I gotta be honest: Today was so busy, there wasn't really much that was interesting enough to take note of. I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Remember how I thought yesterday was going to be terrible, but it wasn't?

Well, today, I woke up feeling great, that it was going to be a super day.

I couldn't have been any more wrong. It was a long, hard day at work.

Boy, is my good-or-bad-day-o-meter in need of recalibration.

Have you ever had a day that you were dreading so much that you built it up in your mind to be something far worse than it actually was?

Well, that was my today.

And guess what?

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

And that's a good thing.

Eight hours from now, my alarm will sound, waking me up to begin the first day of my next five-day workweek.

I am not looking forward to it. I feel like I've been working extra hard lately, and, frankly, I need a vacation. It's been almost six months since I've taken a day off from work (not counting the one sick day I took in early February).

In three weeks, my parents and I will be in Houston to celebrate my sister's "official" graduation from graduate school. I say "official" because A) she defended her thesis nearly a year ago; and B) she has been working as a post-doctoral associate for nearly six months now. All that was missing from the past year was the cap, gown and hood, along with a procession to "Pomp and Circumstance."

And so, we are heading to Houston for three days of celebrating the accomplishments of my sister and her former colleagues at the Baylor College of Medicine. I've visited Houston once a year since 2003, and this will be the sixth and last time (for awhile, at least). But it will be a quick trip, packed with receptions and luncheons and a graduation ceremony held in a theater that hosts Broadway touring productions.

In other words: After I return, I will still need a vacation.

Today, I got to see a live performance of the Metropolitan Opera's production of Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment. It's a comedic opera, and I absolutely loved it.

The male lead, Juan Diego Flórez, made the performance -- including the famous aria with nine high C's -- look effortless. Leading lady Natalie Dessay was absolutely charming. Of course, my favorite was Marian Seldes, whom I'd previously only seen on "Sex and the City" as Mr. Big's mother. Her character didn't have much to do, but when she did, it sometimes came out in English. (This was a French opera.) Frankly, if the whole thing had been done in English, I would have loved to have seen it on Broadway. It was that good.

Did I mention I was in a movie theater in Miami? No? Because I was. Tickets were $22, which I think is perfect because it lets "regular folk" see opera. And it's just as exciting in high definition as it is in person. (I think. I can't say for sure because I've never actually been.)

Next season, there will be 11 operas transmitted around the globe to the masses. I've already made plans to secure tickets for at least two of them. I never thought I'd like opera, but I guess I do.

Friday! Friday! Friday! Friday!

I could go on, but the chant doesn't really have the same effect when it's being read.

This has seemed like a really long workweek. I am looking forward to tomorrow, when I'm heading to Miami to see a live, HD simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera -- in a movie theater.

And yes: There will be subtitles.

She has big, dark eyes.
Her smile lights everything up.
I can only imagine what she sounds like, and I can't wait to meet her.
All I know is that this is the start of something really special.

Welcome to the family, kid.

Earlier today, the most bizarre thing happened: I received an e-mail that said someone had left a comment regarding yesterday's post. The e-mail included said comment.

I didn't know who left the comment, but from what I could surmise, the person's first language was not English. Perhaps it was Portuguese. (I'm only guessing because "Brasil" was part of the person's blog address.) The person said they found my blog interesting, and I should check out theirs, which was about the Servidor. I don't know what the Servidor is, but when I tried to look it up on Wikipedia, all I got was a page that had to be translated from the Spanish. (According to the site, "servidor" means "server" in Spanish.)

And another thing: The person left me the Web address of their blog, inviting me to check it out. But when I tried to click on it, Blogger informed me that it had been removed.

I know there are people there who like to drop spam in the comments of random blogs. But what was the point of all this?

I'll probably never know.

It's a two-fer Tuesday in my world, as I'm doing not only my job this week, but most of the job of my vacationing co-worker. (I say "most" because I can't do all the wonderfully creative things she can do, but I can squeak by.)

Hopefully, 12 hours from now, a 48-page newspaper will be off to the printer. (It's a good thing it's not traveling by car, so it doesn't have to fill up on increasingly pricey gas -- $3.69 a gallon tonight!)

Which brings me to this thought: Are the oil companies raising prices -- literally up 22 cents in eight days -- now so they can lower them in time for the November election? Because that's what usually happens, you know? (You don't? Well, you should pay closer attention come November.)

