I have been having a pretty solid week. As you know I got a new job and I like it. Also, for the film I’m music supervising I was able to land a band for the soundtrack that seemed unattainable earlier. Think of it as landing Led Zeppelin, to play your daughter’s 13th birthday party in a trailer park, for a case of beer. That kind of unattainable. But, thanks to a JTJ stalker named Mark, it happened.

I love our stalkers.

Obviously, I’ve been having a good week and it can all be summed up thusly.

Friday it was snowing heavily. My new job closed early and let everyone go home to beat the rush. While riding home my phone rang and, in a bit of a surprise, I found myself talking to my New Year’s Eve date. She offered to meet at a certain time in a certain place and buy dinner.

I agreed.

Since I had some time to kill I stopped in my favorite watering hole and enjoyed an adult libation or two and then went to the agreed upon location. I won’t bore you with the details but I never did get dinner.

So, Saturday morning, we went to a local restaurant and I had waffles. Waffles which I quickly proclaimed to be the greatest food in the history of food. She pointed out that I hadn’t eaten in almost 18 hours and that I had burned the equivalent of a marathon’s worth of calories. In other words I would have proclaimed shoe leather to be the greatest food in the history of food.

She further deemed my persistent, and public, lauding of said waffles – which came with orange marmalade, syrup and butter - to be psychologically unhealthy and probably a sign that my blood sugar had completely tanked.  Well, she should know. In a year and a half she will be a psychologist.

In a year and a half I will be 52.

Besides eating waffles we also managed to figure out some ground rules to our unusual relationship. My job is to remain drama free, drink bourbon and have sex with her.

Well within my skill set.

Her job is to eventually tell me her real last name. Some day. There’s no rush.

Clearly there will come a day when she’ll find a young man, closer to her age, to take over my job and then the two of them will grow and blossom together. That is as it should be. But, for now, as I explained to a very dear friend last night before I went for more waffles, she is a gift from God. And, like all such gifts, I have been tasked with the arduous responsibility of not screwing it up.

For the record, since I know how important this is to you, today we had chorizo and eggs instead of waffles.

The chorizo was pretty damn good too.

So, to put things in perspective, over the last month and a half I’ve scored more than the Hawks. In fact, while I put up a hat trick last night, the Hawks nailed a goose egg. Getting out scored by a middle aged fat man is not a confidence builder.

Well, it is for the middle aged fat man, but …..

Chris Kuc takes a sad look at the flaccid sticks on Madison.

Joel Quenneville has urged the Blackhawks to play with desperation as they try to break out of their funk.

“That’s probably what it’s going to take for us to get over the hump,” the Hawks’ coach said before their 3-0 loss to the Coyotes on Saturday night.

After another night of sleep-walking their way to defeat during their nine-game trip, the question now becomes: What exactly follows desperation?

The Hawks dropped their eighth consecutive game when they fell before a crowd of 17,353 at Jobing.com Arena. The skid is the Hawks’ longest since the 2007-08 season and they have the franchise record 12 losses in a row in 1951 looming in the not-so-distant horizon.

The good news? With their 10th consecutive road loss, the Hawks still have a way to go before they approach their all-time futility mark of 19 straight defeats away from home in 2003-04.

“It seems like it just keeps snowballing,” winger Patrick Kane said. “You keep thinking the next game is the one that’s going to get you out of it. The onus is on a lot of guys in here but I think first and foremost you look at yourself in the mirror and try to figure out what you have to do better personally.”

Radim Vrbata, Boyd Gordon and Kyle Chipchura scored for the Coyotes, who won for the fifth consecutive time and pulled to within three points of the sixth-place Hawks in the Western Conference. The Kings also earned a point Saturday with an overtime loss to the Islanders and are now two back of the suddenly hapless Hawks, who were shut out for the sixth time this season.

“We need something,” captain Jonathan Toews said. “If it was coming back from a 3-0 deficit (Saturday night), we don’t care what it is. We need something to give in and make us feel good about ourselves. We’re still making some of those defensive mistakes … and it seems like everything winds up in the back of our net.”

Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith made 38 saves to record his third shutout of the season and 14th of his career as the Hawks’ quality scoring chances were too few and far between in sliding to 0-5-1 on the trip.

Ray Emery suffered the loss in goal for the Hawks, who will head to Chicago to regroup before continuing their season-long trip Tuesday night against the Predators in Nashville.

Just FYI, I believe that Emery is the 37th goalie signed by Bowman since he dumped Anton Niemi for a bag of clean socks. That would be the same Niemi who is starting every game for the Sharks and leading them to the playoffs. You know, just like he led the Hawks to a Stanley Cup while he was here.

While Dale Tallon was an idiot with contracts it appears that Bowman is an idiot with players. And I guarantee you that neither of them is having waffles today.

Our very own administrator of Charon, Riverman, has already started a thread so CLICK HERE TO TALK ABOUT WAFFLES.

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