I am disheartened. My fantasy hockey team is in shreds. I have four injured players and I can’t afford to have zero-points-earners on my roster because I am nearly ONE HUNDRED points behind Leigh-Ann! Ack! But I didn’t want to tweak my roster; after a couple of initial moves, I was happy with the guys I had. Still, can’t afford any slackasses - the Unseen University Wizards had to be renovated.

First of all I dumped one of my goalies, Jean-Sebastien Giguere. I picked him during our draft, then learned he was injured, substituted Sean Burke for him and put Giggy back in the lineup once he'd healed. Well, he’s all injured again but - dehydration?!? What a stupid injury for a hockey player. How can you get dehydrated?!? Melt some ice, problem solved. Now I have Andrew Raycroft of the Boston Bruins, a goalie I’ve never even heard of, but he was the highest-ranked goalie available that wasn’t hurt or David Aebischer.

Then I needed to sack Alexei Kovalev, Sergei Gonchar and Martin St. Louis, meaning I needed two right wingers and a D-man. But, dang it all, I didn’t want to change them! I wanted Kovalev and Gonchar. I love Martin St. Louis. Curses! I put Nick Lidstrom in on D and I felt okay about that. I guess. Next I took Milan Hejduk and Ziggy Palffy, the highest rated non-wounded right wings available, but something about that was bugging me. Something was awry in my universe but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I returned to the more important work I’m actually supposed to be doing (more on this later) and suddenly it hits me, with the cold sudden shock of a puck to the nose: Milan Hejduk is a STINKIN’ COLORADO AVALANCHE.

I summarily dumped his Lanchey behind and put Martin St. Louis back in his rightful place. I don’t want to lose, but it’s important to have principles. Martin has a broken tip-of-pinky; maybe it won’t last too long. I’m not feeling good about my team, particularly, but I’m not sure what to do.

As far as work goes, I may be trapped in the movie “Groundhog Day”. Some unutterably stupid woman keeps calling to harass me about an unpaid invoice for one of the companies. She’s right, I didn’t pay it - mainly because I didn’t get it. Could be it was sent to the wrong address, got lost in the postal system or arrived on one of those days where I chuck all the company mail straight into the garbage without opening any of it, which I try to do at random times at least twice per month just for kicks, because it’s such fun to spend my time tracking down all the missing payments, invoices and correspondence. I call it “Corporate Lotto”.

Anyway, this woman - we’ll call her Moronna - telephoned for the first time on Thursday, 11/3. I looked it up, told her I had no record of the particular invoice she was checking on (it hadn’t been paid but been lost in the mail or whatever) and that if she’d fax it to me, I’d get it paid. I never got a fax and I did wonder about it, but I thought maybe I’d misunderstood and she'd be mailing it instead. Then, because I have other things to occupy my day, Fantasy Hockey being only one of them, I forgot about it. I do A/R and A/P for six different companies plus The Boss personally, so it's not exactly the only thing on my mind.

Moronna starts calling for follow-up on Friday the 11th, a day I was taking off and hence not spending in my office. She’s doing this “bill collector harassment” voice and threatening me with such dire consequences. Like I care. But she didn’t even give me a chance to call back - she left three messages that day in escalating levels of threat. So Monday I called her, reminded her that I’d spoken with her previously, during which conversation we'd ascertained that I didn’t have this particular invoice and needed it to be faxed. She said she saw a note that they needed to fax it in the file (er, no comment) but acted like she had no memory of being the person who’d talked to me or having that conversation or anything. So we went over everything - and I do mean everything - from scratch, including fax numbers and addresses and stuff. And she writes slowly, people - oh so very slowly.

You know where this is going, right?

I never get any mysterious invoice fax Monday or yesterday. I walk in the door today, running late because of traffic and heavy rain, grab for the ringing phone one instant too late and check my voice mails. I have TWO messages from Moronna, one at 8:30 this morning and yes, she turns out to be the call I just missed a little after nine. Once again, she tries to threaten me with untold suffering if I don’t straighten my deadbeat butt out and pay this bill. Once again, I call her back and remind her that I’ve spoken to her twice before and that I STILL FREAKING NEEDED THE BLOODY FAX. She keeps on hassling me about how far past due it is - and oh, is it ever, it was due October 15 - and it's SOOO very much money, too: one hundred thirty-three dollars, oh Holy Mother of God, the collapse of the entire US economy may well hang in the balance! I tell her I’m aware of this, she’s told me before, and I’d be thrilled to process her payment if she’d fax the accursed thing. She ignores this and starts to talk of the dark and mysterious evils that befall people who don’t pay their bills on time. I cut her off and say, in a very supercilious tone, “Madam, I would be THRILLED to pay you but public accountants have certain standards to which we are required to adhere, the most important of which you obviously fail to grasp, that being that we do not process payments willy-nilly, without timely accurate invoices for same. Now if you would just hang up the phone, WALK OVER TO YOUR FAX MACHINE AND SEND ME THE INVOICE, LIKE I’VE ASKED YOU TO DO AT LEAST FIVE TIMES, I will see to it that it gets paid. It’s really not that difficult a concept to grasp.”

This hurt Moronna’s feelings, apparently, but I don’t care because - heh heh - I actually used the word “willy-nilly” in a business conversation today. Sometimes I long so much to grab people by the shoulders, shake them violently and spew spittle into their faces as I scream, "WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?????"