This is my 100th post!

It's going to be kind of like a TV sitcom's 100th episode, in that it won't really have any substance, just gratuitous patting myself on the back. I'd say it was going to be like a clip show, except I'm too lazy to pull my best bits from the last 99 posts.

So, there you have it. 100 down, 200+ to go.

And may tomorrow bring something interesting I can tell a story about.

Tonight, my immediate family gathered for leftovers.

Sometimes, if there's a larger group, we actually have a second seder. But, since I was really starving by the time I arrived, I voted to skip the seder and go right to the festive meal.

I was the only one who voted this way.

So, I lit the candles, said a prayer and poured a glass of wine. I said another prayer, took a sip and asked where the food was.

Within moments, there was food on the table and, under the guise of doing a "partial seder," I put a dab of horseradish on a piece of matzoh, then covered the whole thing with charoset. Yum! As I was eating, it came to my attention that the only reason my mother wanted to do a seder was because the soup was not yet hot enough to eat. (Of course, my mother's definition of hot is about 20 degrees warmer than mine.)

Anyway, once the secret was out, we decided it didn't matter how long the soup was going to take. We'd busy ourselves with conversation and chopped liver.

And that's basically how it went until the soup arrived, followed by the main dish and the dessert, a wonderful frozen confection of vanilla ice cream and pieces of a flourless chocolate torte.

And then, after more laughter and such, it was time to call it a night. After all, tomorrow, we have to get up and go to work.

Tonight, my family celebrated the first night of Passover with a seder for 12. It was smaller than usual, as four family members were half a world away, in Kazakhstan.

Hopefully, in six weeks or so, they will return with the newest member of our family, a 2-year-old girl.

Which begs the question: Who gets stuck with the four questions at next year's seder?

On a side note, it was the first time my sister led the family seder. She brought in her 21st-century haggadahs, which referenced not only the Jews' suffering in Egypt, but the Holocaust, the plight of Ethiopian Jews, and the civil rights fights of other peoples. One fact I noticed as I was reading a passage about the Holocaust: It was the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

According to the Web site of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, "on April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Seven hundred and fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. The ghetto fighters were able to hold out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. The Germans had slowly crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the remainder were deported to concentration camps."

It's just one of the more recent events that makes me all the more thankful that I am able to celebrate Passover with my family.

This weekend, I resolve to do the following:

• Rest up, because I need it!
• Make hard-boiled eggs the right way.
• Finish laundry and unpacking from last week's trip.
• Try to finish reading the book I've been avoiding for months. (I heard it was a difficult read, but I promised myself I would stick it out.)

And, if I don't do all that, well, there's always next weekend.

I had another 10-hour day at the office.

By the time it was all over, I had such a bad headache that I really had to concentrate hard not to hit the car in front of me on the drive home.

One of these days, I'm going to have to take it easy.

So, last night, at about 2 a.m., I finally succumbed to the awful bug that is making its way through my office.

That's right: I had a seriously runny nose.

I took some cold medicine, and sat in front of the computer for a good (relatively speaking) two hours before it finally had enough effect on me that I would be able to lay down again. Of course, by that time, I only had one hour until my alarm was to go off. No matter. I needed more rest, so back to bed I went. For 90 minutes.

And then I woke up, got ready for work, and drove the nearly 30 miles to my job.

Today was deadline day.

And 12 hours after I departed, I returned, a little more tired than I was when I left, but minus the runny nose.

Tonight, I think I'll take the cold medicine as a preventive measure. I don't want to know what 3 a.m. looks like. I've been there, and it ain't pretty.

In the last 28 hours, I have added 18 Facebook friends. I'd had 30, and now I have 48. Does that mean I'm popular, or is everyone else just as eager as I am to prove how fabulous they are?

I know, I know: I don't need dozens of Facebook friends to prove how fabulous I am.

But, it sure does help.

Returning to work after three days away wasn't as nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be. In fact, I was able to complete all the work that had been started in my absence before noon.

It was all thumb-twiddling from there on out.

At least I got to ease into the workweek.

I'm baaaaack!

I went two time zones over for the American Copy Editors Society's annual conference in Denver. Since I'm the only copy editor at my paper, it's great to gather for a few days each year to commiserate with people who do what I do.

