Good morning and greetings, workout fans. Four score and ten pounds ago, my doctor, in an effort to lower my cholesterol and keep me from turning into the Goodyear Blimp, told me I needed to exercise more. She didn’t mean just ramping up my gentle morning strolls along West Cliff. She wanted me to sweat, with blood and tears to come later.

Well, I took her advice under consideration, and then for the next ten months, not a drop of extra sweat, with the exception of my Saturday basketball outings, left my pores. I lived like a canteen.

Now these days I do a little running, with the emphasis on little, on my morning jaunts. But I’m still not working up a healthy sweat, except on my people’s Sabbath, when I hit the courts to try and conjure up a remnant of past greatness.

The reason I bring up this subject of perspiration, and this is a huge stretch, is because of a story I ran across this week written by IIyce Glink for Yahoo News.

People in America like to own things. Whether it’s a new car, boat, 80″ flatscreen TV or a Dean’s List certificate, we value our possessions. I always wanted a little piece of land and ended up with part ownership of a house in Poipu Beach, Kauai. Or as Roman philosopher Seneca put it, “What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.”

Well, hold on to your credit reports, as there is a unique real estate opportunity available. For the small price of just $399,000, you can own the tiny, and I’m talking miniscule, town of Swett, South Dakota. Population: 2, with Lance Benson and his wife, being the only two residents in this thriving mini metropolis.
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Swett, pronounced sweat, is about 70 miles outside the Badlands National Park. The park is a work of natural art, featuring fantastic views of beautiful, rock-like formations formed by winds and glacial erosion from 35 million years ago, or around the birth of John McCain’s early ancestors.

So the deal for this little piece of Dakota heaven includes 6.5 acres of prairie land, a garage-turned-tire-shop, a home, three trailers but no Starbucks. However, it does include the pride of Swett, the Swett Tavern. It’s a local watering hole that’s been a gathering place for decades. Where the elite meet to eat.

There’s not much crime, as no one has so much ever drowned in Swett. The town’s owners have changed a handful of times. A grocery store came and went, along with a 1932 post office, but no 24 Hour Fitness. The population peaked at around 40 people in the 1940’s, but those folks fled to the big cities. Now all their houses are gone, as images of a ghost town emerge.

But it’s the tavern that makes the town. In an interview with the Rapid City Journal, the newspaper from Swett’s nearest city, which is almost three hours away by car and six by buffalo, area resident Gerry Runnels said, “The tavern is the place is pretty much where the highway ends and the Wild West begins.” This is the land where Indian Chief’s Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Running Tab were laid to rest.

The tavern clientele includes local cowboys, pheasant hunters, wheat growers and relatives of Tom Brokaw. It had a reputation of being a rough-and-tumble kind of place, but now you can come in and have a meal with your family, rather than defend your family. I recommend the broken leg of lamb.

A friend of Gerry Runnels visiting from Seattle commented that Swett looked liked “a good place to be killed.” Runnels replied, “You could be killed anywhere. At least here it will be exciting.” A visitor from Oklahoma once remarked that “you need a Bowie knife to get in this place and a chainsaw to get out.” And remember to call ahead for reservations.

The owner of Swett, Lance Benson, is selling the town to focus on his burgeoning snake oil concession business. You can own the town but you can’t elect yourself mayor, because Swett is unincorporated, and you need at least 100 people or 30 registered voters to register as a municipality.

But there is one loophole: You can incorporate with just one person by forming a municipality for historical and educational purposes. So there are ways of getting around it. So don’t sweat the small stuff.

While we’re in this neck of the woods, I’m giving a thumbs up for the dark comedy crime drama “Fargo” on FX. It’s very quirky. As the producers put it. “This is a true story. The events depicted took place in Minnesota in 2006. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

For today’s photo entree we are returning to the morning skies above Lighthouse Point. The day was January 28, and the sky performed a colorful morning dance while going through some changes of light and texture. It was a nice beginning.

I’m just about done with the January highlights, but February was an exotic month in the skies. I still have over dozen sunrises and sunsets sitting out on the runway, so the hits will keep on coming.

No late night humor this week. We’ll catch you making unbelievable saves in World Cup play as goalkeeper for the USA soccer team. Aloha, mahalo and later, Tim Howard fans.

Good morning and greetings, spring flowers fans. It’s the magical month of May, a spectacular time to be alive and smelling the roses on this marvelous planet of ours.

The weather on the central coast has been as impressive as Lindsay Lohan’s vow to turn around her life, and I, for one, am fully in her corner. I fell in love with her in “Mean Girls” and my admiration for her courage has grown from there. As Lindsay says, “Life is full of risks, why not take them?” Or you could simply pay for them first.

