Just when you thought you had seen everything ...

I witnessed an amazing event last night - a guy walking a blind dog. The guy said the dog, who is nine years old, lost his eyesight to a congenital disease a year or so ago. But he said he never considered putting the dog down. He simply re-arranged things in his house so the dog wouldn't hit a sharp corner accidentally.

That is remarkable enough in itself but then there is this. As a rule, Pete, the Happy Dog, is very friendly with female dogs but just so-so with male dogs. The one thing he hardly ever does is allow another dog of either gender to sniff his rear for any length of time. (No, I don't know why. Weird dog thing.)

The one dog he ever let do it was our neighbor Ken and Carol Mondry's dog Chico, who was very old and didn't get around well at the end of his life.

But he let Darwin (that's the dog name) sniff to his heart's content and even let ol' Darwin make a little ... er ... run at him. (Call it the dog version of getting to first base. Like any good self-respecting dog, Pete knew when to say when. Perhaps he didn't have the heart to tell Darwin it wouldn't do him any good to keep going.)

I am not quite sure what to make of this. I have been sold that animals have an innate sense that tells them when another animal is either sick or has a problem of some sort.

Whatever the reason, this was a remarkable thing to watch.

It happens every spring (well, here anyway)

Okay, it may be Tax Day but that is no reason to be depressed. Today is absolutely splendid here -- 68 degrees, sunny with just a slight breeze. There are a lot of problems with weather in this part of the world. But days like today make up for a lot of them. Even the woodpeckers seem to be in tune today.

When you live in California, you never get to truly enjoy days like this ... because there are about 300 of them a year. But here, where we have snowstorms in March and water overflowing everywhere, we cherish days like this.

Hope springs eternal

If Christmas is the season of Joy, then Easter is the season of Hope. Despite the gloom and doomers' fondest hopes that we are going to hell in a handbasket, things are looking up these days.

The sun is shining, the grass is greening and the economy seems to be rebounding a bit. If you can't smile today, then you are really a crank and there isn't much hope for you.

Happy Easter to one and all!

It's Opening Day - all is well in the world again (for now)

Appropriately, the sun is shining brightly in our little part of the world today. Even though the local major league team -- the Minnesota Twins -- are about to start their last season playing indoors in Minneapolis -- there is an extra bounce in a lot of people's step today.

For today is Opening Day - the official start of the major league baseball season. (Yes, I know there was Sunday night game in Philadelphia. But that was simply to give ESPN2 something to do.)

No, today is Opening Day. All athletic teams have season openers. But only one sport -- major league baseball -- has an Opening Day. It is as is spring has officially sprung. Never mind that the scheduled high today is 38 degrees. The sun is out, baseball can be played again and, for one day (well, at least one afternoon), we can forget bailouts and overseas summits.

Here in the Midwest (and, I suspect in the East), Opening Day means we can officially go back outdoors and play again. Accordingly, most teams play their first game at home in the daytime. (The Twins and the Blue Jays, both of whom have roofs over their heads, do not. Time is insignificant when you are under the Big Top.)

Granted, it is generally a little nippy but that's okay. I remember going to an Opener at old Met Stadium in Bloomington. Nolan Ryan was pitching for the Angels and there was snow piled up outside the stadium. On a warm summer day, Ryan was a handful to face. On this day - with the wind blowing and the temp about 40 degrees, the Twins didn't have much of a shot and went down easily, 7-3. Didn't matter. It was fun anyway.

On Opening Day, it is usually your team's best pitcher against their team's best pitcher. It didn't matter if the starters were Bob Gibson vs. Sandy Koufax, Whitey Ford vs. Sam McDowell, or as was the case when the twins faced the Mariners at Met Stadium in 1978 (a better weather day, it was 85 and gorgeous), Geoff Zahn vs. Tom House. It was just fun to sit outside and watch baseball again.

Of course, the game doesn't mean more than any of the other 161 the teams will play. In 1968, when the Detroit Tigers lost the opener, 9-1. The next day, they rallied in the ninth inning for the first of their 103 wins en route to rolling to the American League pennant.

As mentioned, this is the last Opener at the Metrodome. Next year, the Twins move to Target Field, a smaller facility on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. There is a large incinerator nearby that doesn't smell great. Parking could be a big challenge. The place will not have a roof. The wisdom of this idea has been debated back and forth but the matter is closed. We'll just have to deal with it.

There will be a few issues to handle. Yesterday, we had two inches of snow on the ground. So, if the Twins opened outside this afternoon, you would see a lot of parkas in the stands. On such a day, an inventive vendor could probably retire after selling hot chocolate all day ... provided he was smart enough to add a little extra "seasoning" to the drink. (Naturally, the "seasoning" would not be recorded on the books.)

As a country, I think we need the concept of Opening Day more than ever this year. The constant battles over the economy, the war in Iraq and other assorted issues has worn us all out. For a short time it takes to play a game, we can put those weighty issues out of our minds. They will be there for us tomorrow. The arguments over them can return then. Today, it is simply time to relax and play ball.

Even if it is indoors.

A quick economic lesson

I got an email this morning from a guy I used to work with in St. Paul. He moved to Montana a few years ago because his wife was transferred there. Now this fellow is a conservative chap but he is not the fire-breathing type that is heard so often on talk radio. In other words, he probably wasn't fired up over Michelle Obama touching Queen Elizabeth the other day.

My ex-colleague was all a twitter this morning, however, over the fact his wife got a bonus check of $19,000 but, after taxes, only netted around $11,500. His anger was twofold: 1) The amount of taxes being taken out. 2) What that tax money was being used for.

I understand all that but I felt I needed to (gently) remind him something. I have been out of full-time work since mid-October. Without getting into specifics, it would take me roughly 35 weeks of full-priced unemployment checks to match his wife's after taxes money from her bonus check.

I don't begrudge her the bonus for a second. I am sure she "busted her ass off" (as her husband put it) and deserves every penny she got. Good for her.

It's just that a lot of us folks would love to "bust our ass off" for just about anybody. So, having sympathy for folks complaining about the size of their bonus check is tough to do.

If, in some people's eyes, this makes me a bad, selfish person for thinking (and writing) along these lines, so be it.

Nobody ever said life was fair.