to all of my friends who have tried to contact me in the past two weeks, i am quite sorry. it's been busy busy times, perhaps (i guess) because i dawdled (daudled? dawdelled?) for the first few months of the offseason and am now playing catch-up - in a big way. i've referenced the three publications that i'm working on. one's to bed. one's watching letterman. one's just getting out of his morning shower. like, i mean, i've designed exactly zero of 48 pages. (theoretically, the entire thing needs to be laid out by monday afternoon. the team's in town tuesday, and then things get busy.) 21 of those pages are theoretically ads, but only 10 of those are confirmed. this weekend'll be a long weekend.

and this past week has been a long week. 8 hour days on both saturday and sunday. at work until 9 on monday. it was 11 on tuesday. after midnight on wednesday. seven last night. i'm working right now, although i went to dinner from 8 until 10 or so.

it sure looks like our roster is going to be good, and the staff could be dominant. offensively, we've got two number one picks - one leadoff guy, and one middle-of-the-lineup power threat - plus a middle third that was the best middle third at their level last season. our number two hitter is an australian, which is cool. our starting rotation features three guys that are listed among the best 15 prospects in our system, and the number 22 guy's currently on the disabled list. the number 12 guy'll be a midseason promotion, it appears.

the team yearbook is essentially unstarted (that's the 48 pager), which means that i'll be going for my pre-season oil change saturday, then buying a few groceries, then paying some bills, then heading into work for about ten hours. straight to work on sunday, it seems, although i would like to get home to see the bosox and orioles. ahh, baseball.

in other news, thanks much to unstadt. a new double mix cd arrived today, because he's an all around nice guy. still haven't returned his call, because i'm awful.

and, finally, my pal nemo is dealing with the loss of a good friend right now, because mr. tony's off the air. (i heard 3 minutes of 'the herd' on wednesday, and the host seemed to be a pretty intelligent, eloquent guy. not the buffoon he was portrayed as, but i also didn't hear any callers.) due to my love of bernstein and boers, i've never heard much tony, so maybe i'm not knowledgeable enough to comment. but, in my bernstein and boers experience, i think that complacency is an issue. those guys have such a bevy of inside jokes intertwined with other inside jokes (usually about penises) that it can probably be off-putting to potential new listeners. was mr. tony the same way? hmmm.

monday's goal: listen to old guy radio at work.