A Sunday daylight entry, the cool breeze coming through the window on a sunny day, the wind chimes clanging below ...

I made the most of my weekend, which featured another Saturday night off, a pleasure becoming a little more frequent (though a streak that will end next week, because of vacations at work). After work Friday, I had two choices: I could drive 20 minutes to Sea Bright and meet up with some friends nearby and have a few drinks in the final 100 minutes before the bar closed at 2 a.m. Or, I could drive 80 minutes to Hoboken and meet up with some college friends at someone's apartment and drink until the party died.

I went to Hoboken.

Driving around the tiny one-way streets lined with cars and bar hoppers, I finally settled on the municipal lot, which cost me $20 for about 16 hours, but was worth the comfort of knowing I parked it in a fenced lot. It was a half-mile walk back to my friend Nate's building, and I buzzed my arrival at 1:30 a.m.

The party had dispersed a bit, but only to the bar across the street. I had a drink and talked with the half-dozen people left in the apartment before the rest of us went downstairs and into the bar. Most NJ bars close at 2 a.m., but some � like this one � stay open until 3 a.m., but won't let anyone in after 2. We arrived with 10 minutes to spare, downed a shot, bought some beers, and danced until 3. It was just a bar, not a club, so the music wasn't your typical club-thumping, bass-driven drivel. Sometimes, I prefer dancing to Tom Petty and Billy Joel and � in this case � the Beatles. A song I hadn't heard in ages (but I bought the tape years ago) really got things going: George Michael's "Freedom." The two women behind the bar began grooving to this one, sparking memories of movie scenes with similarities to "Cocktail" or "Coyote Ugly" and the dancing bartenders. This place finished up with "Sgt. Pepper's" and then "Hey Jude" to get everyone out.

When we went back across the street, of course there were people out returning to their places from others. Two girls walked by with chairs lifted from the trash on Willow St. Hoboken, passing Nate's building just as we crossed the street. It was garbage night, and one of the neighbors decided the chairs, like those that go with a table or something, had served their purpose. The girls disagreed, picked them up and continued walking, saying to the people who looked, "Hey, these are still good chairs." And then it hit me. I called out to them after they'd gotten a few steps past us, "Hey! Is that seat taken?" It was a great line, an almost perfect line, a great work of improv right there on that Hoboken street. And they didn't hear me. My friends did, and acknowledged my wit, but, alas, the ladies kept walking.

Back at the apartment, a few people crashed immediately, but my friend Matt (up from D.C.), this guy Bill and I � all of whom were sleeping in the living room � stayed up another half hour with one final bottle of beer in our hands talking.

Saturday morning, we rose in shifts. I awoke to Christy's voice, one of the girls who had been at the party. Kind of a weird situation (I never got the full story), but when I got to the apartment, she was dancing with this one guy, Glen, Nate's roommate. When we went to the bar, I asked Matt if she was dating Glen. Matt said no, she was with Bill. Later, she and Bill danced at the bar. When we went back to the apartment, Nate and his girlfriend went to bed, Matt and I found our spots on the floor, and Bill took the futon. Christy went and slept with Glen. BUT, in the morning, Christy and Bill took off for a day of climbing up in the hills of southern New York, while Glen aborted his plans to drive down the Shore to go surfing. Basically, with the dancing and the sleeping together, Glen and Christy completely acted like they were together; but with their plans laid out for Saturday, it sure appeared otherwise. It's not a big deal really, just something I'd thought about. So anyway, I woke up, hardly remembering where I was, my left hand numb because I'd tucked it under myself on the floor and cut off the blood flow, to hear Christy and Bill talking on the futon. Matt murmured and rolled over, and when I got up the strength to move, I lifted myself off the floor just enough to roll over on my back and close my eyes again. Very tired.

Once we finally got going, about 11:45, Matt and I walked to our cars, left our bags there, and boarded a bus to New York, where we got on the subway and headed out to Shea Stadium to see the Mets and Diamondbacks. We got there in the top of the second, but saw all the excitement in an 8-1 Mets win on a beautiful sunny, 65-degree day at Shea. We watched more than baseball. The two of us sat there, lounging in our Row J seats in the loge section, about even with the edge of the infield dirt and outfield grass on the third-base side. And as we watched the game, we watched the women too.

"Matt, down there, red hat!"

"Dan, by the tunnel, on the cell phone, with the Hooters shirt tied around her waist."

"Walking up from near the field, straight ahead, black tank top."

"When I sat down in the field section using someone's season tickets I'd been given, I saw more beautiful women than in the rest of this stadium put together," I told him of a game I went to last year. "They're all there after work in their business suits, beers in hand, likely using the company's tickets for the night. Man, it was sweet."

Baseball: America's pastime. I'm pretty convinced that my future wife is out there at a ballgame somewhere. Whoever marries me will have to understand my passion for the game � especially if I'm a beat writer covering a team. It would be great to meet someone at a ballpark; then I'd be sure she's be the right one. I wouldn't have any doubts whatsoever.

After the game, we retraced our steps, got in the cars and drove back to my place. We went to dinner at the local bar, Val's, and watched the Devils game, stolen from us by the officials (I can't get into that now), and drank and drank.

Back here, we watched "The Replacements," a rather horrible movie. Watching it, I realized that I just know too much about sports to know that there were way too many logistical mistakes in the film. Among those that survived in my mind this morning:

� Striking football players would not hang out in groups and harrass the scabs taking their places on the field. The quarterback does not lead a bullying gang of tough guys as if they're out on the playground at recess picking on the weaker kids. When pro athletes strike, one representative from each team dresses up in thousand-dollar suits and joins in on the negotiations. The rest get in their Ferraris and Hum-Vees and go on cruises and vacations abroad.

� If this was supposed to be the NFL (as I think it was), there would not be four games left to the season in Washington if Keanu Reeves (Eddie Falco in the movie) was sitting on a boat in Baltimore Harbor in short sleeves.

� Even if the players went on strike, the cheerleaders wouldn't, so why the hell did they need new cheerleaders.

� Cheerleaders would never practice in the stadium alongside the team. Part of the reason being the unlikely knowledge Annabelle had in giving Eddie the scouting report on Detroit.

� A star quarterback, let alone the best in the league, would never cross the picket line on his own, particularly not if he had been so strong in his convictions when bullying Eddie. And one entire team would not break the strike lines (as the "Dallas" team did). Once the strike was settled, they'd be ostracized.

� The season doesn't end on Thanksgiving. And there's no way a strike that starts with four games to go in the season ends so quickly and cleanly the day after the last game is played, right before the playoffs. It's unlikely that they'd know, playing the last game, that by that time the next day the strike would be settled.

� This is a minor point, and doesn't really apply to the extent that the others do because this is a movie, but John Madden and Pat Summerall would not broadcast four straight games during the regular season involving the same team. Besides, John Madden sucks. Worst sports commentator on TV. I don't care what he knows, his delivery, method, vocabulary and everything else is repetitive, over the top, and annoying.

I realize that a lot of liberties are taken in writing movies, and that in order to have a good movie, you need an antagonist, someone who gets in the way and tries to prevent the main character from reaching his goal. Without the star quarterback harrassing Eddie and coming back for the final game, you don't have much for a movie.

That's the point.