Notes from the weekend...

* For those of you who played in a TRASH regional, the first tossup and bonus of the first pack (assuming you played the packs in numerical order) were written by me. I just thought that was neat. Undoubtedly, some of you would have another adjective to use there.

* I really wish I'd gotten to see more of the college football carnage, though I did get to see about half of Bowden Bowl V while flipping back to Virginia Tech's loss at Pittsburgh. I really would have been interested in Oklahoma's 77-0 waxing of Texas A&M, if only to see how the Sooners managed not to score in the fourth quarter.

* Got to see a little bit of the lunar eclipse on Saturday night while waiting for a table at John Harvard's in Framingham. I'd forogtten about it, which seems to be the standard case whenever astro-phenomena are afoot.

* I managed to aggravate my knee problem on Friday, which led to some gimping around over the weekend. I did manage to spend large chunks of yesterday in bed with the heating pad and ice pack, and took some ibuprofen, all of which seems to have gotten me back to semi-normal.

* For this week's fantasy football game, I had three choices for 2 RB spots: Michael Pittman (TB), Anthony Thomas (CHI), and Moe Williams (MIN) (I'm sure those of you who participate in this sort of thing see what's coming). Pittman and Thomas were facing run defenses of similar rank, while Williams was facing a weaker defense but appeared that he'd be losing carries to the returning Michael Bennett. So I talked myself into starting Thomas and Pittman... and thus missed out on Williams' 2 TD catches and 171 total yards.

The good news is that I have about a 7 point lead going into tonight with Donovan McNabb. I have half a mind to bench him to preserve the win, though even in his depths he's not caused me to lose that many points.

* In good holiday news, we got a new Christmas tree this weekend, a 6.5 foot fakeroo (can't have real ones in the residence hall, fire codes) to replace a 3 foot fake that could open and close like an umbrella. In bad holiday news, we don't know where we can put it in the apartment where it won't be in the way.

* We got the stuff we bought at Waterford last week, and it came with a care manual. We thought this was unusual, until we got to the passage noting that the faceting and shaping of some pieces can, if left in direct sunlight, focus beams to the point where it'll scorch wood. That's good to know.

* As irritating as it is to go to Walter Brown and see the alma mater drop a 4-0 decision to UNH, it's exponentially more dispiriting when you realize that the last time BU scored on UNH's Mike Ayers was 17:19 into the third period of a BU win over UNH on JANUARY 23, 2003. The Terriers have not scored on Ayers in 254 minutes and 24 seconds of hockey. I'm not sure if there is a NCAA record for longest shutout streak by a goalie against any one specific team, but if there is Ayers must be getting close.