Last week, I found myself being asked the questions, “Can you believe it’s May?” and “What was it like being a supermodel?” Yes, the days on the calendar continue to hurry by like Kim Jong On’s wife trying to escape from under his demilitarized zone.

Last Wednesday was May Day, the first of May, and if the weather around the nation was any indication of what’s in store, then hold onto your barometers, thermometers and wind chimes. I never judge a book by its cover, except for Playboy’s party jokes, but this opening chapter of our fifth month was a doozy.

May Day is a celebration of the international workers movement. In Seattle, it’s celebrated annually by brave anarchists smashing windows of local businesses while dodging pepper spray. Yes, nothing helps keep the focus on the global economic crisis and the immigration reform movement than creating havoc and running wild in the streets with a bandana covering your face.

In Hawaii, May 1 is Lei Day, which always brings smiles to vacationing honeymooners. It celebrates the history and tradition of the lei, the fragrant floral necklaces that have become synonymous with the aloha spirit and vacation rentals on the Big Island. In the Hawaiian culture, giving or receiving a lei carries a special meaning, like here on the mainland, when you give that special someone cash on their birthday.

Let’s head back to the weather map. In Colorado and Wyoming, May started out with a blast of wet spring snow. I received a first hand report from my brother Brad in Boulder, who was snowboarding down his driveway so he could de-ice his mountain bike. But as they say in Colorado, ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes,” as one minute it will be blizzarding and then sunny the next day with blue skies and 70 degree temps, making that snow disappear faster than a box a donuts from Rush Limbaugh’s desk. For you Denver basketball fans, the only months that snow hasn’t fallen or people weren’t grumbling about the Nuggets being knocked out of the first round of the playoffs have been July and August.

The first day of May also brought buckets of heavy snow and fried chicken all across the midwest. For those of you who aren’t geography majors, Sioux Falls, which is the largest city in South Dakota, got its first May snowfall in 37 years. Kansas City experienced a May snow for the first time since 1907, which coincidentally is that last time the Chiefs had a shot at the Super Bowl. Schools in Wisconsin and Minnesota were closed as children frolicked and played and went ice fishing. I may be old-fashioned, but nothing says spring to me like mittens, boots and snowplows on the road. That sound you hear is the groundhogs chuckling.

Meanwhile, trouble loomed to the north in Fargo, North Dakota, which I didn’t even realize was part of the United States. For the last four out of five years, the Red River has flooded, swamping this city of 105,000 and ruining prom plans. It’s an annual event for high schoolers in this area to come together and bond over filling up sandbags, of which a million were filled this year in preparation for the rising waters. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” The good news is the river crested over six feet below record levels, which means the newly built sandbag dykes remained dry. The bad news is they’re still in North Dakota.

So while the snow was coming down harder than Oprah running wind sprints, a natural disaster was taking place in southern California. No, I don’t mean the announcement of Fox’s summer TV schedule, but wildfires, fueled by dry, gusty conditions, were burning out of control all over the Inland Empire. Conditions throughout the Golden State are drier than my mouth in the middle of the night when I wake up and hear the camels laughing, but that’s nothing that a little sleep apnea can’t take a care of. With high winds, high temperatures, high cholesterol, low humidity, dry brush and a wet comb, it adds up to a perfect storm for wildfires. It’s one thing to be stuck in traffic on the 101, it’s another when fire is burning in the diamond lane.

Since we had some April showers, I feel it’s my cyber duty to feature some magnificent May flowers. Today’s beauties are bearded irises, the fleur-de-lis symbol that for centuries has represented French royalty, which makes them the flower most likely to surrender. These ornamental masterpieces feature more colors blended together than you’d see in the stands at a day game at Yankee Stadium. Their name comes from the fuzzy hairs growing from the downward facing petals that are called beards, leading to the name of bearded iris, which is still no excuse not to shave.

So let’s end with a flower joke. Two friends, a blonde and a redhead, are walking down the street and pass a flower shop where the redhead happens to see her boyfriend buying flowers. She sighs and says, “Oh, crap, my boyfriend is buying me flowers again.” The blonde looks quizzically at her and says, “What’s the big deal, don’t you like getting flowers?” The red head says, “Oh sure, but he always has expectations after giving me flowers, and I just don’t feel like spending the next three days on my back with my legs in the air.” The blonde says, “Don’t you have a vase?”