An added bonus this year was that, on the second day I was in Denver, it snowed. This may not seem all that fantastic, but I'd never seen snow before last Thursday. So, I was a little more than a little excited to wake up and look out the window and see it. Luckily, I was able to take pictures of this, and you can see some of them right here. (Yeah, I went a little overboard, but I spared the public and just posted about half.)

Now that I'm back, hopefully the humidity will quickly heal my high altitude-induced dry skin and I'll look like a normal person again.

Since my plane departs for Denver in 11 hours and I'm setting the alarm to wake me up in eight hours, I'm going to cut this post short so I can pack.

Yeah, I'm a procrastinator. Ya wanna make somethin' of it?

All it took was one phone call.

"Mom, I'm going to call up the shuttle service and make my reservation to get picked up at 4:15 on Wednesday morning."

I said it in my saddest, most-tired voice. And she agreed to take me. For free. (Well, no -- nothing is free. She said I owe her. That's fine by me.)

So, I guess this means I get to sleep until 4:15 on Wednesday morning. Now, if only I could bring myself to begin the packing process ....

I just finished watching the "Blue Harvest" episode of "Family Guy." I don't know what the episode's name means, but the basic gist of it is that the power goes out when the Griffins are watching TV, so, to kill the time, Peter tells the story of "Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope."

Now, I'll be the first to admit I am nowhere near a "Star Wars" fan. I don't think I've ever seen any of the movies in the original trilogy all the way through. (I'm fairly sure I saw "The Ewok Adventure" at the United Artists theater that used to be on Broward Boulevard but was knocked down for some other use, maybe Einstein Bros.) I really enjoyed this episode, even if there were dozens of jokes that went over my head. There was plenty of stuff I did catch.

There was a reference to John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra (which was blown up, so they had to settle for Danny Elfman). Obi-Wan Kenobi took on the Patrick Swayze role and Luke Skywalker was Jennifer Grey in a recreation of the final musical number from "Dirty Dancing." And there were cameos by lots of "reds": Red Buttons, Red Foxx, Helen Reddy, Big Red, Simply Red -- and more, which I have already forgotten. (Maybe I should've taken notes. Nah. Too much trouble for a TV show rerun that's already had a DVD release. If you really wan to know, go to Blockbuster and rent it.)

Anyway, at the end of the story, after the lights came back on, Chris Griffin (voiced by Seth Green) told his dad that, yeah, that was good, but "Robot Chicken" did it way better months earlier. This was hysterical because, even though I've never seen "Robot Chicken," I have read enough about it to know that Seth Green is on of the show's creators.

And that's about it. The credits rolled in blue on a night sky, and the theme song was redone in John Williams style. I guess that means he's really not dead. Thank goodness for that!

How does one spend their last weekend before an out-of-town trip?

Sleeping in.

Wasting half the day away.

Spending quality time with family.

Watching syndicated reruns of shows already seen.

Any questions? No? Good. It's bedtime. I gotta get up early tomorrow and finish my laundry.

Five days from now, I'll be in Denver. But, before I go, there are a few things I need to take care of: packing, getting things squared away at work and figuring out whether it's better to leave a six-week-old car in an airport garage for four days or take a shuttle service that will pick me up at 4:15 a.m. and drop me off at the airport (that's 12 miles away) two hours later.

First, the packing: I went to weather.com to check the 10-day forecast. On one of the five day's I'd be in the Mile High City, the words "scattered snow showers" were in a little box, just to the right of the box that told me the temperature would be between the low 30s and high 50s. I guess this means I'm going to have to break out my heavy sweaters!

Next, work stuff: I'll only be gone three days, and of those, only the first day will be really rough on those left to put out the paper. I can't control the pace at which the reporters file their stories, but here's hoping that they file early and often.

And, finally, the great transportation dilemma: My flight to Denver departs at 7:09 a.m. My parents usually are good for drop-off and pick-up, but I think this flight's a little to early for them. (I had no choice, really, as this was the only nonstop to Denver on that day.) I can take a shared-ride shuttle that will pick me up three hours in advance, and get me to the airport an hour in advance for $16. Sure, it's inexpensive, but I really don't feel like I should pay for a ride that I could do in 15 minutes myself. Which leads to option No. 2: leave my car in the airport garage. I'm fine with this idea, but my mom can't believe I'd leave my new car somewhere other than in front of my residence for four days. She'd be willing to let me drive her car to the airport and leave it there, but that would mean she would be driving my new car for four days. Frankly, I don't think she or I would like that option.

