A rock star wants my job.

Imagine that, a songwriter, a guy who writes some well-known, catchy songs, would love to be a sports writer. I, of course, would enjoy his job. If only I could read music and understand chords and carry a tune.

But let me start from the beginning ...

I woke up at 4:30 this morning after three hours' sleep so I could catch a 5:30 train with my mother and sister into New York to go see the Today show. Some friends of mom's were meeting in the city to go see the Jackie O exhibit (her wardrobe, I believe) at the Met, but beforehand we were crowding into the plaza at Rockefeller Center to see Mary Chapin Carpenter perform on Today. We rode the train and subway amid the early-morning commuters and walked over to the plaza with the other tourists. We got a spot not far from the stage ... only we were behind it. We could see into the studio a little, and above the windows outside were flat-screened TVs so we could watch what was on the air at that moment. That's how we watched Katie Couric's interview inside with Ewan MacGregor.

But behind the stage was still a decent view, and Katie gave the people in the back a quick shout-out after interviewing Chapin onstage. We even got on TV. I am certain because at one point, a cameraman on a little crane, a cherry-picker of some sort, turned and focused the camera almost directly on me. When the red light went on and the live feed came from his camera, he panned from me across the crowd. Pretty cool. I was the one with the (darker) red hair in an off-white shirt holding a camera. I was probably the only one who wasn't waving, standing next to the 16-year-old Girl Scouts from Virginia Beach, one of them with a mother in a green shirt who apparently was programed to yell, "GIRL SCOUTS RULE!" every seven minutes or so, or when it appeared a cameraman might be breathing.

After the show, Mom and Jess and their friends went off to meet some others who weren't quite up for the dawn patrol to go to the Jackie O exhibit. I wanted to spend a little time in the city, so I walked up Fifth Avenue, starting at St. Patrick's and passing all the high-end stores. And who knew � New York stores open at 10 a.m. So I walked passed the lifeless windows of Saks, Hugo Boss, Fortunoff, Bruno Magli, Gucci, Bergdorf's, then the Trump Towers and Tiffany's. With her husband walking ahead a few steps then stopping to wait and repeating the dance, a woman stopped at each of the five windows of Tiffany's on Fifth and 57th and filmed the displays with her camcorder.

I crossed back over Fifth and went over to the Plaza and sat on a bench near the fountain, New York honking around me, the buildings towering above. I looked over at the hotel and thought, I'm going to spend a night there someday. And I decided to return sometime at night and shoot photos of the fountain, the water all rushing into a soft blur, the lights (I'm assuming) shimmering off the surface.

Walking back down Fifth as it nears 10 a.m., I pass a man buffing the gold plaque at Harry Winslow Jewels and find myself waiting at each crosswalk with another man shooting pictures of the New York morning street scene. Crossing 53rd I look disdainfully west at the banners outside the MoMA and wish I had time, but I'm already tired and weary and longing for my seat on the train back home.

After a quick stop in Times Square, I'm back in Penn Station at 10:45 � two minutes after a train to the Shore departed. So I'm forced to wait an hour for the next one, but it's not all bad � I sit in the waiting area with a large lemonade and two pretzels from Auntie Anne's, which for some reason wasn't open at 7 a.m. and squashed my hopes of having one earlier.

Listening to the Cowboy Junkies' new release, Open, I fall asleep on the train for nearly 45 minutes and am surprised when I wake up we're only in Woodbridge, which is still half an hour from home, yet I'm at the end of the CD. It just seemed like I should've been farther.

After returning home, where it is now in the 80s and humid, I drive over to Red Bank to say hello to Ann, my friend Walker's mother. It's her sister who's married to Mike Timmins, the guitarist and songwriter for Cowboy Junkies. Ann got me on the guest list for tonight's show at the Count Basie Theater, and I wanted to see what she and her husband were planning to do as far as going to the concert. I figured I'd walk over with them.

I know she's home by the van in the driveway and the front door being open, so I ring the bell and she welcomes me in. As we walk back toward the kitchen, she says, "C'mon on and meet Mike. We're just sitting down to lunch."

And there, in the kitchen, is Mike Timmins.

Ann explains I'm a friend of her son and a sportswriter at the local paper. "Mike would love to have your job," she says to me.

He smiles and nods and then begins asking me about my job. So over lunch, the three of us talk sports and music and the inside happenings of the newspaper industry. Being from Toronto, Mike's born a hockey fan, so we talk a little about the Devils, and about the local baseball team I cover, and then a little about music and touring and the road. Particularly Norfolk, Virginia, from where the band has come most recently. They played Norfolk Wednesday night, arriving in Red Bank yesterday. We bring up some past Junkies memories from previous shows and I get the chance to do something I've thought of doing for a long time � I'm able to tell a songwriter how much I appreciate one of his songs. I explained to Mike how Miles From Our Home was released the day before I left on my post-graduate cross-country trip in 1998, and how the title track became my theme song driving across the deserts of the Southwest and the plains of Kansas and all points in between.

Back outside, as Ann went to drive Mike back to his hotel, she asked if the black car across the street was mine. I said it was and Mike turned to me and asked, "Did you go to Notre Dame?" after seeing the ND sticker in the window. I don't know why I got a kick out of that, but that, too, I found really cool.

So now I'm inside this air-conditioned room about to take a nap to make sure I don't yawn through the entire set tonight.

And I also have to look up the time for the show, since I don't have a ticket in hand and forgot to ask during lunch.

So yeah, it's starting out as a great weekend.

The 250th Entry Celebration was the last one, in case you missed it. I know elliemae didn't.