SPRING IS BLOGGIN' OUT ALL OVER

According to LeBlanc, rooms at the Waterford sell from between $109,500 to $149,500. You buy the room, and you own it. Every year you let the Waterford know by May 1st which days you want to reserve the room for yourself. All the other days the Waterford is allowed to rent out your room, with you and the hotel splitting the proceeds (LeBlanc would not divulge the percentage-split of that deal between the room owner and the Waterford, no matter how charming I attempted to be).

Look at it this way if you are a Notre Dame fan or a parent of a Notre Dame student. There's a hotel in town that, on football weekends, charges $600 per night and requires a 3-night minimum stay. While that's on the upper end of lodging costs, it gives you an idea of how outrageous prices are for those seven weekends. So you buy the hotel room, tell the Waterford you need it on football weekends, and then instead of scalping tickets you scalp your room. Ask $1,000 for the weekend and you've covered your mortgage for the month and that's before you rent it out any other days of the year.

Besides, didn't you always want to say that you have an Irish pub (Bridgid's) in your home? The Waterford is only about a mile north of campus on Route 31. As bizarre as buying a hotel room sounds, this may just be so crazy that it's brilliant. In fact, when I mentioned it to Dan and Jamie Rudolph, the parents of incoming freshman tight end stud Kyle Rudolph, they smiled knowingly and told me that the Golics already own a room there.

Lisa LeBlanc (cool name...it deserves to be said in full) informs me that the Waterford has 200 units for sale but that 119 are already gone. If my two shares of AAPL stock rise significantly after the bell today, Lisa, I may be in.

If you're interested in buying, you can contact Lisa LeBlanc at: lisaleblanc@cressyeverett.com

or

574-535-4663

(and no, I don't get a commission)

JUST SING, SING A SONG

If you were a fan of this story , then you may be interested to know that the national championships were held last weekend at Lincoln Center in New York City. And the winner was...SoCal Vocals from the University of Southern California. I was unable to attend (darn you, Blue-Gold game), but the group's showstopper was culled from the patron saint rock band of all collegiate a cappella groups, Queen. Here, have a listen:

LETTERMAN

Billy Crystal, riffing on the Jewish faith, killed on Letterman on Monday evening. I don't care if he was using material that's older than Esau's back hair, it was funny. Lamenting the fact that Jewish holidays are never as fun as Christian or secular holidays, he compared Rosh Hashanah to the standard New Year: "You know, New Year's Eve, drinking, carrying on, etc. The Jewish New Year? We don't eat, we sit in darkness and we atone for our sins. Happy New Year."

Crystal also noted how the Jews don't have a living figurehead leading their religion, as Catholics do the Pope. "As Jews the most important person we look up to is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve."

Quick question: Crystal turned 60 years old last month. Will his birthday cake next year have an asterisk next to the candles?

Speaking of the Pope, here was the New York Post headline on Monday following Sunday's papal mass at Yankee Stadium: "SERMON ON THE MOUND". If you want to quibble, the altar was actually on second base, but how can you not use a headline like that (I'll tell you how; if you're the blue pencil at a certain sports magazine).

Our NBCSports.com colleague Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo appeared on Letterman last night. The topic: ESPN's "sandbagging" of Miguel Tejada about his age (Tejada said he was 31, and ESPN produced a birth certificate showing that he was 33). Letterman asked why this was a big deal. Mad Dog said it was a big deal because ESPN wants to be "60 Minutes". Letterman said, Yeah, I get that, but why is it a big deal? Mad Dog said it was because they sandbagged him, because they embarrassed him. Yeah, Letterman said, a little more exasperated, I get that, but why is it embarrassing? Because they sandbagged him, Russo said. And on and on the circular dialogue went.

Let me try to answer the question for you, Dave (and if anyone has a better answer, please comment): It was irritating to Tejada because in two years his contract will expire and he'll be a free agent. And he'd have been abled to command more money -- and more to the point, more years -- on his deal if GMs thought he was 33 years old in 2010, not 35 years old.

Then again, when you're earning $13.8 million per season, as Tejada is, should you really be worrying about your financial status that much? Is he trying to buy all of the Dominican Republic?