As I write Tuesday morning, with the deadline clock ticking as we finish laying out the last few pages of the March 16 issue, another nor’easter is headed our way. Not fun but it is a test of our experience of dealing with such circumstances. We did it with lots of coffee and concentration!

Had to buy a new TV this week. Tried everything in the book to fix the problem with my now dead TV ... rebooting cable, blowing the dust out the back of the TV, checked the connections … the screen just kept getting whiter and whiter. Got a good deal on both the dead TV and the new one. It seems nothing really lasts these days and sending it away to get fixed would probably cost more than buying a new model.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Mom always told me she wanted to name one of her children with an Irish name because of her Irish heritage, and I got it. I don’t know if she knew she was going to have four additional children after me but my older siblings, Sheryl and Bruce, didn’t get the Irish names.

Hope you do well on your NCAA men’s and women’s tournament brackets, if you fill those out. I expect to fill mine out tonight before, god forbid, the power goes out. I foresee Alabama, Kansas State, Texas and Marquette doing well as I write this column, but I will probably change my mind when I sit down to actually finish writing it all down. My wife will probably do better than me anyway. She doesn’t put a lot of thought into it, sometimes just picking the team’s uniform colors she likes!

Have a good week and take it easy cleaning up the next winter mess.