Hola, nerditos. Today was a pretty nice day. Temps were pushing 50. Got out for a 10-mile run and was wishing I wore shorts. And I even got to play a little hockey with Hannah in the driveway for the second time ever. The last time was in January. She hasn't quite mastered the right way to hold the stick (I got her a set of plastic sticks and nets for Christmas) or shoot, but she likes running around chasing the hockey ball.

The Oscars are tomorrow night. I'm rooting for Bill Murray and "Lost in Translation," although they'll probably be overshadowed by "Lord of the Rings." We shall see. In the meantime, you've gotta love the Razzies.

Lots of stuff in the news about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, including some rumors he had already been captured. You've gotta believe that John Kerry is hoping it doesn't happen any time soon, although Bushie didn't get much of a long-term boost from capturing Saddam Hussein. Of course, Hussein didn't attack us on our own soil like Bin Laden did.

This is one of the stranger stories you'll ever hear. The managers of four Wendy's restaurants in Massachusetts were called by an anonymous person claiming to be a cop, who told them one of their employees was stealing from customers and needed to be strip-searched. I guess it doesn't say much for the quality of Wendy's managers that all four actually did as they were told, forcing specific employees to strip head to toe. One female manager allegedly went a little too far in searching her male employee. How stupid are these people?

Why doesn't Michael Jackson just lay low until his trial is over? Does he really expect nobody to bother him when he shops at the Wal-Mart in a ski mask? And why am I asking so many questions?

Figured I'd throw in my two cents on the Howard Stern/Clear Channel controversy: In a word, hypocritical. Before the Janet Jackson boob flash, Clear Channel had no problem with anything Stern did because he made them loads of money. Now that they're on the hot seat at a Congressional hearing, all of a sudden he's a menace to society. Clear Channel, the Congressional nitwits behind the hearings, and the FCC are all a bunch of pompous buffoons who are wasting valuable carbon.

The mini iPod is selling like hotcakes. Doesn't make sense to me, since for $50 more, you can get 11 gigs more of storage. But I guess people like their iPods in purty colors now. As for my iPod, I've got about 1730 songs loaded. The thing rocks.

Later.

Hey there, ho there. Just checking in real quicklike.

This kinda freaked me out when I read it. It seems to come out of nowhere, so I hope it's wrong by a few millennia.

The steroids-in-baseball controversy continues to swirl. Surprisingly, both Bonds and Giambi say they welcome testing. Giambi turned plenty of heads when he showed up yesterday looking like a shadow of his former self. He says he's only four pounds lighter and he's just lost body fat, but the dood looks downright skeletal.

As always, my dawg OJ is the freshmaker, much like Mentos. His blogimazogg recommended this fine music-themed blog, of which I too offer my hearty endorsement. This hearty endorsement was brought to you by the fine folks at Encore frozen foods. For you and more, it's Encore. But don't let that wimpy guy from "Spin City" who does the Encore commercials come to dinner. He'll eat you out of house and home.

Another weekend has come and gone. This was a busy one, as we had Deb's brother Matt and his family staying with us. We had fun, as always, because it's great to see Hannah playing with her cousin Danny and also it was nice to see little Timmy, who's only a few months old but is incredibly expressive. But man, can it get loud when Danny and Hannah start tearing around the place. I can only imagine the din when Timmy and little Baby Kumar 2 get to be a few years old.

As we approach T minus 14 days until the baby arrives (and of course, it could always happen sooner), we've begun getting stuff ready like the list of who to call and stuff for Deb to bring to the hospital, since she'll be there for five days after she has the baby. It's definitely getting close.

A little sore today. I spent an hour splashing around the pool at the Y with Hannah and Deb and then went for a 15-mile run with my running buddies Matt and Rick. Matt just scored himself a number for the Boston Marathon, so he's getting ready. It's weird not to be running it this year after doing it the last two, but we've obviously got enough stuff to worry about.

After 11 years of running my coed softball team, I finally turned the reins over this week. I'll still help out with a lot of the stuff, but I got tired of being the guy that everything depended on. I just want to play.

We had a couple of road trips to Toronto last summer and found on the second one that a portable DVD is key to keeping Hannah happy. Unfortunately, this guy went a little too far keeping himself happy. A few times, I've found myself noticing DVD screens in other vehicles and trying to figure out what movie they're watching. That can be dangerous if you end up getting into the movie. Fortunately, it wasn't anything like the guy in that article was watching.

I'm not an "American Idol" fan because there's only so much overwrought mangling of Mariah Carey songs I can take, but I have enjoyed watching the show's first few weeks when they trot out all the really bad singers. This dood is awesome, and more power to him if he can actually become popular.

Later.

