Three Beautiful Things 03/22/14: Farewell at the Airport, Yakkin with the Byrdman, Jimmy Fallon Delivers

1.  A most enjoyable seventeen days of time with Molly, David, and Olivia came to an end this morning after the kids piled into their car seats, we stopped at Starbucks for reinforcements, and drove to the Portland airport so the Diazes and the Deke could board their flight for Washington, D. C.  I'll miss the never ending theater of the absurd Olivia and David play out all their waking hours.  I'll miss Molly's good humor and our conversations.  It'll be a good trip for the Deke, especially because she'll get to see Adrienne and Jack, even if for a short visit.  I'll miss everyone over the next week, but I'll have some fun -- working in the yard, going to eat at a couple places I haven't been, and going out to take some pictures.

2.  After the airport, I drove down to West Linn and picked up Hall of Fame of Great Guys charter member Jim Byrd (Guard/1st sacker, KHS Class of '70) and we bellied up to the bar at Little Cooperstown, ordered some Ninkasi Total Domination IPA, a sandwich each, and spent a couple of hours or so doing some Hall of Fame yakkin' and kept an eye on the Louisville/St. Louis basketball game.  Awesome time.  We covered a lot of ground talkin' to each other and it was great to do it over sound bar food and in a mellow setting. 

3.  Returned home late in the afternoon, settled in with espn.com and twitter and followed the NCAA evening games.  A win by the Ducks would have been a perfect ending to a great day, but not that many great days have perfect endings, do they?  No.  That's rare.  So I accepted the Ducks' defeat by eating some leftover noodles and Mar Far chicken and other stuff from Jade Palace and let myself think about what might have been, for the Ducks and in my life, too.  These thoughts were made more enjoyable by watching awesome clips from the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  Steven Merchant lip synching "Boom! Shake the Room!" amazed me, delighted me, delivered me from descending into a funk.  So did Kevin Bacon's "Footloose" entrance.  So did Jimmy Fallon and Billy Joel singing, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".