I have no idea who Laura Ingraham is, but I can assure you she will not be invited to dinner at Casa Magnolia anytime soon...

That said, I think I'm ready to move on from the past five days of all Favre, all the time (although I'd like to commend the fine folks at the NFL Network for airing eight consecutive hours of His Holiness programming yesterday during an all-day downpour that a) flooded many local roads; b) made me not want to leave the house; and c) eventually gave way to wildly gusty winds that almost ripped the storm door clear off my abode, which led to me outside in bare feet, armed with a hammer and a screwdriver trying to perform an emergency repair during a watery deluge (and about which a future post about the resulting necessary repairs is sure to come).

But I digress...

A great weekend has helped me start to turn the corner. Friday, I had dinner with my brother and cousins at the Spanish Tavern in Newark. While this photo is not of our actual table but from the restaurant's home page, it's representative of our dining experience...

Tremendous eats. Excellent wine. Great time. I wish we could all get together like that more often, but life tends to get in the way.

From there, it was on to the Devils-Lightning game, my first hockey game in The Rock. The game itself (once we got there, near the end of the first period as such a great meal cannot be rushed) was outstanding, with the Devils earning a 2-1 victory as overtime expired.

Of much greater interest was the evacuation of two sections of the arena quite close to ours. The ambulance-chaser in me found it fascinating that hundreds of people were moved from their seats. We tried to ask some of the refugees from that section, who wound up standing below us, what precipitated the move, but apparently the Greater NJ Russian Hockey Fan Club was having an outing and no one could speak English to help enlighten us.

In the days of yore, that would have been the end of it and we have forever wondered what happened. But thanks to Al Gore, I was able to find the answer (a "smoke condition" from a pizza stand behind the sections) on the Ledger's Devils forum.

So thank you, Mr. Gore.

Saturday night was spent drinking Guinness and throwing darts with a sweet boy in a seaside bar and really, life just doesn't get much better than that.

And Sunday featured sleeping in until 10 (an absolute rarity), lunch with my parents at another seaside joint and a quick visit with the crazy Trio.

In personal administrative news, I have crossed #14 off the list after six hours of wardrobe elimination. I have amassed seven bags of clothes and shoes for Goodwill and somehow the closet is still full. But it's no longer overflowing, which I hope will make a difference. We'll see how long it lasts.

Man, this post has been a whole lot of me-me-me. Sorry about that.

That reminds me of a great line from one of my favorite movies, the little-seen but outstanding "Baby It's You." It's a classic girl-falls-for-boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks tale and scores major points from me for a) being the first film to feature Springsteen tunes, and b) the classic line: "The only people who matter in this world are Frank Sinatra, Jesus Christ and me."

Words to live by.