Werd up. We just got through a long, cold weekend where I spent much of my time indoors, and I still didn't blogify. My bad. So I got together with the whole WebNozian crew on Friday night at the Cambridge Common; some of the guys from the Daily Grind email group I'm in were also there. It was a good time, once I finally found a parking spot on Mass. Ave. I don't know how people deal with that on a regular basis. What a pain in the arse. Anyway, I enjoyed a couple of good porters and some meat loaf and had a blast.

The Yankees traded for A-Rod. Gee, what a shock. Too bad they have to actually play the games.

If you're a music fan, here's a list bound to annoy and stupefy.

Conan O'Brien did his show up in Toronto last week. I taped the four shows (because they're on way past my bedtime) and have seen 2.5 of them. Some funny, funny stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of Canuck politicos are condemning a bit where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog went to the Quebec Winter Carnival and basically insulted everybody. Those folks need to lighten the hell up. I was born in Canada and I thought it was hilarious.

So I've got 1303 songs, or 4.6 gigs, loaded on my iPod. It rules.

Later, my peoples.

Greetings. As the weekend winds down and the annual crapfest known as the Grammys prepares to unfurl itself, thought I'd check in. I just watched the NHL All-Star Game, making me one of the hundreds nationwide who did so, but dammit, it was a good game. The East beat the West 6-4, and they actually played some defense.

Yesterday, Deb and I went to see "Miracle," the retelling of the US Olympic hockey team's gold medal run in 1980 and damn if it wasn't a really good movie. It had the potential to be really hokey and patriotic, but Kurt Russell did a fine job as Herb Brooks and the actors who played the hockey team were actually hockey players, so they didn't have to do embarrassing cutaways all the time like so many other movies. The guy who played Jim Craig is an actor who's been on shows like Friends and I heard they used a double for his game scenes, which makes sense since Craig was such a huge reason for the team's success. But even though everybody knew how it ended, "Miracle" succeeded in showing how a determined loner of a coach turned a bunch of ragtag college players into giantkillers. We got our tickets a few hours ahead of time and came back 15 minutes before showtime, and there were so many people there we had to sit right in the front of the theater. It was worth it.

So I ended up successfully setting up my iPod on my work computer. I downloaded a software program called Ephpod and was able to start loading songs on the iPod; apparently the version of Windows 2000 I have at work doesn't have the proper software pack (whatever that is) to support iTunes. I might be able to get it from our IT doods, so I'll have to check with them. But for now, I've got close to 5 of the 10 gigs filled because I had previously backed up a lot of MP3s on CD. Now I'll pick and choose certain CDs to rip. I've been playing the iPod on shuffle and getting quite a good mix of stuff, including every so often the musical stylings of Bea Arthur's Revenge, featuring yours truly on lead "vocals."

Okey dokie, I'm outta here.

Salutos, my friends. Normally at this time, I'd be off playing hockey, but we're having this nasty rainstorm that could easily freeze over in a second and I didn't want to be traversing Route 128 when it happened. So's I stayed home trying to hook up my new 10GB iPod. Unfortunately, I've got Windows 98SE, and even though there are ways to get it to work, those ways aren't working for me. So I'm going to install it on my work computer and load it up with the digital music there; I'm not planning to download stuff there, just transfer files from CDs and such.

The Pats won the Super Bowl in a pretty damn exciting game. Tom Brady proved himself once again to be one of the greats in the game today, leading them down the field every time they needed points in the second half. Unfortunately, the hypocrites at the FCC and CBS are making a big deal out of the Janet Jackson peep show; I'm not going to say too much about it because it's already been overblown by every media outlet out there, other than to say: Who freakin' cares? It was a boob, not even a naked boob. If you had your kids watching the halftime show expecting good wholesome entertainment when you knew Nelly would be out there singing "It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes," then you're a friggin' idiot, anyway. Yeah, I'm talking to you, FCC Chairman Mike "Thanksdad" Powell, you simpering tool. All you've done since you've taken over is make the world safer for media conglomerates. Taking a stand on this is pretty asinine.

Besides, nobody's really talking about this flabby-assed clown.

The Pats held their victory parade today in Boston and 1.5 million people showed up. And they got to see Bob Kraft dance again. Lucky them. Hey, he's done a hell of a job with the team. If you won two Super Bowls in three years, you can dance any way you like.

So the Montreal trip was fun. The drive up was quick (if you call 5.5 hours quick) and the hockey game was a blast. The Bell Centre was huge (21,270 capacity) and vibrant, even though there were plenty of Bruins fans there to see the 1-0 victory. The Habs totally dominated play, but B's goalie Andrew Raycroft stood on his head. We hit the bars after that, and let's just say this about that: I'm not planning to drink again for quite some time. Sunday was not fun. We got home by 4 and I still felt pretty lousy, but fortunately I felt better by the time the Supa Bowl started.

Aiight, time to log off.