(Sunday Paper, Volume II, Issue 11)

Usually this time of year I'm traveling to New York for a fantasy baseball draft.

Or I'm hosting my friends for said draft.

Whichever direction we go, one of my friends has to take a plane...and we're all ditching significant others for the weekend.

This year, for the first time in more than a decade, we couldn't make a weekend work where we could all get together. (My comedy schedule is largely at fault.)

So for the first time in our fantasy baseball lives, we did the draft on the computer.

Some quick background - this is a four-man fantasy baseball league. Justin, Kevin, Dave, and I all went to college together. You'll get to know them better when they write their guest Sunday Papers later this year (they don't know this yet, but they'll do it), so I won't spend too much time introducing them. Just know that a) I definitely have real friends, and b) they're the best.

And to go along with the smaller-than-average league population (many leagues are 8- 10- or 12 teams), we only select players from the teams in the AL and NL East divisions. (We have 2 Red Sox fans, a Yankees fan, and a Mets fan, so this covers all of our favorites.)

And when I say above that we did this year's draft on the computer, I don't mean one of those typical Yahoo! drafts where you do an 'online draft'. I mean on Saturday morning we set up Gchat and saw each other and talked to each other and held the draft.

(I know Gchat has been a thing for years and people reading this have probably used it often, but I've never had occasion to talk to more than one person in different locations where anything more than FaceTime was necessary.)

It was great. We had some good laughs, I got a lot of players I will have fun rooting for, the games haven't started yet so I feel great about my team, and I resisted the temptation to take David Wright. So it was a very successful Saturday morning.

We haven't lived in the same city since we all lived in Boston 17 years ago now. We're currently spread out from Framingham, Massachusetts to Springfield, New Jersey to Washington, D.C. to Columbia, South Carolina.

We've held our draft in my basement, Dave's old apartment in Brighton, a hotel room in Boston, Justin's old New York City apartment, my parents' house in Queens, and now, for the first time ever, on-line.

It went well, and it was a really cool hangout...but I hope we're able to get together in person next year.

Writing

*Had a good working rhythm this week, got a lot done, and even was able to get some creative writing done, so it was a productive week on the writing front. Of course, as I mentioned last week (I think), Kathy was away for half the week, so I had to be home all the time and while I was home I worked.

Comedy

*Friday night I was part of a charity show in Newton and Saturday night I was part of a show in Jamaica Plain with Boston Comedy Chicks. Both shows were great. The charity show was with some fun comedians - enjoyed hanging out and talking with them during the down time. It was a really professionally run show, too, which was nice - those types of shows can sometimes be a disaster. The crowd enjoyed it too, so that was fun. Saturday night's show was also great. Strong lineup, good crowd. There's a Boston Comedy Chicks showcase show every second Saturday of the month at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain and another showcase on the second Sunday. They've been good to me, so you should support them.

*Can't believe this week is finally the Robert Kelly show I've been telling you about for a long time. Saturday, March 18th in Marlboro. The link has the rest of the details. (Just to be clear - I am not in this show. But it's a good comedy show in the Metrowest area for a good cause.)

*Where am I this week? Thursday in Quincy, Saturday I'm hosting a show I don't have a lot of details about...so come out to Quincy on Thursday. Next Sunday night I'm at The Hideout in Fanueil Hall - that will be a good time too.

What I've Been Enjoying

*In whatever down time I've had this week I've been basketball-ing it up...I've spent more time watching conference championship games this year than probably the past five years combined. I hope I'm not exhausting myself on basketball before the NCAA Tournament intensity begins on Thursday, but with the comedy shows I have scheduled and other family stuff during the day, I might not be able to immerse myself in the tournament the way I usually do...so I'm getting a little bit of my fix in now.

Notes

*One thing that's important to know about Justin, Kevin, and Dave: they've been, outside of Kathy - who far and away has the number one spot for what she puts up with - my biggest supporters in my comedy life since day one. What started out as an email to them on the day of my first open mic to make sure they held me accountable for going to sharing the terrible audio of all of my early attempts and getting their feedback to still getting audio emails to show off how far I've come...they've been incredibly patient, supportive, and instrumental in this journey. And if I become a huge success...I will delete this paragraph and take all the credit for myself.

*Last week I told you about 'The History of Comedy' on CNN and I mentioned four episodes, the fourth of which I hadn't yet watched on DVR. Turns out that fourth episode was pre-empted by breaking news...two weeks in a row. I guess that's the risk you run when you try to put other programming on a news station like CNN.

*Well, the snow cover is back. And now there's another huge storm coming this week. As we've touched upon before....I'm not a fan of winter/snow being spread out this much.

*The only thing I hate more than another foot-and-a-half of snow after all the other snow from the winter has melted: losing an hour of sleep. It's about to be a grouchy Sunday for me.