It's been a strange weekend. Friday night was one of the best, most fun nights of my life (thus far, anyway). My brother and I went to a hockey game together as the Toronto Maple Leafs were in town playing the Atlanta Thrashers. For me, that's a great combo because those are my two second-favorite teams so no matter how it turns out, I can be happy.

We debated a bit about seats and tickets. In Philips Arena (well, anywhere I suppose) some seats in the $85 range are quite good, but many of them aren't any better than the $25 seats - you're still too far from the ice to follow the puck easily, you're still looking down through a sea of heads and if anything interesting happens you have to watch it on the JumboTron anyway. And we figured, if we're going to be watching the entire game on the JumboTron, we might as well do it from $10 seats - so instead of buying tickets in advance, we just showed up at the arena a couple of hours before the game to see what was available. What was available was Row B, second row from the glass to the right of the Thrashers bench - w00t! Those were a bit more pricey - triple digits - but I hadn't bought Bo a birthday present (it was in August, I'm running a little behind) and because of the lockout we had spent no money on hockey all last year, so I figured what the hell.

It was SOOOOO worth it. We were inches from the action. I took many pictures, including one of Tie Domi punching somebody! You don't see that every day. (Well, you DON'T. The Leafs don't play every day.) See how close we were? Flippy saw Bo on t.v. but apparently I was blocked by a pole - I didn't even notice it was there, I guess because I was looking at various angles to the ice, depending on the action.

This next bit is good even if you have no interest in hockey: during warmup, the Thrashers were practicing at our end of the rink. A bunch of little kids were standing at the edge of the boards watching and one little girl with long blonde hair kept waving at Peter Bondra. When warmup was nearly over, he looked at the little girl, then up to my brother and said, "Down there?" Bo nodded, Peter nodded back and flipped a puck up over the glass to Bo, who caught it and gave it to the little girl. It was so sweet! He did it a couple more times, looking at Bo like "you ready?" and flipping the pucks up to him for the little kids. I thought that was way cool.

But extreme highs in my life are usually accompanied by extreme lows and after such a fabulous Friday, Saturday arrived and with it, my near-demise. After running errands and having lunch, I started feeling badly - achy all over, that weird kind of almost-headache, woozy and my throat hurt quite a bit, along with that slimy, coated feeling. I took a nap but didn't feel much better so I settled down in the living room floor to play some PS2 and that's when I felt it!

I had this sharp pain in my thigh so I ran my hand down my leg. Even through my jeans, I could feel this large welt and it hurt. It was far enough around toward the back of my thigh that I couldn't see it, so I sought help from Alan, who was at this very computer at the time.

"Look at my leg!" I pleaded. "I've been bitten by something!"

"Hey, wow, sweetie," he said. "You're right, that's a huge insect bite. Do we have anything to put on it?"

"What do you mean, 'insect bite'?" I said, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "It is obvious that I have been SNAKEBITTEN, and that's why I feel so weird."

"Um, sweetie?" he said, all irritatingly nonchalant. "If it was a snakebite, there would be two welts with little puncture wounds and all you have is one big one."

"Well, it could be a snake with just one fang! You don't know!"

"Why would a snake have only one fang?"

"Maybe he broke one gnawing through the doorjamb, or he tried to bite Sprocket first and it broke off on his collar spikes, or...it could be anything! There are a million reasons why a snake might have just one fang. It's snakebite, I know it."

"What kind of snake do you think it was?" [he was trying to suppress laughter - he'll be sorry when I'm dead and the coroner tells him it was snakebite.]

"Copperhead, probably. They're all over Georgia. A one-fanged copperhead got me."

"Sweetie, I don't think --"

"Google it! Google it and see if everything that's wrong with me isn't symptoms of snakebite!"

[flurry of typing]

"My God, sweetie, you're right. Sore throat, achy muscles, slight fever, stuffy nose - it's all right here! You're displaying all the classic symptoms of snakebite. You'd better let me cut an 'X' with a razor blade and suck the poison out," Alan offered bravely.

"No, don't bother," I said, resigned to my fate. "It's too late now, I can feel the poison coursing through my body. I'll just go to bed and die."

"That's good. I'm gonna surf a little more, okay?"

So I went off to bed to die but much to my surprise, I woke up this morning (as astute readers will have guessed already). My throat still hurts but I don't feel woozy or achy anymore. There is only one logical explanation: years of living on nothing but single-malt Scotch and potato chips have strengthened my body, rendering me invincible! I am immune to snakebite.

This is important news. I may even go hiking in the woods once the leaves start to turn, as I have nothing to fear from Nature. (Heh - me. Go hiking. Sometimes I crack myself up.)