Wow, 23 days of nothing. I'm not very good at schedules. But there might be a new charter school in New York soon, all because I wasn't messing around with this blog. So there's that.

Anyway, for no good reason I wound up on Business Week's website today (I swear, I was looking for something else.) and discovered that we're all doomed: Bill O'Reilly is coming out with a new book, The O'Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide.

I suppose it will contain the regular stuff on setting goals, doing your homework, and how to react when commie liberal activist judges steal your lunch money or get the lead in Our Town when it was so totally yours after play tryouts.

Now I am busy. I have a bunch of work, deadlines that keep moving closer to the present - and not in some figurative way, either; they've actually changed - and we have a dog.

It's not really our dog; in fact, it isn't our dog at all. We're dogsitting. This dog, whose name is Clover, is pretty well-behaved but a little jittery. She follows one from room to room and paces like a little old lady. And, like nearly everyone else who walks into our house, she has fallen deeply in love with Leah but regards me with something between suspicion and tolerance. Yes, I threw a dog-modified soccer ball (bone-shaped handles) to her for 20 minutes in the back yard, but apparently I took her back inside too soon. How do I know? Because she had the gall to steal the ball from me as I opened the door to go back in. Even alone in the house, I am not in charge.

I have not yet received word from any of our candidates regarding my interest in being recognized as a special American. Hence I am still undecided. I'll keep you posted.

The Superbowl seemed to go as planned around here, with only a few celebration-related deaths. Not that I don't enjoy a good "Yankees Suck!" cheer as much as the next guy, but where's the fun in running over Northeastern students with your car? I just don't see it.

Maybe this isn't so weird, since I am about as much of a fair-weather Pats fan as someone could be, but I found myself rooting for the Panthers. At least I wanted Viniatieri to miss a third field goal so it would go into overtime. Maybe I just wanted football to go on a little longer. But luckily, just as I was wondering how I was going to break it to Leah that now we need to stick around the house on Saturday and Sunday to watch college hoops, that cool baseball commercial came on. Have you seen it? Derek Jeter hits a wiffleball for what can only be a stickball dinger inside what is supposed to be Josh Beckett's house. It made me go looking for my wiffleball set, since it might hit 40 this weekend. It does not appear to have survived the move.

I think it says a lot about the Mets this year that I already know that my excitement for the season will rise until April, when it will most likely decline slowly until the end of May. At that point we will be 7 1/2 games out and Mets fandom will reach a low point where it will remain through the rest of the season. Lucky for me, the Sox ought to be 4 up on the Yankees by then, just enough to keep everyone around here forecasting doom for the next 4 months. Did you know that the two biggest topics of conversation on sports radio yesterday - that would be the day after the Superbowl victory - were the bad officiating (ok, fine, it was a fumble, but you won) and Ken Walter's two bad punts. There'll always be a New England.