More than a few thoughts while debating whether I cover my plants tonight or take the easy way out and just them all with the hose to protect them from our first freeze warning of the year. Frequent commenter Jana is gonna be dealing with an ice storm. I sure remember ice from my four winters in Louisville (boy, does that seem like a dream!).

Living out here in the Desert Southwest it never fails to amaze just how the weather around here works like clockwork. The first 100-degree temps arrive in the middle of May approx. 2 weeks after we hit 90 for the first time. Then, the heat is turned off the second week of October. Then, the first week of December (usually on the 6th or the 7th), we get our first freeze of the year. There are usually only two, with the second one coming the third week of January, and then that’s it. But it is amazing how every December 6th or 7th I’m scrambling for protective cover…

Mark my words: come April next year’s Masters is going to be the most hyped and most anticipated in recent memory, perhaps of all time. You’ve got perennial contender Tiger Woods still searching for his 15th major. You’ve got a re-emergent Rory McIlroy. You’ve got Adam Scott, the winner of last year’s Masters, who is playing arguably (with Henrik Stenson) the best golf in the world right now. And you’ve got Stenson, winner of the 2013 FedEx Cup who also is playing as well as anyone in the world. And that’s not to mention fan fave Phil Mickelson. Great players at a great venue. Four months out, it promises to be quite the weekend.

…and speaking of golf, you have to see this shot. It really is the shot of the year.

Yesterday I linked to Shawn Colvin’s rendition of In The Bleak Mid-winter. Today it’s Christmastime Is Here, from her Holidays Songs and Lullabies release. Few can capture the child-like innocence and melancholy of that Charlie Brown Christmas Special song the way Colvin can. The more I listen to her music the more I find myself enchanted by it. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but she’s right up there as far as I’m concerned.

Reeling from his own lying lies and the disastrous Obamacare roll-out, the President chooses MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to find a safe haven interview. How pathetic is that? One can only imagine what Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, and Matt Lauer must be thinking.

Happy Prohibition Repeal Day! Hard to believe this country (sort of) went fourteen years prohibiting the sale and distribution of alcohol. Just goes to show you that not all “noble” government experiments last. I wonder if I’ll outlive Obamacare.

Love what the Red Sox have done this off-season with upgrading their bullpen. On the heels of signing Righthander Burke Badenhop, the Cardinals’ Edward Mujica is a great signing. And I like the A.J. Pierzynski signing – he’s (at least to me) an upgrade over Jarrod Saltalamacchia. I guarantee my Mom and my Auntie Marge will grow to love him.

Rest in peace, Nelson Mandela. I put him right up there with Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, Daisaku Ikeda, and Mahatma Gandhi as heroes – the kind of folk I call an “angel of the Lord”. He was a giant, and his kind will be missed.

The White House response? They’re soooo typical. I’ve known narcissists like him before: “Enough about me, let’s talk about you. So, what do you think of me?”. Without a doubt, Barack Obama is one of the all-time horse’s asses. People will look back on his presidency fifty years from now and wonder what the hell people were thinking. How on God’s green earth did we elect such a classless jerk as President?