*I don’t feel good. I have a cold, which seems to be a little better this morning but I never can tell. My colds sort of come and go until they’re completely gone. What’s worse is I have a muscle (or maybe a group of muscles) in my back on the lower left side that is being extremely hard to get along with. Stupid muscle. I swear I didn’t do anything to it. It just up and decided, “Ha ha, I’m going to be a brat for a few days. Yeah, that’ll be lots of fun.”

*Almost forgot to mention this. We got a call from the Neilson TV ratings people. They had sent us a card a couple of weeks earlier saying that they would call. I wasn’t too excited about it. I figured we would probably miss the call because we almost always let the answering machine screen our calls but Sunday a little bit before noon the phone rang and since I was expecting Number One Son I picked up in case it was him calling to say he had car problems or something. Instead it was Neilson. I think I managed not to cuss but man are they ever pushy! The woman on the phone never asked me if we wanted to participate; it was like, ‘We are Neilson! You WILL do this!’

Now I’m sort of torn about what to do. I’ve always sort of wanted to be in the Neilson ratings thing – to feel like my opinion counts, just a tiny bit – but now my instinct is to refuse to participate just to show them I will not be pushed around. And I know that can be a self-destructive instinct but it really drives me crazy to be treated that way. Maybe I will participate and send them back a nastygram along with the TV watching diary.

*I actually heard two good performances of the Star Spangled Banner this weekend, at the beginning of two of the NFL playoff games. I’m posting this one because it’s the first one I found; I don’t really have a favorite of the two. These guys are not perfect and polished sounding but they sing it, to the best of their ability, the way it was written and so it is better than all of the twisted celebrity renditions. Please, NFL organizers, give us more like this.