OK, so the Super Bowl is tonight, and I'm scared to watch it. See, ever since Monstro and I moved to Massachusetts, the sports teams in the area have broken records and won world championships. They have done this all without me; I have yet to watch a complete game of ANYTHING since we moved here, and Monstro would rather read a book. So now, if I tune in to the Super Bowl, will I jinx our hometown team?

I'd figured this point was moot; we'd planned to go to Bible study tonight -- I'm facilitating it this year, we're doing Disciple III -- but last night, those plans were derailed when our pastor called. And when your pastor calls at 8:00 Saturday night to ask, "are we having Disciple tomorrow, or cancelling it so we can all watch the Patriots?" it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what he's actually saying is "I won't be there, and neither will anyone else, so let's not have it."

I'd planned to go to church this morning to do a straw poll of our study-group, to see if anyone wanted to have it, but after being up half the night, uh, burning the candle at both ends after eating something that didn't agree with me, I wasn't up for it. I called the office and spoke to a member of the choir, who said she'd announce the cancellation.

Monstro had to go to a post-church seminar, though, and while there one of the women from our group approached him, saying, "So... we've been pre-empted!"

The game I'm most excited about today is the Animal Planet Puppy Bowl, and particularly the Kitty Half-Time Show. Great stuff. Bark bark! Meow!!! It starts at 3:00 Eastern time and I think will be re-run for most of the day. Motormouth says, check it out.

Monstro's birthday is Thursday so he's walking around asking everybody if he's middle aged. We're not answering him. Our game group met last night -- the woman who brought dinner included a homemade carrot cake (with homemade cream-cheese frosting) with the legend "All Hail the Game Master." Then I brought out his birthday present from me (a new hard drive, specifically for gaming), from the boy (Crysis), and his Valentine's gift (two gigs of RAM), and his anniversary present (a new fast-as-lightening video card with another 512 MB of on-board RAM). Kind of stinks that now he won't have anything to open on his b'day, Valentine's Day, or our anniversary, but his buddy is a Dell consultant and offered to do the installs for free, and I couldn't see dragging Russ over three times.

So, happy early birthday, sweetheart. Of course, now I won't see him for a month, as he'll be holed up in his study, killing baddies.