On to the late night. “An elementary school here in New York City has become the first school in the country to serve only vegetarian food. It’s serving only vegetarian foods, like tofu. Now when bullies say, ‘Give me your lunch money,’ students are like, ‘Here, take it.’ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in trouble. He was arrested this week for threatening to expose some sensitive government secrets. And you can tell it’s serious. His bail was set at 200 goats. New reports say New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will not run for president in 2016 if Hillary Clinton does. In a statement, Hillary said that she appreciates the decision and the support. Then she added, “Because I would crush him.” – Jimmy Fallon

Washington Wizards center Jason Collins just came out of the closet, making him the first pro athlete in a major sport to be openly gay. He is getting credit for being the first openly gay pro athlete. Or as Martina Navratilova put it, “Hello!” – Jimmy Fallon “More news keeps coming out about Jason Collins, the NBA player who revealed he’s gay. It turns out he’s a free agent looking for someone to sign him. He’s got some interest from Chicago. Not the Bulls, the Broadway musical. There’s a trend now of prison inmates reviewing their prison on Yelp. The downside is that people are now committing crimes just to get the amazing fish tacos at Rikers Island.” –Conan O’Brien

“There’s now talk here in California of letting noncitizens serve on juries. The bad news: If you’re ever on trial for underpaying your nanny, you could get the death penalty.” –Jay Leno “It’s been two years since the SEAL team busted in and got Osama bin Laden. On the night of the raid, the guy never knew what hit him. It’s like being married to a Kardashian.” –David Letterman “I don’t consider myself a baby boomer. To me, that means hippies. What do I have in common with a hippie? I never went to Woodstock. I never wore flowers in my hair. I never took huge amounts of LSD and then battled killer ducks who I swear were out to kill me. All right, I did the last one but I didn’t think it was groovy.” – Craig Ferguson

So welcome to May and the second round of the NBA playoffs. We’ll catch you showing fans what gems there are to be had in the second round of the NBA draft. Aloha, mahalo and later, Draymond Green and Chandler Parsons fans.

Good morning and greetings, warm weather fans. Well, who doesn’t love summer weather in January? According to Diana Ross, so far this month we’ve had no wind, no rain nor winter’s cold. And you readers know I need to follow the sun wherever it leads, because ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough and ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from writing my weekly declaration of codependence.

So how dry has it been here on the central coast? Well, as they say in Rick Perry country, it’s been so dry the trees are bribing the dogs. Not a drop of rain has fallen in the month of January, although rumor has it that both some moisture and the NFC championship game between the Giants and 49ers are headed our way this week.

Well, thanks to some research by Jennifer Pasko of the Sentinel, here’s some facts about our lack of precipitation on the central coast.

Folks weren’t exactly dodging the rain drops last month either, as according to the National Weather Service and the banana palms in my back yard, it was Santa Cruz’s second driest December on record. These recordings date back to 1893, right around the birth of John McCain, the man who had the vision and foreskin, er foresight to bring the world Sarah Palin.

A total of 0.13 inches of rain fell from the sky in December, as compared to almost 10 inches that dropped in 2010. Up the coast in the Bay Area, they have been keeping rainfall records that go back to the Gold Rush, which is coincidentally the last time the Oakland A’s made a good trade. For 49er fans in San Francisco, who are still rejoicing today, it was the third driest December since 1849, when chow fun was first spotted in the city’s finer Chinese dining establishments.

Until then it was just lo mein and chow mein, but then the floodgates opened and all kinds of appetizers like crab rangoon and shrimp rolls broke loose. In the two drier Decembers, not a drop of rain fell, which would indicate the fog was also out to lunch, which comes with egg drop soup, steamed rice, crispy egg roll and a fortune cookie.

Moving along, in the midwest and Great Plains, the first week of 2012 brought temperatures nearly 40 degrees higher than average. Thermometers were busier than my two TiVo recording systems as 473 high temperature records were set on January 6. As Brad Johnson at Think Progress Green put it, “Fueled by billions of tons of greenhouse pollution, a surge of record warmth flooded the United States, shattering records and CDs from southern California to North Dakota.” Meanwhile, it was 10 degrees in New York that same week, but Derek Jeter was in Paris with Minka Kelly so there was no need to worry.

Every major city in North and South Dakota set records for the date, of which many were shattered by sixteen degrees of Kevin Bacon or more. To put it in perspective, on this balmy January day, it was four degrees warmer in Rapid City, South Dakota than it was in Miami, Florida. Holy Dwyane Wade, Batman.

