I felt sick this morning, so I e-mailed the lead dev and told him I was taking a day off, then knocked myself out with NyQuil – that fends off about 90% of potential colds and illnesses for me. Sure enough, it worked – I woke up around noon feeling much better. “Oh, cool, I can watch the noon news, I never get to,” I thought, and clicked on the TV and turned to Channel 5. The news wasn’t on, however – the Olympics were. That makes sense – the Olympics only happen once every four years and are important enough to pre-empt the news.
The Olympics were not, however, important enough to pre-empt Days of Our Lives, which came on at 1 PM. Really? So it’s OK for us not to be informed, but heave forbid we miss our daily dose of mindless trash. No wonder society is in such a sad state these days. I left the TV on for the first five minutes and found Waste of Our Lives to be even more unwatchable than I remember. If my building’s windows opened all the way, I would’ve pitched the TV out the window.
Just checked Real Clear Politics… bad news for Barack Obama today. In their “no toss-up states” map, Obama now holds a very thin lead over McCain, 275 electoral votes to 263. He was up in the 320s, but Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado now show McCain leading in the polls (although all are within the margin of error). This election is far from over. Those three states, along with Florida, Indiana, and New Hampshire are the ones to watch – Obama and McCain are within 2% of each other in those states. The Obama campaign is organizing convention watch parties for Thursday, August 28, the night he accepts the nomination. If there are any local ones, let me know about ’em and I’ll post the info.
A Downtown Memphian is flying out to L.A. this week to compete on Jeopardy. I’ll post more details about the date the show will air at a later date.
In case you missed the newspaper over the weekend, the Commercial Appeal ran several Downtown-related stories:
- A story on a Downtown Memphis ghost tour offered by Backbeat Tours. They’re the ones with the old bus that parks outside Blues City Cafe on Beale Street.
- A story on the Ghost River Brewery and its plans for the future. They are the microbrew arm of Boscos, brewing at the corner of Main and Crump.
- And, today the CA had an article on the dance classes at the Downtown YMCA.
Surfing around today, I noticed that Mpact Memphis has a new website. Looks good! Their calendar is starting to fill up with fun things to do, ways to get connected, and ways to spread the good word about Memphis. I haven’t done anything with them in a while and even let my membership lapse. I need to re-join and check out what they’re doing these days.
And lastly but not leastly, you may have seen countdown clocks in Downtown bars. The Saucer used to have one to count down the number of days, hours, and minutes, and seconds until the Olsen twins turned 18. McGuinness had one counting down to St. Patrick’s Day. Well, now it looks like Big Foot Lodge will get a clock of its own:
If you sit at Big Foot’s bar when bartender Meghan is working, you’ll have access to this information. However, it isn’t always delivered in a timely fashion, as you may have to sit there for 8, 10, sometimes even 15 minutes before Meghan rolls her eyes, lets out a loud sigh, and tells you how many hours and minutes are left before her shift is over. The countdown clock ensures that patrons constantly have access to this important data. It’s also more accurate, delivering the remaining time down to the second.
All right. Gonna go take a nap. Back later if I find more stuff to post. Wow, it’s almost 3 PM, can’t remember the last time I went that late in the day without posting.