What's that song, that really fast orchestral piece that they play in commercials and movies as background when someone's going really fast, or a scene is really hectic and crazy? "Flight of the Bumble Bee" maybe? Well, whatever it was, it fits my day.

I wake up (snooze) wake up (snooze) wake up and put the cat out, eat some breakfast, take a shower, put the cat in and head off into the office to put in photo assignments to make sure we have photographers out at the ballpark this weekend ... Then off to the ballpark for a nooner, an afternoon delight, a niner at noon, a matinee on a delightfully sunny low-70s day, but since I'm arriving at the park within an hour of the start of the game, I'm anxious, not wanting to be late ... The game moves quickly � that tends to happen when in 1-0 games where the losing team gets but one hit, that being the Lakewood BlueClaws in their loss to the Asheville Tourists. (My lede to the story: "Yet another group of Tourists enjoyed its visit to the Jersey Shore.") ... After the game I make a rather swift tour of the lockerroom, talking with the players and manager I need to see and returning to the press box to hammer out my story ... And then on into the office for an hour, where I take care of a few early chores that I'll need to tend to for my shift that night before ...

Going back out to Scooter's, a bar and restaurant near the ballpark where the players and coaches were tending bar and serving food to benefit ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, with all tips going toward the ALS Foundation. I ask Jeff Manto about the gigantic ring on his finger, and he hands it to me for a closer look � his 1997 AL Championship ring from his days with the Cleveland Indians. It is heavy and shaped like home plate, a small fortune in diamonds making up the home plate design in the center. Sitting by myself at the bar, I have a great time, chatting with the manager and coaches behind the bar, a few people near me. Front office members from the team come by and chat, and soon, as the others arrive from the ballpark, my corner of the bar is where they all hang out. I order a burger and have dinner and just a beer (or two) and enjoy the company and conversation � It's one thing to talk baseball, another thing to talk baseball with your friends, yet another thing to talk baseball with people who work in the sport (and love it as much as you do) and still yet another to talk baseball with guys who have played it professionally and wear two-pound championship rings on their fingers. I take a tour of the restaurant, watching the players enjoy their duties as waiters and busboys and bartenders. I watch Scott � the team's resident heartthrob � please all the pre-teen girls just by walking by. I think he could recite the alphabet and they'd still stare at him. And then, as I'm about to leave to return to work, the musical entertainment (as in a guy, a guitar, and an amplifier) announces Scott's going to play a song. So I decide I have to stick around as he puts the guitar strap over his intentionally mussed blonde hair (that's his look) and goes into Stone Temple Pilots' "Push," hitting the chords and strumming along, contorting his face into rock-star-standard expressions of effort when hitting certain notes. While he plays, girls crowd around that corner of the bar, a smaller room set off between the bar and the entryway to the restaurant in back, and lean over the partition between the two. Why did he have to have the talent to play baseball AND perform covers of power ballads AND have the chiseled looks of a Ralph Lauren model AND the slight drawl of a Georgia country boy? He's really making it unfair for the rest of the players, running away with the lead on affection and attention from all women aged 12 to 42 along the Jersey Shore. The song ends and the girls and his teammates encourage another song, so Scott does them one better, playing a little Lifehouse and some Silverchair ...

But then I have to leave the fun and am back in the car, heading up Route 9 and over I-195 to the Parkway and the office, sitting down at my computer and basically spending the next four hours up to midnight shuttling back and forth between my terminal where I pull the box scores and standings and horse racing results and et. al. ad infinitum and code them up and send them off to the pagination system ... Where I shift to another terminal, one of just three in the immediate area (but of which there are several more scattered throughout the newsroom) and paginate the baseball page and the general scoreboard page and a few stories and such and then I'm done, and tired, and almost ready to come home ...

But first I go play on the internet a little, waiting around just to see if the rest of the copy editors need any help from me. I'm tired and have as much right as anyone does on any given night while working in their 11th hour of the day to go home, but I feel bad about leaving before deadline. Some people don't have a problem with that, but I do, and that's just me.

So to kill time, I play around on the internet. I find a good friend in our expanding community and then fool around on Emode just to see if there's anything I don't know about myself � like my personality is that of a movie star; my celebrity match is Cameron Diaz; my superpower is animal communication; if I were a dog I'd be a golden retriever; my career aspirations will eventually lead me to become a cruise director; and, the kicker of them all, my inner rock star is:

Beck

I told the guy next to me, "I just took a survey and found out my inner rock star is Beck."

"HA!" Fred said. "Loser."

So why don't you kill me?

And that has all led me back here, to my little corner of D-Land where I recount my day and struggle to keep my head up long enough to drop it down hard on my pillow in mere minutes ... whhhhhump!