Have you been having trouble this week keeping track of what day it is?  I'm not complaining about the Thursday Holidays, mind you - but it's made for some serious disorientation.  Nice and quiet at work, though.  I've been digging through things I hadn't gotten to for months, and my in-box is down to just [.

First off, our friend Alice (who suffers good-humoredly my unrelenting pressure to become a JordanCornblog contributor) is off to tour Florence today.  Happy travels, Alice! Happily, she will not have to leave before the USWNT faces Iceland in their second game at the Algarve.  She (and the rest of us) will be able to follow it [.

Thanks for your comment on yesterday's post, Alice. I haven't checked out the video Bill Moyers aired - Torturing Democracy - yet, but plan to. Meanwhile, for a never ending stream of despicable and delusional Dickishess there is always the Dick Cheney page on the Huffington Post. I glance at it occasionally in the hope that something bad will have happened to him.

First off apologies to HollyCornblog ... who I offended by describing September as JBD's birthday month. It is HollyCornblog's birthday month, too ... and that fact should be duly celebrated by everyone ... most especially everyone who likes a nice hoppy beer from time to time!

Second .

Sounds ominous, I now ... but I'm just talking about the beginning of the end of the month, here.  It's been a frozen, snowy January - in fact I can't remember the last time I saw bare ground here in NH.  Not that I'm complaining.  So long as it's mostly snow (as opposed to ice) [...]

Lovely, Chuck ... how much has the insurance industry poured into your campaign coffers? This is cold, cold stuff -- unless you are unimaginably dumb, Senator, which I somehow doubt.

Meanwhile, Cheney is working on his memoirs and waxing slightly more talkative than usual. Watch out, Dubya .

In case you hadn't heard ... yup ... the Eagles were declared the winners up in Minnesota yesterday ... kinda like Al Franken, except there won't be any lawsuits to follow (so far as we know).  Next up?  They might be Giants.  And the Giants have to be bummed, as the birds are "the wild [...]

Regarding March Madness, our Men's bracket winner ... Mo ... has started off the trash talking for next year with this prediction ..."Next year I will either go perfect in one of the brackets or win both of them."

Alice, you will need to convey this to Mike when you see him. Meanwhile, I will begin plotting my own comeback!

Amazing game last night as the Louisville Cardinels took it to Oklahoma and are moving on to the national championship game. Angel McCoughtry came back after a dismal first half and scored 14 of her 18 points in the second frame as she helped her team put away the Sooners. Now they have the dubious pleasure of facing the UConn Huskies in the final - after the Huskies (led by the incomparable Renee Montgomery) summarily dispatched Stanford in the late game.

Yesterday was the 37th anniversary of Title IX ... 37 years. I like that the milestone coincides with the 10th anniversary of the 1999 Women's World Cup. Alice (thanks!) sent me a link to "License to Thrive" a documentary chronicling the passage and impact of Title IX. We're hoping it'll come to Red River .

Who'd a thunk? I woke up at about 4:30 this morning to the sound of teeming rain -- and wondered how our young plants are keeping themselves from sliding down the hill. Really. As the light returns, I see that everything looks pretty much intact out there -- albeit waterlogged.

Not so intact are the egos of the Red Sox this morning, I'm thinking, as they blew a 10-1 lead and lost to the Orioles.