It’s the day you’ve all been waiting for. Yes, the official start of the Syracuse basketball season. Tonight, SU takes on the Big Red of Cornell. We’re optimistic about this season, though you never really how things are gonna work out until you really get into it.

In other news, the beleaguered president of the fine institution for which I work has decided to resign for the good of the University (and so he can spend more time with the Mayor of Toronto). I really feel bad about the whole thing – he struck me as a good guy. Shows what I know.

Happy 64th to one of my all-time favorites. I finally just had to pick one of these, otherwise I’d spend my whole day just watching one after another. I’m sure Vernon can find some good ones.

First, the bad news…. My write-in candidacies seem to have failed (though I’m still holding out hope I can get the Toronto Mayor gig that might be opening up soon). On the bright side, Democrat Mary Jo what’s her name defeated Republican incumbent Dan somebody to win out Town Supervisor race. In fact, it was Ladies Night across Upstate New York, as Rochester elected its first woman mayor, Syracuse re-elected its woman mayor, and Albany also elected a woman as mayor. Fitting, as yesterday was the anniversary of Susan B. Anthony walking into a polling station in Rochester back in 1872 and casting a ballot (which of course was illegal and got her arrested). No woman in NYC, but at least they elected a Democrat (and one with a sun who has a rather impressive Afro).

In other results nobody not from NY cares about, Casinos passed but age extensions for Judges didn’t. One of the land swap deals passed, but I can’t find any info about the other one to the mining company yet, so I hope it failed. So far I see no results for the other propositions either. Must have been too close to call.

I’ll be sure and keep y’all in the loop.

Outside NY, it’s legal to smoke pot in Portland ME now (other than those pesky state and federal laws), and everybody’s favorite Syracusan Terry McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia, beating Tea Party darling Ken Cuccinelli (or, as his former boss Bill Clinton might have put it, he really “stuck it to the Cooch”). Oh, and Chris Christie won, but we already know that was gonna happen.

Well, time to get back to getting ready to seize the day.

Ah, here we go, the vaunted “off year” election. An event that occurs every couple of years when I try to determine whether or not it’s worth my while to get off my ass and vote. Let’s see what I have to choose from.

First up, NY State Supreme Court Justice. I can vote for any two, which should be easy ‘cuz there are only two people running – both on the Republican, Conservative, and Independent lines. Then I can vote for a County Legislator. Only one guy running there – again on the Rep/Con/Ind lines. Not much voter motivation there. Next up, the Town races.

Town Clerk? Only one Republican running. Ah, but for Town Councilor we actually have a race on our hands. Three people running for two seats – and one of them’s even a Democrat (of course, he’s also on the Conservative line, but I guess you take what you can get around here). And it’s another Demservative candidate running for Town Supervisor. She’s a woman running against an incumbent male, and while that’s extent of what I know about her, that’s good enough for me.

That’s pretty much it for candidates, but there are actually six proposed NYS Constitutional Amendments up for consideration. The first one is to authorize casino gambling. Seems to me that’d be stepping on the good things the Native Americans have going around here, so I think I’ll vote no. Plus, until they put legalizing pot on the ballot, I’m gonna vote against everybody else’s vices.

Proposal number two is to grant veterans with disabilities additional Civil Service credits. No-brainer there.

Prop three is to let municipalities keep excluding debt for sewage facilities from their constitutional debt limits until 2024. Hey, why not? Maybe they’ll extend sewers to my house and I can get off the old septic system.

There are a couple of proposals dealing with land exchange in the State Forest Preserve. Basically a land swap between the State and private entities. Sounds innocuous, but one of these deals with land to be used for mining minerals up in a very pretty area of the state by Lake Champlain. Screw that – I say no!

And finally they want to allow judges to serve until they’re 80. Forget that – time to make room for some young judges.

So I suppose I ought to get out there and vote after all. But I think I’ll wait ’til it warms up a little.

Not only is it Sunday, when I have the opportunity to sleep in a little bit, but it’s also the return of Standard Time, when I could even sleep an extra hour later. So naturally I got up at five four o’clock. I’m sure I’ll feel like sleeping late tomorrow when I have to get up to go to work. I’ve come to one very strong conclusion this morning, though: we have way too many goddamn clocks in this house. Way too many. Every time I think I’ve gotten to them all, I stumble upon another one – and then there’s still the car (which has two, but I’ve never figured out how to set the one on the radio w/o reading the directions, so I don’t bother).

I had very simple goals for this weekend. I wanted to take the mower off the tractor, put the front end loader on it so I could put the mower in the shed, and then if I was feeling really ambitious, I thought I might even put my snow tires on. So I pulled the tractor out into the driveway, dropped the mower, and went to start the tractor back up to lift the mount out of the way so I could get under there and unhook it from the PTO.

Unfortunately, at this point, the tractor decided not to start back up (no lights, no flashers – nothing).

Usually that happens because the battery terminals get all kinds of nasty and need to be cleaned up. They weren’t all that bad, but I cleaned them up anyway.

Still wouldn’t start.

What did start at that point was the rain. :fustrate:

If it wasn’t gonna start, I really wish it hadn’t waited ’til I got it outside.

So, for the first time since I moved here, my poor tractor spent its first night outside in the cold, and now instead of spending the day not doing much of anything but reading and watching NFL Redzone, I have to mess around with that and hope like hell we don’t get a foot of snow or something before I can get it going again.

If you live east of, say, Sudbury Ontario and have a clear sky this morning, you’ll get to see a partial solar eclipse at around sunrise (if you live in Africa, you’ll get to see a very rare hybrid annular-total eclipse). I’m not sure if I’ll get to see anything, because I think it’s cloudy out at the moment (too dark to tell for sure, but I don’t see any stars), and it might be over by the time the sun gets high enough to clear the hills and trees to the east of me. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be on teevee.

The interesting thing is that while I was trying to find a satellite weather map, I stumbled upon a series of French spy satellites called Systeme de Radio Communications Utilisant un Satellite. Yes, that’s right – Syracuse (how did I not know about this?).

The Syracuse-3 (Systeme de Radio Communications Utilisant un Satellite) series spacecraft are the third-generation military communications satellites for the Délégation Générale pour l’Armement (France’s Ministry of Defense’s procurement agency).

Syracuse 3 consists of a Spacebus-4000B3 platform, hardened to resist nuclear attack in compliance with NATO specifications.

Yeah, baby. We scoff at your nukes.

If, like an idiot, you missed Mike Boettcher in Syracuse last week, you can make up for it by hearing him on “The Campbell Conversations,” which is a program on one of our local NPR stations – WRVO – at six o’clock this evening. You can, of course, listen to the live stream or go to the website and listed to it later (also available via iTunes, if you do that sorta thing). This promises to be the best episode since they had John Keeling – brewmaster at London’s Fuller Brewery.

Oh well, 45 minutes ’til sunrise. I guess I should get ready to see what I can see.

Hope y’all have a better Sunday that I probably will.