I just got off the phone with a former broadcasting colleague. We spent the 2003 and 2004 seasons in the same league, before he earned a well-deserved promotion to the upper ranks, and I would consider him one of my best friends from the time in "the business."

He's got a lot of pretty exciting things going on. He tells me that he's making almost twice as much as he was making in 2004. He's getting married in about six weeks. (Second marriage for both, so he's far less excited than the first time.) He really, really likes his boss, and thinks that his boss really, really respects his work. And likes him, too.

Our call got cut off, so we tried again, and it got cut off again, so we gave up. He was at the airport. But it got cut off when he was saying to me something along the lines of, "If you told me that I'd be here for the next 15 years, I think I'd be - [nothing] - [static] - [nothing again]." But I could pretty safely infer that he was about to say, or had said, "Satisfied." Or maybe, "Pretty darn happy."

And yet, during the course of the 20 minutes or so we were on the phone, he also spent a solid five minutes talking abot his job search techniques for the offseason - who he's going to contact, how aggressively he'll pursue things, how long his tape's going to be. And, even though he's not really interested in Triple-A opportunities, because "They couldn't offer me as much as I'm making here," he's still going to send to them - "Just to keep my name out there." And, again, he's really satisfied where he is, and his soon-to-be wife makes good money, and he's really looking forward to this season.

And yet, he's still looking for jobs. It's a built-in aspect of the business. And I'm not looking for jobs right now, and that really makes me happy.

Certainly there's indecision or uncertainty where I am but, gosh, at least I'm not going to spend every September-through-March not concerned about where I'm working in April. That's nice to know.

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I work for a growing company of 30 or so employees, and one of my co-workers is the full-time HR person. Resume-reading, recruiting, interviewing, hiring. But we're only 30 employees, and there are maybe three or so openings (there's talk of moving to a bigger building but, at this time, we probably don't have much more capacity). So, yeah, she's busy, but she's also got a lot of other fairly interesting responsbilities.

Among them:

1) Small talk
A lot of, "How are things for you?" and "Did you have a good night?" and "Are you going to run tonight?"

2) Lunch
I brought in a head of lettuce on Friday. Several people brought in other things. The company returned our empty bottles and got lots and lots of beef. The HR person made a fiesta lunch. It was fantastic food, and a pretty nice chance for group small talk. (Postscript: My head of lettuce did not get used, though I donated it to the HR person's collection. I don't do lettuce.)

It's reflective of a pretty good commitment to employee happiness here. Or satisfaction. Or "feeling like the company gives a crap." Either way, it's a position that could easily not exist, or could easily be done differently, but it's done in a great way here.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and this is how most people's office existences are. I've just worked for terrible places.

- - - - - - - -

I was doing some math, or rather some addition, or rather some counting, and I came up with some amazing facts.

Since last December, I've had:

Four different 'home' addresses
and
Five different companies cut me paychecks.

It's pretty likely that I'll have a fifth home address come the spring. In this time, I've missed several copies of Spin magazine and maybe a few copies of ESPN magazine. My Newsweek and Sports Illustrated, however, has never lapsed. Focus on the important stuff, you know.

- - - - - - - - - - -

As you probably weren't, I was absolutely intrigued and overly-excited by this week's review of Rock Plaza Central's Are We Not Horses? on Pitchfork. Mostly because whenever anything is purported to sound vaguely like Neutral Milk Hotel, I'm there, dude. This review also drops an Okkervil River Black Sheep Boy comparison, and I'm also there, dude. (For the record, NMH soundalikes have been great - The Decemberists - or just okay - Beirut. People don't throw around NMH comparisons lightly, I don't think.)

It's a self-released effort, and it's not really available anywhere. (Their myspace page lists a record store in Toronto, and that's about it.) So I ordered a copy through their site - it's a PayPal transaction - and I had some troubles. My PayPal-approved credit card has an old address, and I never really got a chance to update it. It was odd.

So I fired an email towards the band's "customer service" email address. I explained my kind-of predicament - "I got a confirmation, but did you actually get the order?" And I sent out the email on Saturday early-evening. I had placed the order after work on Friday.

