Point A: I have no real theme today, but I've fallen into a nice steady Monday/Wednesday/Friday routine as of late, so I feel like I should keep that going. Point B: I have a busy day ahead of me, including a drive to the other side of Minneapolis to pick up Barbara's watch from the only repair place in Minnesota that could fix it and a last trip to Kinko's (okay, it's officially called FedEx Office now, but it's still Kinko's to me) to collect the final batch of "show & tell" things for next week's trip to LRS in Springfield. And, finally, Point C: I have this large pool of odd little factoids, some of which are connected in the oddest of possible ways, so I guess I'll just throw everything in a big heap here and let it all fall wherever it wants to fall. Basically, I have no plan and very little time, but I do have some interesting (I hope) things to share.

I shall commence the blogging with an update on our NHRA hockey pool, seen here. Despite a poor day on Thursday (the column headed by the letter Y is your total score from the day before, which is also known as "Yesterday"), Neighbor Dave continues to hold onto the top spot, now with a large 15-point lead over Greg Ozubko, who is followed closely by Rob Flynn. More on Ozubko in a bit...

If you look down to the No. 12 spot, you'll see I am now (as of this morning) officially known as Geddy Wilber. There's a reason for that, but it shall also follow shortly.

Notables to spot include that Canuck hoser Jeff Arend (eh) in 7th, with Bob Vandergriff right on his tail, and how about the husband and wife duo of Sheila and Chris Cunningham in 9th and 10th! They swear they didn't cheat and peek at each other's picks. Yeah, right. Susie Worsham's technique of selecting only the cutest guys for her team is working out better this year, and Dan Hood is hanging in there as well, no doubt cheered on by his wife, a certain Ashley from the Force family. With Jimmy Prock right behind him, Dean Antonelli way back, and Ron Douglas (the pride of Highland, Illinois - Go Bulldogs!) firmly holding down the 40th and final spot, you might think young Mr. Hood leads the Force contingent, but that's not so. My boy Matt Madden, who is in 11th place, is a JFR crew member. For the record, Ron Douglas' fatal flaw was allowing his heart to overrule his head, by picking a bunch of St. Louis Blues (obviously his favorite team). You need to check your actual team allegiance at the door, if you want to win in this league.

Okay, back to Ozubko... He sent along a photo the other day, which is prominently displayed as the first pic in today's gallery, down below. Greg recently got married to the lovelyJami Butterfield, so his 88-year-old mother was there for the ceremony, and she joined him and a couple of his hockey-playing friends for a quick photo after they came off the ice at their local rink down in Georgia (Greg, who is on the left, is a goalie - and yes, they do play hockey in Georgia). Quick: Who can name the other two guys in the photo? Answer at the very bottom...

Greg is also, of course, involved in the new Geddy Wilber appellation on the hockey pool rankings, since he's the pool administrator and has exclusive access to change names. The name Geddy is, as I'm sure you know, a direct Rush reference (to lead singer and bass player, Geddy Lee) and my new name is connected to the fact Mr. Ozubko sent me his hockey photo in reply to a note I had just sent out, to a bunch of my hockey buddies, about Rush drummer Neil Peart. Neil, it turns out, just recently recorded a new version of "The Hockey Theme" for sports network TSN in Canada. "The Hockey Theme" is played on TSN hockey broadcasts, so this is a pretty big deal to have a drummer like Neil Peart do a new version of it.

I sent along a TSN video, shot in the studio, because Neil was not only wearing a hockey jersey when he recorded the song, he also had his traditional drumming hat on, but this one featured the logos of the "Original Six" NHL teams (quick, who can name the "Original Six?") and he is playing on a new custom drum kit, created for him by DW and featuring the logos of all 30 current NHL teams. If you want to check it out, go here: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=301709.

Onto different subjects... My wife (who got to be part of ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ on Wednesday) finally got home from New York last night, a day later than planned due to the big storm. That 24-hour delay was more than just an inconvenience because it put her, quite literally, in the line of fire.

