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.

billytea, your birthday is now in Australia time!

For me, you'll only be square tomorrow. Perfect-square, though, you are, already. Happy birth(Australian)day!

Happy Birthday BT!

Sudafed is keeping me up long past the time when it was actually decongesting me.

Sudafed once made me stay up, sick, the entire night Christmas Eve in a flurry of making more homeade gifts and wrapping each gift with a handmade decoritve ornament or bow. I am scared to see how I would act on speed.

In other congestion woes, my ^%#&%ing ear is still plugged up. Little to no pain, but liquid moving about in my ear!