seriously, it took Michael frickin’ Jordan to overcome this karmic funhouse of a saboteur).

It turns out that the Hawks are now doing very well.  I will only allow the news of their success come to me casually, through friends or the radio.  I don’t go looking for it - oh no!  None of that!

I know enough to know that the Hawks recently put away the Canucks, with their much acclaimed goalie, Roberto Luongo.  And all of this was to set up a link, with a rather funny story on the subject.

“Oh now you love the Ten Commandments.  Yet you’re the one who so conveniently forgot ‘Thou shalt protect thy father, and honor no one else above him unless it be-ith Me, thy sweet Lord.’”  - Gob

Chris Fox and I recently discussed the notion of the perfect joke, upon which no improvement could be made.  An example of this is Gob’s theme song, “The Final Countdown.”  Seriously, try to think of a better song for him.  You can’t.

You had your standard, alcohol-in-the-morning? comments from most people.  The joke I liked was:

(Laughing) “I saw that and thought, ‘Are we all getting fired?’”

For my part, I thought, but didn’t say, the following:  “For a moment I thought I was walking through a T-Pain video.”

I don’t know.  I’ve never seen a T-Pain video, except “I’m on a boat,” so I’m not sure how funny that is.  Which is why I didn’t lay it on them.