As we have for several years, the entire family went to the Caps New Year's Day afternoon game. We expected to win, but we lost. We have now lost five or six in a row. I thought that the only highland was Nicholat, the defenseman recently brought up from Hershey; it looks to me like he is here to stay. I am not sure when John Erskine will return, having a broken bone in his foot, but without him, the defense is pretty weak. Brian Muir is also out with a foot injury.

I think this is what led to the three Coyote goals in the first period. If I were a better viewer, I could gauge whether the goals are caused by goalie or defense shortfalls (or both), but I can't.

The other problem was our weakness on the power play and that even Ovechkin, Semin, Clark and Zubrus seemed off their game.

Next one: Thursday against Montreal.

Other than that, things were pretty quiet. That's good. Having been disappointed at the articles in the Smithsonian Magazine's January issue, I was happy to see that I had overlooked December, which is filled with interesting stuff: 'The Treasures of Timbuktu' [thousands of handwritten Arabic books, ignored for centuries, being preserved where possible and restored], 'Antarctica Erupts' [Mt. Erebus, 1700 degrees Fahrenheit in the crater) and 'Rembrandt at 400' (powerful paintings, filled with emotion, unlike anything else being done at the time], amongst other things. There is a Rembrandt drawings exhibit at the National Gallery. And we just saw one in St. Louis at the St. Louis Art Museum. Prolific guy.