Ah, the first-annual Eff That Guy Party for Lefty. A success in so many ways.

…so many ways I really can’t talk about here. For so many reasons. Just to summarize: We gave attendees the opportunity to take their aggressions with various, um, smashing-oriented activities—all of which were wildly popular. Hopefully a few pictures will suffice.

A homemade pinata, in the likeness of That Guy (who is a Redwings fan, obviously).

Guest of honor Lefty. I don't know what she's holding,

but I'm sure she was responsible for breaking it.

 Mrs. Wonderful (aka Andrea Rankin) demonstrates one of the

more popular activities, as a cow-shaped napkin ring prepares to meet its maker.

See me take down a dinner plate on video. (Note the goggles--safety first!)

Rock Star Kim goes after a bigger prize, Krazy Kevin's car.

(No Kias were injured in the taking of this picture.)

Sunday afternoon, while we relocated our composure (and as much of our dignity as we could sweep up from the garage), Ma was putting the finishing touches on her 42-year career at the Asolo. Not a day I was looking forward to, to be honest, but she’s certainly excited about the free time. Look for a little Q & A spread I did with her in our May issue, which should be out in the next week or so. For the time being, check out Jay Handelman’s piece that ran in Sunday’s paper.

It was weird this morning: Recently, Ma’s been calling me at work on Mondays (her theatrical day off for the last four decades). She’ll get out of her yoga class and swing by Starbucks, and we enjoy a quick chat on the sidewalk in front of our office. This afternoon, she called to say she was taking a rain check. “I’ll see you sometime later this week,” she said, and my mind instinctively tried sorting through her schedule of rehearsals and matinees and evening performances—before I realized that, nope, she’s free and clear of all that now. Weird. But I could certainly get used to Tuesday-morning coffee.

Of course, as you’ve no doubt heard, there’ve been some big changes happening in my workplace as well. It’s still work work work as usual from where I stand, albeit with a little extra vim, vigor and vitale in the office attitude. Which is helpful, because I’m one feature down, one to go for the June issue, plus two departments and a special section, plus elbow-deep in Top Companies revenues and preparing for the nonprofit onslaught of Charity Register updates. So good morale is important to me right now.

Outside of all that madness, now that CCB and I have wrapped up the travel hockey season as well as our big spring party, plus gotten through Valentine’s and Easter and, consequently, the heft of tourist season, I’m looking forward to a little rhythm and normalcy in my extracurricular life. For our weekly routine, we’ve got the usual sports lined up (hockey, boxing, roller hockey, hockey, kickball and wildcard). But outside of that, I’m going to sit back and enjoy a lack of plans for the next week or two. It’s good to have a little negative space in the schedule. We’ll see how long I can resist the compulsion to fill it.