I'm assuming Boston doesn't have a rugby team? Because if a vampire, homicidal maniac or Karl Rove was coming for me, I choose rugby player every time. They're just so BIG.

We're such a baseball town, that we don't even know if we have a Rugby team. We barely know we have the (champion) American Football team, Basketball team, and hockey team. There's a Soccer team, but nobody pays any attention to them, either. That said, I have met Rugby players in pubs (shocking, I know), and I would probably pick them second. There's a lot of the same mentality with hockey and Rugby players, I think.

There's a lot of the same mentality with hockey and Rugby players, I think.

I've never actually seen a hockey game, but I've heard a lot about them. And I think you might be right. Throw a few punches, no hard feelings? Buy a beer in the pub after the game?

Hockey is like rugby, but faster, and with walls to crash into. And yes, throw-a-punch, buy-him-a-beer type of insane camaraderie.

Now that hockey requires helmets (with face guards!), most hockey players still have their ears, noses, teeth, and intact cheeks.

Boston also has a soccer team (okay, the New England Revolution) but I do not recognize teams with collective names, like the Jazz, Heat, Thunder, or Crick-in-the-Neck.

Nilly! I turned thirty on Friday. I am now 30 + 3 days.

[edited to be coherent]

Hockey is like rugby, but faster, and with walls to crash into.

Also, on ice.

Because if a vampire, homicidal maniac or Karl Rove was coming for me, I choose rugby player every time. They're just so BIG.

No doubt. The first actual professional rugby team I saw was up close. I came back from using the restroom in our hotel in Bulgaria, and said to my husband, "There are several very large, very scary, bald men wearing matching scarves in the lobby." He correctly identified them as a British rugby team, there to play the Bulgarians. Terrifying people.

But very nice, as it turned out. I just read that football (soccer) is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans, while rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen. These guys upheld their part of that.

In hockey's favor, they also have razors on their feet and are armed. But against hockey, they are armored. (shrug) I'm from New Mexico, what do I know about hockey?

According to Tom, the UK's entire internet system is sagging under the weight of people trying to check cricket results.

I turned thirty on Friday.

Your Hebrew-date birthday (which is nearly a month after the general one this year) is on the day after the fast day that's right after Rosh Hashana. It's the fourth day of the Jewish year, but it's like the first day of the year that isn't some sort of holiday. Only, being your birthday, it is.

I am now 30 + 3 days.

Oh, you're so nice, expressing your age in a way I'll like. Everything, of course, is about me.

I dunno, some of those Patriots are very large men, so as to afford more hiding-behind space.

But at least one of the Patriots makes a good beer.

I am now 30 + 3 days.

And as of 18 minutes ago, I am 36 years old +, lessee, 0 days. Yep. I'm a square! A square of a perfect number, no less.

Everything IS about Nilly!

The best part of my birthday was the day that it fell on 9/9/99. There was a short article on the front page of the Times Metro section about the different New York subcultures that considered such a date numerologically important -- some of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, but not others; some Chinese immigrants but not others; a couple of random wacky Armenian fortune-tellers; people who think numbers are cool.