With my mini-vacation ending, I have just a few odds and ends to clean up: 1. I don't know if it was the size 64 jeans with the elastic waist band or the dirty pony tail sticking out from under the rainbow-colored NASCAR cap. Maybe it was the way he was yelling across the bar for the waitress to bring him another drink every ten minutes. It could have been in the way he demanded the drink, holding up his empty glass and pointing at it with his thick, sausage-like fingers. Maybe it was the fact that he was drinking Captain Morgan's and Diet Coke (as if the Diet Coke was going to help him shrink that waistline.) Whatever it was, it made me never want to go back to that redneck bar again, despite the fact that they have every NFL game on one of their 20 or so televisions. 2. I have a new motto to live by: Nobody messes with Miller Time. I damn near got into a fight at the end of our hockey game tonight when this stupid pond rocket was hacking on our goaltender. He tried getting in my face, but I just stared him down ...

This is definitely the link of the day:www.marryanamerican.ca The site is designed to help liberal-minded Americans meet a spouse in Canada who will marry them and allow them to take up "safe-haven" in our neighbour to the north until Bush is out of office. I think I found my dream woman, too bad I'm not Canadian. There's no way this site, or at least this profile, isn't a joke. The more I think about it, the more I'm glad Detroit doesn't have a reliable and effective public transportation system. Riding a train or bus into work in the morning would mean that I would get in on time, which would mean I would have to be in the office more. I don't know what I would do with that extra 15-30 minutes each morning. Generally, I get to work on time, but sometimes leaving at 20 after 8 will get me here five minutes early, other days it will get me here 30 minutes late. The problem is, drivers on I-96 coming in from the west side aren't horrible, they're just stupid. There will be back ups for miles just because people catch the sun as it's coming over the horizon. ...

Today is one of our reporter's last day, so we get free lunch. I love Pizza Papolis. So we lost another hockey game last night, which brings our record to 0-4 on the seson. We are currently in second-to-last place in the league. We just aren't playing up to our potential, and the huge layoffs in between games are to blame. We can't get in a groove when we play a couple games then sit out for two weeks. Who cares though, we're still ahead of the Nordiques. We're going to smoke them on Nov. 7. So I'm supposed to be doing a little workshop at the my college paper next Friday. This will be the second year in a row that I have gone back and talked about online journalism and the opportunities in the field for students going out into the field. If nothing else, it's an opportunity to escape the office for a day. The secretary sent me the ad they ran in the paper today for my speaking engagement. First of all, I don't understand why their advertising this, but that's a completely separate issue. My beef is with whomever designed, and even moreso, with whoever approved, that ...

So the word is out at work. Now all the guys in my fantasy football league are asking me if this means my team name--the Aggies--is going to change. I just wish people would stop reminding me about her. On another note, we lost our first hockey game last night at our new rink 7-2. I had one goal and Broken Leg TOm, who was all but kicked off my brother's team, scored the other. Since we were the visiting team and our opponents also had red jerseys, we were forced to wear child-size pullovers on top of our jerseys. For myself and the two other big guys it looked like we were wearing sports bras. It was pretty hilarious. Uneventful weekend coming up. I'm hoping to keep it low key. The last thing I need is the drunkenness of last weekend to repeat itself. I'm too old for that.