Now I admit I’ve never been to this midwest tropical paradise known as the Dakotas in January, but I know what it’s like sitting in a meat locker watching the golf channel. The ground is normally more frozen than Joan River’s smile. Believe me, there’s a reason they call it the Badlands.

This same record heat produced the first 60° temperatures ever recorded in Minnesota during the first week of January. We’re talking about an area colder than Mrs. Herman Cain after hubby arrived home from his failed presidential wanderings. Things got so bad in Viking country that they had to cancel a midnight snowshoe hike because there was no snow. I hate when that happens.

But according to Brad Johnson, there is a downside to this heat wave that has me crying and tearing me apart. Although schoolchildren are dancing in the streets, this breakdown of normal seasons threatens serious economic disruption. The total lack of snowcover in the Dakotas means that wildland fires are much more likely and the seasonally cold air following this surge of heat will severely damage the winter crops that are usually protected by at least 3 inches of snow at this time of year.

And then there is the cancellation of one of my favorite fall shows, “Prime Suspect” on NBC. Sure, the program’s name was misleading, but I love the cast, starring Maria Bello as Detective Jane Timini. Actually, this has nothing to do with the heat wave, I just wanted to rant a little bit.

For today’s photo sweepstakes, we are journeying back to the last images recorded before my camera lens decided to take a sabbatical, which would be the morning of December 29th. And it was a sunrise that I won’t soon forget, as it was low tide and I wanted to capture as much of the brilliant reflection from the clouds as possible, because that’s the way I egg roll.

In my effort to get total reflection, I edged out into the water, and before you could say, “Remember the Titanic,” a wave hit me. As I backstroked towards dry land, my zoom lens dove out of my pocket and went for a swim. “No, no, no.” But it was yes, yes, yes, as it turns out, lenses and salt water really don’t mix. Thus, another memorable chapter in the annals of Sunrise Santa Cruz was in the books. Or should I say the Pacific?

On to some fresh late night. “Congratulations to Mitt Romney. He won the New Hampshire primary last night. See, this is proof that even the multimillionaire son of a multimillionaire can beat the odds and run for president of the United States.” –Jay Leno “Seventy-six percent of people polled thought that Mitt was short for mittens. I’d vote for him if his name was Mittens Romney. Other nations would fear us for being so adorable.” –Craig Ferguson “I’m having trouble warming up to Mitt Romney. He looks like the guy in the restaurant that comes to your table to make sure everything’s all right.” –David Letterman

“Fidel Castro posted a blog entry this week titled ‘The Best President.’ Castro thinks a robot would do a better job than President Obama. And if Mitt Romney wins, that could happen.” –Jimmy Kimmel “With all due respect, Castro, we tried the robot thing here in California. And it didn’t work out. I came up with a great slogan for Romney. “It’s time to Mitt or get off the pot.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“During the debates I drank a shot every time I heard the word ‘contraception.’ I was more wasted than a contribution to Jon Huntsman.” –Stephen Colbert “Jon Huntsman is surging in New Hampshire. And it lasts longer than four hours, he’d better call a doctor.” –David Letterman “During the GOP debate on Saturday night, Jon Huntsman spoke Chinese. Not to be outdone during the debate, Newt Gingrich ate Chinese.” –Conan O’Brien

“You know the difference between Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Tim Tebow? When God tells Tim Tebow to run, he wins. “Even though Rick Perry came in fifth, he is not quitting. He said it’s on to South Carolina. And then today, he said, ‘Which way is that?'” –Jay Leno “Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is under fire for a remark he made in Iowa about black people. The remark has sparked outrage among Iowa’s black community, otherwise known as Steve.” –Conan O’Brien

David Letterman’s “Top Five Ways Kim Jong Un Celebrated His Birthday”
5. Enjoyed ice cream made by Kim Jong Ben and Kim Jong Jerry
4. After seeing how good Charles Barkley looks, joined Weight Watchers
3. Nice quiet dinner with a few close human shields
2. Treated himself to a deep-tissue jowl massage
1. Executed his pastry chef for using those trick birthday candles

So another weekend of NFL playoffs is now history. I hope you caught the Saints-49ers game on Saturday, as the end of that contest was as fantabulous as it gets. And on Sunday, it was a New York Giants shocker as they upset Aaron Rodgers and the Super Bowl champion Packers in a game that if I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Unlike courtroom proceedings, the Giant’s defense never rested.

So enjoy Dr. King’s birthday and perhaps take a moment to reflect on the greatness, vision and courage of this man. We’ll catch you coming up huge in the biggest game of your life. Aloha, mahalo and later, Alex Smith fans.