So, that's what's on my mind today. I know -- it's not earth-shaking, but it's all mine.

Today, the first post-strike episode of "My Name is Earl" aired. And let me tell you: It was well worth the wait!

After a brief appearance by NBC Universal President/CEO Jeff Zucker -- who talks us through an online two-minute recap of how the show left off, complete with eSurance promo -- we get right back into the action: Earl and Billie are unconscious after she hit him with her car, then she gets out to check on him, only to get hit by a car driven by former Officer Daniels. When the paramedics arrive, they rush to Billie, leaving Earl on the street. But, Randy comes along and, in a stroke of genius -- this is Randy, after all -- loads Earl into the ambulance and takes off for the hospital.

Along the way, Randy sees Joy, Darnell and Catalina on the side of the road, dealing with car trouble. He tells them to hop in, and they each try to revive him as they make their way to the hospital.

Unfortunately, Earl ends up flying out of the ambulance, gets stuck to a semi's grill, and ends up the in the home of Sissy, the semi driver who wants to make the dying Earl her lover. Eventually, the quartet gets him back and brings him to the hospital.

Of course, the entire time, Earl is still narrating the action. The thing is, though, he's having some sort of dream (hallucination?) that he's happily living in the 1960s and he's newly married to Billie (and they have a lot of toasters). As the friends try to wake him up, his dreams are adjusted accordingly. Even Paris Hilton shows up to say her favorite line: That's hot!

In the second half of the hourlong episode, Gerald, a pint-size faith healer nicknamed "God's Little Finger," is introduced. The four remember that he healed Earl years ago, and want him to do it again. Only now, he's not healing anymore. It seems that after he healed Earl and Joy, he saw them commit a crime on TV, and decided to give up healing because these were not good people. They tell him about Earl's list (even adding him to it), but he's still unconvinced that Joy is now a good person.

Luckily, Darnell -- with the help of a blue tarp and some experience making propaganda films -- is able to compile a video of Joy's good deeds through the years. (Think "Forrest Gump," only funnier.) After watching the video, Gerald agrees to resume healing.

They head to the hospital, and he tries to wake Earl up. Unfortunately, it's all for naught, as Gerald's father finally admits that his son never had healing powers, that it was all a big scam. (Earl was in on it and healing Joy was a fluke due to some hospital-strength Neosporin his father always put on Gerald's fingertips.)

So, everyone leaves the room so Randy can say goodbye to his brother. (Loved the doctors hovering outside the window with coolers, to presumably to collect the picks they made earlier in the Transplant Draft.) As Randy talks to Earl about how good he was and how God might reward him for getting as far as he did on his list, he realizes that Gerald can now be crossed off. As he does that, he notices Earl's heartbeat increases. (And viewers see his dream change, too: Instead of leaving everyone to move away for a promotion, he decides to stay.)

So, all is not over for Earl J. Hickey. I don't know how soon he'll wake from his coma -- hopefully it won't take as long as his recent jail stint -- and how they're going to resolve Billie's storyline. After all, she's also in a coma, on the other side of Earl's hospital room wall.

I guess this means I'll have to tune in next week to find out. And thank goodness for that!

Today was one of the longer workdays I've had -- 12 hours at the office!

Add to it my 128-mile commute (each way) and I was out of the house for more than 13 hours today!

But, it wasn't the longest day I've ever put in. I don't remember the exact day, but there was the one time, last year, when I was at work until 9 p.m. I think I made it home just in time to change into a nightshirt and hop into bed. (Tonight, I actually get to eat dinner!)

I finally finished Disc 2 of the Elton John extravaganza!

"Elton's New York Stories" -- five live performances -- was the extra on the disc. The first two songs were about New York, while the middle one was an ode to John Lennon and the final two were performed at New York's Madison Square Garden.

There was also a "hidden extra," although I don't know if I'd give it such dignity: The audio for "The Bridge" played as the credits rolled for the various random performances included in the set, most of which I have not yet seen.

I don't know when I'll get back to Disc 1 and the rarities, but I'll be sure to report back when I do.