There’s about 20 seconds left but I think it’s safe to say this game is done. Actually, I think it was safe to say that in the third quarter!

I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about tonight’s Celtics-Lakers game. It looks like St. Patrick’s Day today - everywhere you look, everyone is wearing green (myself included). Maybe we could call it “St. Auerbach Day?” Hell, it’s gotta beat the purple and yellow Lakers fans are wearing… right?

I just think it’s about time the Celtics, Boston’s perennial champion of the 20th century, enter the new millennium and reclaim their place in town, you know, with the Red Sox and my Patriots showing them up lately.

At least today wasn’t unbearable at work. Shocking, I know. Actually it was kind of fun because this afternoon, a local cub scout came in to learn about newspapers for some boy scout badge, and I gotta tell ya, he was the cutest kid EVER! He couldn’t have been any older than seven but he actually showed interest in what I was saying. I’ve had boy scouts come in before for badges but this kid was the most fun. All told, he earned his badge and my dad didn’t suck as badly as usual. I’m even thinking of sneaking a little “hello” to him in tomorrow’s paper.

These 9 p.m. Celtics-Lakers start times are killing me! I had to hurl myself out of bed this morning and my boyfriend - my poor sleep-deprived boyfriend - was a cranky nightmare. BUT every yawn, every watery eye, every cup of coffee is so worth it because watching Ray Allen & Co. stick it to the Lakers last night was truly STUNNING!

After the abysmal first quarter, I thought my boyfriend’s head was going to explode. I now know why he doesn’t regularly watch sports like I do - he gets too angry. We even switched it to something else for much of the second quarter but I insisted watching the second half and my boyfriend is glad we did.

Even my dad, Mr. “There’ll Never Be Another Larry Bird”, got into the game and came running into our room early in the fourth quarter to tell me that this current incarnation of the Celtics reminded him of the teams from his youth.

Now this might sound like Boston heresy but I almost (emphasis on “almost”) want the Celtics to lose Sunday night so that if they win this series, they can do it at home in the Garden. As awesome as it would be to see a bunch of phony celebrities wincing as they sit in their comped seats at the Staples Center, it would be so much better to see the Garden completely explode (figuratively, of course).

As you might remember, I got fired and subsequently unfired on Tuesday. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to go into work on Wednesday (which just so happens to be production day). I guess there’s some truth to that whole, “It’s not smart to live paycheck-to-paycheck” thing because then you get stuck in situations like this.

I decided I would give them a real scare and show up at 10 a.m. When I walked in, my mean boss (who, from this moment on, I will refer to as “Mean Boss”) was on my computer. I went outside and had a butt until he got off, not saying two words to him.

Once I got back in, the day went on as any other Wednesday would. I had a lot of work to do to take my mind off my seething anger. Then, Mean Boss came out of his office on another rampage. I don’t even know what set him off this time but an almost identical confrontation occurred between him and a co-worker. Again, he threatened to call the police to have her removed. What’s with the police thing?

As they were screaming at each other, I tried as hard as I could to not laugh but it was so hard when Mean Boss started screaming, “You must respect me!” Eric Cartman anyone? All that was missing from his tirade was fist-clenching and jumping up and down.

Long story short, she’s gone and I’m left there all alone with Mean Boss and Nice Boss. I now have no co-workers which is horribly depressing. Mean Boss is still mean and I don’t know how I’m going to handle it all alone, taking on the full brunt of his bitter wrath. Pray for me, and my monster.com account.

So get this, I got fired today. Yep, fired. Me. From the newspaper. Fired, for the first time in my entire 15-year working history. And you’ll never believe why! Get this… I got fired because when my boss called me stupid I told him… get ready for it… not to talk to me like that.

Obviously, after so long my tone went from firm to all-out psycho bitch but in my defense, one person can only handle so much. This particular guy calls me dumb on a regular basis and I sit there and take it. But today was different.

My boss started yelling at my over ad copy which I pasted from an advertiser’s email. There were errors in it but I had sent it to both him and the advertiser for corrections. It was by no means ready for publication and I told him that when he started screaming at me. When he called me an idiot, I said, “Don’t talk to me like that.”

So he says, “I’m the boss!”

I flipped out. Literally flipped out. I screamed, “That gives you no right to talk to me like that.”

He told me I was fired. “Fine,” I screamed.

We got into another mini-argument as I hastily grabbed my stuff off my desk and threw it into my bag. Keep in mind, this whole incident occurred in less than five minutes.

Then… now this sent me into hysterics… he threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave fast enough. The fucking POLICE! FOR ME! He’s 6-foot-oh I don’t know, 5″ and he’s telling me, Miss 5-foot-1, he’s going to call the cops to have me removed from the office. Why did he threaten to call the cops, you ask? Because I was on the phone telling my aunt that I got fired as I packed my stuff.