By Sunday morning, I got a response. Nothing particularly interesting. "Yeah, we got your order. Yeah, it's this address, right? Cool."

And then I looked again. I seemed to kind of recognize the name on the email. It wasn't RCP or Rock Central Plaza or Cust Serv. No, it was lead singer/principal songwriter/[apparently] small-time novelist Chris Eaton.

True, true indies kind of rule, don't they?

- - - - - - - - - - -

I guess I used to write a bit about my work, because my work was pretty interesting. My work is no longer particularly interesting, or particularly comprehensible unless you're "in the business."

But I should tell you that, it turns out, corporate America is really, really inefficient. But you knew that.

I started working with a pretty large nationwide insurance company on Monday. We had an ambitious plan, and we were going to launch my aspect of their program on, we were hoping, Wednesday. I told them this during our call on Monday morning.

At the time, I didn't really understand how freakin' inefficient corporate America really is.

Now, yes, I understand.

As far as I can figure, I'm one of four consultants working on this project. Four consultants, plus at least seven internal company employees. And it's been about the most frustrating time I've ever had at work. Ever. Frustrating beyond all belief.

On both Thursday and Friday, I returned home from work with stress-related headaches. (Probably thanks to the HR person, there's ibuprofen at the office, so the headaches weren't as bad as they could have been.) On Thursday and Friday, I also returned home with the project not actually having been launched.

But there were at least two really nice instances of office-wide "Keep your chin up"s, so that was nice.

Also nice was when my DS (not an R, and he's fantastic) said to me, "Hey, you know when, from time to time, you hear about large companies making massive layoffs?" "Yeah." "Well, the people you're working with, those are the people getting laid off."

I don't know if it was reassuring or what, but it was nice to know that they kind of understand that things are, in their own way, out of my hands.

- - - - - - - -

Wow, that was boring.

- - - - - - - -

Maybe something interesting will happen in the next two days. I'll try to write on Tuesday night before I take off. Wednesday's going to be a long, long post-work drive. I'll stay caffeinated and, perhaps, Taco Bell'd. Mmmm, Taco Bell. Maybe I'll write Wednesday night, instead. More likely, I won't write at all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm totally fired up for split pea soup on Monday night. Totally fired up. Yum.

- - - - - - - - - -

Northwestern's win was quite satisfying on Saturday afternoon. Even if you discount the quality of the recruiting class that's coming in, and the quality of recruits that sat out this season, I think there's a great group coming back.

QB: Bacher. (Kafka)
RB: Sutton. (Roberson, Conteh)
WR: Lane. Peterman. Ward. Brewer. (Yarbrough, Cheatham, TJ Jones.)
TE: Frayne Abernathy, hurt most of the year. Frosh who played Mitchell. (Woodsum.)
OL: Crum. Rees. Matthews. Belding. Taylor. (Diaz. Boyle. Others, I'm sure.)

DL: Wootton. Ngene. Hahn. Gill. Kennedy. Mims. Koehn.
LB: Suck. Suckitude. Well, Kadela. Arrington. Simpson. (They figure to start.) (Dinard. Malleo. Jeske?)
DBs: (Wow) McManis. Battle. McPherson. Smith. Phillips.

New specialists.

I guess that I'm just really happy with the way the Cats finished. They've got seven home games next year, along with a "road" game at Detroit against miserable Eastern Michigan. Minnesota and Indiana are back on the schedule, and Wisconsin and Penn State are off of it. There's a great, great chance for great, great things.

A bowl is expected, and a January bowl is a reasonable hope.

Now's where I get off-the-top-of-my-head ridiculous.

I expect to win against Northeastern (can't we schedule crappy I-AA teams?), Duke, Minnesota, Eastern Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. That's six.

I expect to lose at Ohio State and at home against Michigan, though even that seems like a possibility.

I see the other four games (home against Nevada, at Michigan State, at Purdue, and home against Iowa) as the difference between a good or great season. Eight wins seems quite reasonable.

Also, the consensus seems to be that Illinois and Northwestern are both programs on the rise. Have these people considered the fact that Illinois' quarterback can't throw?

OK, just wondering.

Happy Sunday.