If you didn't hear the news, an unlicensed street vendor who was hawking his stuff on the sidewalk in front of the Marriott in Times Square, was approached by NYC police, and he reportedly fled when they asked for his vending license. According to newspaper reports, he then stopped, turned, and pulled a gun, aiming it at the officers. According to my own first-hand reports, direct from my wife Barbara who was waiting in line to get in a taxi while standing in front of the same Marriott, it went something like "Pop... Pop... Pop-Pop-Pop" and then the street vendor staggered under the hotel portico and collapsed. She was no more than 20 yards away.

Lots of people were panicking, although she also said that it was uniquely New York-like in the way the people reacted. Some ran, some screamed, some just acted as if nothing had happened, but her immediate thought, as hoards of police officers descended on the scene from all directions (including a group on horseback, at full gallop!) was the far more practical, "If I don't get out of here and into a cab, they're going to shut this whole area down, and I'll never get to the airport."

She walked to the head of the taxi line and asked the nattily-attired valet guy, "Where can I go to get in a cab, right now?" and he said "Come with me." He took her across the street and a whole block away where he flagged a cab for her, sending her on her way to LaGuardia. Now that's actually pretty impressive, and the tip she gave him was commensurate with his effort.

After I got all this news from Barbara, I sent out a note to my brother and sister, with a link to a New York newspaper's immediate online report of the shooting, and instantly got a note back from my brother, Del. He wrote, "I was there too, not more than 20 yards away from it." Amazing. My wife and my brother had to have been no more than a couple of feet apart from each other when the whole sordid thing went down. As I wrote to Del: "Small world! In this case, far too small." Wow...

All's well now, though (not for the street vendor with no license, who thought pulling a gun on a New York City cop was a good idea), Barb is home (actually at work) and that drama is yet another story for us to tell (I just did). There's a full day's supply of parentheses in one sentence.

When we got up this morning, we looked out onto the sun-drenched frozen pond and saw not only a whole bunch of tracks, but also a new string of very odd bumps. It seems like every year there's something new going on with the pond that I've never seen before. The bumps are so big, at first I thought they were human footprints, but then I realized they would've had to have been made by a one-legged guy hopping across the pond, because they're all lined up in a single-file row that meanders all along the edge of the pond.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out what's going on, although I still don't know exactly why it's happening. It looks like a rabbit originally hopped across the pond, right after the snow quit the other day, and since then all of his footprints have morphed into these larger blobs that project up from the surface like inverted plaster-of-Paris castings. How did I put two and two together to figure that out? The process is still on-going, with the latest set of prints, heading off in a new direction. As the photo in the gallery shows, each print eventually turns into a bump. Very strange...

Well... I gotta get to Kinko's (FedEx Office) and then to the watch-repair place. It's warming up today. I think it's all the way up to 3 whole degrees right now. At least that's above zero! Oh, and special thanks to blog reader Mike S., on the island of Maui, who sent me this note today: "Bob. The weather here on Maui has been terrible. The last few nights have seen early morning dips into the high 60s. I have to wear my fleece-lined Croks until 8:00 a.m., but I can still wear shorts." Thanks, Mike. Thanks a lot.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Oh, and here's the answers to the questions up above...

Standing with Greg Ozubko are a couple of his hockey buddies. That's former NHL first-round pick and 13-year veteran Scott Pearson in the middle and former Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Tom Glavine on the right. As for naming "The Original Six" franchises in the NHL, that would be the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins, the New York Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Detroit Red Wings. They were the only teams in the league for about 25 years, until the first NHL expansion in 1967. They all actually date from the mid-1920s or earlier, but a number of other early teams failed to survive The Great Depression and World War II, leaving "The Original Six" to play it out by themselves from 1942 to 1967. Quick, name the six 1967 expansion teams for extra bonus points... tick-tock-tick-tock... That would be the St. Louis Blues, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Minnesota North Stars, the Los Angeles Kings, and the never-to-be-forgotten California Seals. Pat yourself on the back if you got all of that right.

Wilber, out!