Don’t worry though, my other boss already UN-fired me because, I mean c’mon, but as I’ve been sitting here all afternoon, I don’t know if I want to go back. Today was the first time I was “fired” but arguments like this with my boss are nothing new. It seems like a six-month thing - I take the belittlement for so long and after awhile, I just can’t take it anymore. A blow out ensues and then a relative calm for another six months. I just can’t live like that.

I have to admit, I’ve really started to get into this Celtics-Lakers series. If only basketball was like this all season long, I’d probably be a devout fan.

Which reminds me of the kid my dad and I met in Disney World back in December of ‘06. He was clad in a Paul Pierce jersey and my dad said, “You don’t see many of them anymore.” After a brief conversation, we discovered he was 18, from Springfield (Mass, that is) and a lifelong Celtics fan despite not even being ALIVE during the last great championship era (Larry Bird, et al). Of course, my dad had to school him on the history of the Celtics, told him of how great the 60s and 80s were and how he should never give up his team because of its current record, using his own lifelong Patriots allegiance as an example.

Anyway, like I said, I have been watching the games and enjoying them but one thing that has stuck out in my mind is how MFing ugly the Lakers are and I’m not talking about how they play. Pau Gasol is FUG personified. The boyfriend tells me that ugly Lakers is nothing new and they had perhaps the ugliest basketball player of all time. Thanks (or not) to Google, a quick image search introduced me to… dun dun dun…

Really, my boyfriend is not one to discuss the appearance of other men so I knew when he said Kurt Rambis was one ugly M.F., he wasn’t joking. Wow, just wow.

Not only does my boyfriend have excellent taste in women (har har), he’s a bonafide hero now, too! Let me explain…

While I’m sitting here at the office, my boyfriend and his cousin decided to enjoy the heat at the beach. As they were relaxing, they overheard cries from a group of kids. They discovered a girl drowning and sprang into action, pulling the girl from the water and attempting CPR until paramedics arrived.

He was convinced the girl died and called me hysterical (which is so not like him) but he just got a call from state police telling him that the girl is in stable condition. There’s no word on if she suffered any brain damage because, as my boyfriend says, she was underwater for a long time, but alive is alive! He and his cousin are still shaken, but very much relieved knowing the girl is safe.

I knew he was good for something. I’m so proud of him, I can’t help but brag.

UPDATE: Really bad news, The Item is reporting now the girl died. My boyfriend is going to be heartbroken.

UPDATE 2: My boyfriend and his cousin were on Channel 7 (video on the right). I just got off the phone and he is really upset.

As you may or may not know, Wednesdays for me are the equivalent to torture. In fact, I think the CIA could benefit from this type of head-numbing agony.

For example, music torture is popular nowadays since it’s supposedly humane. Well, on Wednesdays I am also subject to music torture by way of Oldies 103. Over and over, the same HORRIBLE songs, and even if at one time I did like the song, when it’s played over and over and over and over… I’ll contemplate plunging my ear drums out with a pencil. My boss also likes to step up the misery by playing the same The Mamas & The Papas CD over and over and over. The band’s Greatest Hits album is the now constant soundtrack of any nightmare I have.

There’s the “Way Way Way Past Deadline” Torture. This kind of torture typically involves an advertiser sending over ten pages of text that he or she would like to fit into a 2″ x 2″ ad… an hour or two before MY DEADLINE (when the papers must be finished).

There’s the “What Am I, 4-1-flipping-1?!” Torture. I’m going to let you all in on a little secret here. Most newspapers are, believe it or not, businesses with competitors. Just because you want the phone number to our arch rival, and even if I know said phone number, if you call ME and ask for it I will not give it to you. I will also not give you the number to city hall, some guy that advertised in our paper last year, or the fax number to the local district court.

And I can’t forget the “Ang! Ang! Ang!” Torture. This is by far the greatest, most painful, most headache-inducing torture of all. For some reason, everyone in my office believes I am the know-all, fix-everything, so-awesome-I-can-handle-643-tasks-at-once, go-to person. I’ll get handed a fullpage ad with more copy than Homer’s “Iliad” and just when I start to get into a groove I’ll hear, “Ang! Ang! Ang! How do I… oh wait, I got it.” It requires nothing on my part but destroys any and all focus I had, causing me to start over. And the process repeats. “Ang! Ang! Ang! Last year, when did we run that [insert name of advertiser that hasn't advertised with us for ten years] ad?” “Ang! Ang! Ang! Did you get an email from [insert annoying communications company that keeps calling 50,000 times to see if we got their stupid press release name here]?” “Ang! Ang! Ang! Can you fix a paper jam in the printer?” Ang! Ang! Ang! The fax machine ran out of paper. What do we do?!” and so forth.

On Wednesdays, I can literally FEEL my blood pressure rising. I get a stiffness in my chest, my hands start to shake. Hell, if I was being interrogated by the CIA under these circumstances, I’d confess to kidnapping the Lindbergh Baby to just make it stop.