Early Saturday morning:

1. Welcome stefka and stonetimber. Vermont is in the house!

2. You really have to read the whole story at the Albany Times-Union to understand what absolute idiots the radio talk-show hosts were:

ROTTERDAM -- For nearly two years, Athena Andrikopoulos didn't get an apology from the radio station that mocked her burn condition during a morning talk show.

But she will receive a $1 million settlement, under an agreement finalized Thursday in state Supreme Court in Albany. It was reached only hours after the Guilderland woman tearfully testified about the impact of a Feb. 15, 2006, broadcast on the former "JR in the Morning" program on WRCZ (94.5 FM).

"The money didn't mean anything to me," Andrikopoulos, 26, said during a Thursday afternoon interview in her family's business, the Redwood Diner in Rotterdam, where she was joined by her parents and siblings. "They used my scars as a joke just to get ratings. What they got in the end is a girl who is emotionally scarred."

Radio personality J.R. Gach and sidekick Shawn Bolts identified the woman as "Susie Burns" -- and a host of other jaw-dropping monikers -- and labeled her family's restaurant the "genetic mutant diner" during the broadcast.

3. You know you're having a tough day when you lay down early the evening because you have just had a disturbing nightmare in which:

You lose all your stuff somewhere in Boston.
You get lost.
Some SCA people from another kingdom pop into it as an interlude.
A little girl with metal claws on her hands rakes your arms up and down.
A guy befriend you, then he and his buddy try to get you into a room for clearly nefarious purposes.
And it ends with you on the phone with your mother telling you how much you have disappointed her.

4. Speaking of my mother, word out of central Pennsylvania is that she will be on the Internet for the first time soon. That will be great, but any "Two Lumps" fans know what I am afraid of. ;) So do I get her a LiveJournal? Hehehehehe.

5. Anyone following Doonesbury? I think the stuff with B.D. is just fascinating.

6. Since I have about a 30-minute ride to work, I am planning to listen to audio books. I am currently listening to Liam Clancy's "The Mountain of the Women." My dad was half Irish (and half Italian) and he an Mom loved the stuff. Of course, now, Niki and I alternate between the Clancy Borthers and the Dropkick Murphys. Clancy reads the book himself. I love the accent. Facinating stuff about the roots of folk in America in the 1950s and 1960s. I will write more when I am done.