New Realities and Old

It's March, it's Minnesota and we had another "tournament blizzard" yesterday. The metro escaped with a glazing of ice and little snow, but outstate got hit hard. Actually, in Minnesota we refer to everything north of the twin cities as "up north". If you look at a map you will notice "the cities" are in the lower fourth of the state geographically. We have been conditioned to look for the tournament storms. Years ago there were two tournament weekends in March: the hockey and basketball tournaments. Now, I believe they run almost the whole of the month. We have divisions according to gender and size of the school. Hence you might have AAA, AA, and A boys basketball and repeat that with girls' sports and duplicate it with hockey. You see we have a lot of tournaments in March. The poor Minnesota Wild Hockey team has trouble scheduling home games.
Might as well face it--it snows in March.
The poor Minnesotan is not only bombarded by freezing rain and snow, we have to contend with daily updates on election results. You had forgotten about the election, hadn't you. We are not so lucky. Our senatorial contest is still being contested in court. Both sides are spending someones' money picking at nits. Norm Coleman finallly suggested a week ago that we vote over. It is hard to imagine anyone feeling good about any decision that comes down. This is ruining our squeeky clean political image. Wouldn't a coin flip work? An article in Newsweek this week proposed another solution. Vote over with two new candidates. I think I heard a loud AMEN from the populus.
Times have been strange.
-- You can buy a couple shares of GE or GM stock for less than a Happy Meal.
--Michael Jackson still has fans in the UK and is touring again.
-- The former CEO of Countryside Mortgages who helped topple our empire with bad mortgages is getting rich buying up houses at firesale prices.
-- Bernie Madoff is about to plead guilty if his wife can keep some spending money----$67 million.
Friday I finally sold off part of my IRA that was invested in "financials". It had lost so much I thought I might as well take what was left before it was Zero. Yesterday Citi Bank announced a 4 biillion dollar profit and the stock market soared. Maybe I should keep an eye on what that CEO of Countryside is doing or invest in Michael Jackson memorabilia.