Do You Feel Bad About It?

Hola, nerditos. I'm digging this cool fall weather. Just went out for a nice 18.9-miler through Beverly, Salem and Marblehead; met up with Molly for last 7.5. Only two more long runs before the taper. Nice. Running through Salem was tough, what with the 8 zillion tourists and all. They must rake in some serious cash this time of year.

It was a tough week. I don't write about my job here, so all I'll say is things were pretty grim around the office this week. I'm just glad the weekend's here.

Because I've got so much free time, I've agreed to start writing a biweekly running column for my old newspaper. Not sure on the details yet, but I'll post a link when the thing actually starts appearing on the InterWebs.

At hockey, one of the guys had stickers made up with Mike's #8, so we all put them on our helmets to honor him. Pretty cool gesture. I'll post a pic later. It was also decided that each week we'd honor the player of the week with the McGilvery award, also known as his old helmet. One of the goalies won the inaugural honor.

In addition to all the craziness at work this week, I was extra fried yesterday after staying up late to watch the Sox come back from a 7-0 deficit to beat the Rays. It was one of the most incredible things I'd ever seen in baseball. After the Rays tacked on two in the top of the 7th to make it 7-0, people started streaming out of Fenway and I went over to the computer. But then I heard the Sox score a run and Ortiz was coming up with two men on. I ran over to see what would happen. The announcers said Papi hadn't hit a postseason homer in 61 at-bats and then BOOM!, it was 7-4. I woke up Deb and we watched the rest of the way, right til 12:30 or so. Now, of course, some folks think the Sox can't lose. They're still down 3-2 and Josh Beckett's going tonight; he was lit up last time. I'm certainly no Sox fan, but I wouldn't mind seeing it go to game 7.

I watched my first Leafs game of the season last night against the Rangers and they actually looked pretty good, at least until the third period when they started taking penalties and were pinned in their end. But they didn't give up any goals; they lost 1-0 in a shootout. There were a lot of new faces and I was impressed with their team speed. I still think it's going to be a long year, though. Maybe they'll have a Cup contender by the time I'm 50.

Abbreviated thoughts:

• So the latest scuttlebutt on the long-gestating (15 years in the making and counting) Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" is that it will be released on November 25 through an exclusive deal with Best Buy. And yes, Dr. Pepper will have a tie-in for a free soda for every American. The soda may be better than the album.
• Sarah Palin is appearing on SNL tonight. Although I'm having a tough time envisoning how she can be funnier than she is in real life.
• Berkeley Breathed, creator of the legendary comic strip "Bloom County" and the current "Opus," is retiring the strip to write children's books. Opus was a Sunday-only strip, but was still better than 90% of the stuff out there. Although the old Bloom County strips were a must-read back in the day. I need to get that stuff in book form.