Enough of the ice has melted on Lake Quinsigamond to let the rowing crews get in some practice time. Even though they're working very hard, it had to be cold on the lake that's just above freezing. I could see the skullers as I drove home along Route 9 after I did some grocery shopping. Commuting is a lot easier now. For the years that I was driving to Lexington, the weekly Starts & Stops column in the Boston Globe was a must-read.

The rains have let up and the floods were not as bad as predicted.

My return to the office was alright, at least until the afternoon. I met with an engineer who had a lot of comments (few favorable) about a book that we'd just released. My biggest problem wasn't that I made mistakes, but that I'd not included him in the final review. He wasn't on the formal review list and should have been. There were just a couple of minor things that were actually incorrect. Several sections were not clear and could lead the reader to do the wrong things. It's too late to fix these sections for this release. We may be sending out an update in a month; I hope to make these corrections this week.

A VP at a former company used to say, "Make new mistakes."

I can take a small measure of comfort that I'm not the only one who's making mistakes these days:

• "The exact time of death, I think is not something that matters so much at this moment...," notes Fox News Channel's Shep Smith, after prematurely announcing that the Pope had died. Transcription and video are here. Of course, none of the media was flawless.
• Yesterday's mail brought me a free Schick Quattro.
  
• The Red Sox made two errors in their opening game.
  

I think that I'm being careful, but I'm not always sure.

We're meeting with the Phillipston Conservation Commission on Saturday to inspect the site of our proposed septic system. So, we won't be able to attend the rescheduled event. I guess we'll just have to send a gift.