Time once again to renew my annual loud, obnoxious and ultimately futile call to reduce Wrigley Field to tiny, tiny pieces as soon as is humanly possible under the current rules and guidelines enforced by the various neighborhood associations and alderman (i.e., 34 years).

Sometimes all we can do is sit in the cheering section and hope for the best. I generally get the aisle seat which means the incessant vendors, late-arrivers, and the early departing can ruin the focus on the event. Saying a fond farewell to some dear ones this week has had somewhat of that same interrupted focus.

When former Batavia Bulldog defensive lineman Pfc. Jason Ledbetter e-mailed me a few weeks ago that he and the rest of his 3rd Infantry Division soldiers were moving up from Kuwait into Iraq, I asked him what he needed from home and to get me his address as soon as he had one.

Day six in a post-Anna Nicole world, and only now do I finally feel like things are starting to get back to a fragile sense of normalcy. For instance, this afternoon I turned on the TV, and they were talking about some dude with a beard named Mahmoud something or another. I didn’t catch the name. Long names make me sleepy. Anyway, he seemed angry.