I broke the cardinal rule of a sports fan: never schedule a major life event such that it will conflict with a sport you care about.

Corollary One: Don't get married during football season, ever. No exceptions. Your team may have a bye week this year, but they won't again next year-- and your friends who are fans of different teams are screwed even if you aren't.

Corollary Two: Getting married during baseball season is not ideal, but could possibly be acceptable* as long as it is not done (a) on Opening Day weekend, or (b) during the last 6 weeks of the season.** If you are following Corollary One, (b) will not be a problem.

Corollary Three: Don't have an event during March Madness unless you are planning on having a wall of TVs showing all the games at the reception. I did go to an event once that had this, and it ruled- but 75% of the attendants spent the entire party in front of the TVs. So proceed with caution.

And now I can add:

Corollary Four: Don't move (or otherwise be unavailable all day) on Trade Deadline Day. It is painful. And unless you have a pal willing to regularly text you with updates (thanks, Clare!), you will go bananas. The Gwen Stefani kind of bananas.

You know when's a good time to get married? (1) February- after the Super Bowl, before March Madness; (2) during the All-Star break; (3) that week in December after the college football conference championships but before the Bowls start (provided you are not getting married on Sunday).

* For the record, this is not acceptable for me.
** I add an additional - "or (c) during my annual spring training trip".

Hello, Kyle. We haven't met before- mostly because you played for the Reds, and I couldn't give a rat's ass about that team. You're not a bad-looking dude, even though you have some unfortunate facial hair choices (but I don't hold that against Aaron Rowand or Josh Beckett, so I'm not gonna hold it against you). There's the whole born-in-Chico thing, but I can get past that (and it's not like you were born in freakin' Arkansas like a certain slowcamotive leftfielder). Your name written out looks kind of like "Loser", which is not good- but pronounced like "Lowsh", which is better.

But here's what's troubling: your 6-12 record and 4.58 ERA scare me, dude. If I can be frank, they kind of make me think you might stink. Like, stink pretty bad. I know you played for Cincinnati, so it's not like you were getting a lot of offensive help-- but 6-12? That's pretty bad.

So I'm going to be in the bleachers at Wrigley Field today for your debut for Philly - it's a day game, and is going to be approximately 1,000 degrees out, and I will have been drinking for 2 hours beforehand, so I'm not sure I'll be the most coherent fan around... but I will be there. All I ask is that you don't completely suck. We bounced Coolerpants Durbin to add you to the starting five, and I'd just like you to do better than he did. Plus, it's not like the Phillies pitching staff is full of aces (minus Cole) that are hard to live up to... you just have to do kind of good. That's all I ask.

Deal?