Seems like a good time for bullet points.

* Why do I see paralells between the current presidential brouhaha at the alma mater (see Monty's blog for details) and the transfer of power in any given banana republic?

* I'm fairly non-plussed about the Grady Little firing, which when combined with all the big contacts expiring next season makes me think that '04 may be the year of the great Carmine Hose Meltdown. That or they're going to win 115 games and still not win the World Series. Which, I have to admit, would be kind of funny.

* The RD I share the office with here was at the Pats-Browns game this past Sunday, and lived to tell about it. Not that there was much to tell in a 9-3 game.

* My knee is about 85 percent. I can walk pretty much normally, but I have the occasional limping moment.

* I'm getting towards the end of Quicksilver, and it's not too bad if a bit slow (I suppose it's setting things up for future payout, which would be fine if I could move on to the next book now instead of having to wait for April).

* I love the Bruins. In four home games, they managed to beat the Red Wings, tie the Devils, but lose to both Carolina and the NY Rangers. Maybe they should just stay on the road (where they're 5-1-1 with wins over NJ, Colorado, and Dallas).

* It also bears mentioning that after two failed attempts to get BU hockey coach Jack Parker behind they Bruins' bench, the B's have one of his former players, Mike Sullivan, who graduated from BU THE YEAR BEFORE I DID. Things like this should stop bothering me, but they won't.

* I am involved in a pumpkin-carving contest this afternoon, which should be interesting given that I have very, very limited artistic skills. I'm told that there will be templates and such for facilitating the carving, but I'm still thinking there's going to be ugliness. On the positive side, perhaps we can roast the seeds, which I've always found tasty.

* The Ireland recap is going slowly, but will pick up now that I've resized the photos. The mistake I made was trying to resize all of them at one go, which made my computer well-nigh unusable for 3 hours yesterday. Thankfully two of those hours were taken up by lunch and a meeting.

* The Top 50 Competition Movies of All Time, as you can thus imagine, is going even slower. I'd meant to pick it up again by now, but I'm trying to get Ireland down while it's still somewhat fresh. Given that, if you have suggestions for the list feel free to email them along.