We're cool

Louie and I are going to South Bend Saturday for the Washington game. Could be a big win, ya never know. The weatherman says rain for Saturday, so I asked Janett for a ride to the thrift store so I could buy a hooded sweatshirt to sit in the rain in. (Joel at VP Automotive has had my car for a week and isn't returning my calls). Janett doesn't think it's cool to brag about my thrift store adventures, but I can't help it. I found this over the top, off the hook, whatever, Notre Dame jacket for $39. Now as you all know, I'm usually conservative when it comes to ND gear, preferring the crest to the monogram, the monogram to "Irish" and "Irish" to the leprechaun, but this jacket has a pugnacious leprechaun 10 inches tall and a foot wide on the back, a smaller one on the right chest, and NOTRE DAME around the right sleeve. I couldn't pass it up. It's what we used to call a car coat, comes over the hips, and appears to be new, even still having the little plastic thing on the cuff of the sleeve where the tags were attached. It might be a little heavy for a nice day but should be good for 50's in the rain. OK, so we'll be rocking, win or lose.

Speaking of which, the market was down again today, and so I'm about back to where I was last Friday on my puts. I hope today's drop on the bad employment numbers puts a little "let's wait and see" into the bulls. I also hope this week's up days were just a result of fund managers buying stocks to list in their quarterly reports, to show their investors they're really earning their money, and that they'll be easing back out of a lot of those positions tomorrow.

Oh, and I haven't posted since my birthday party Tuesday night at Stephie's Lots of fun and good food (soft and hard taco's and funfetti cake). Kim and Ross were there. After dinner Mark couldn't find the Yatzi game and Malachy persuaded us to play Mousetrap, a came involving the construction of a Rube Goldberg kind of mousetrap. (Mally likes the word contraption). Owen was delightful, except for his fascination with my cigarette's which makes Daddy Mark a little uncomfortable.

Then yesterday, while Stephie and Janett were on a shopping excursion, Mally hung out with me down in the office, in his customary supervisory role, including keeping a sheet of paper with Jose and my names on it, scoring our performances with checks or x's. He was great, but I think the experience was tiring for him. He suffered a meltdown when Stephie and Janett returned and it was time to go home. The tiring part was probably mostly having to correct Jose's rude and offensive behavior toward me without becoming rude or offensive himself. Little Mally's officious manner brings out the tease in Jose. At one point the little fellow had to hold up his hand, fingers extended and say "Jose, I'm going to give you this many more chances and then if you're still being bad, I'll have to fire you." A lot of responsibility for a four year old.