What a week it's been so far, and it's about to get even hairier. Believe me, I have very good reasons for having been largely absent recently. Here's a quick run-down:

Saturday

Sam and I went to watch the Basingstoke Bison play ice hockey. We turned up in the arena car park a good 90 minutes before the start where, to my surprise, Sam transformed herself into The Knowledge Of Basingstoke and guided us straight into a Frankie & Benny's. This was a result. In a bizarre twist, I found myself putting up half-hearted arguments for not having the enormous sharing platter to start - Sam insisted. That, too, was a result.

It was a result for the Bison, who also went home happy having stuffed the Sheffield Steelers 6-3. Great game, some of the best ice hockey the Bison have played in yonks if you believe fans on the message boards. Ice hockey is an incredibly under-rated spectator sport although, having said that, watching the announcer at the Bison is also an under-rated spectator sport. He was playing everything from Backstreet Boys to Paddington Bear (or similar), and going mental with delight whenever the audience clapped along. He was the Keith Chegwin of ice hockey.

Monday

If ice hockey was my 'home' fixture, ballet on Monday night was definitely the 'away' leg. We ended up in the Hexagon in Reading to see the Moscow Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty.

We were underwhelmed.

For me it just wasn't quite as graceful as you'd imagine. Dancers missed the musical cues by split seconds, everyone looked a teensy bit wobblier than was strictly necessary, and it was all acted out with a lack of emotion bordering on the mechanical.

Then again, this was a one-night-only whistlestop show in a middling English town from a ballet troupe who, for all I know, could be the ballet equivalent of going to see the Cheeky Girls at Butlins. I may be expecting a little too much if I judge ballet as an entity based on this one performance. I'd like to go to a top notch venue and see the undisputed heavyweights of the ballet world (if that's not an oxymoron) to compare and contrast.

The best entertainment of the night came before curtain-up, when I reached my seat seconds before a gentleman with the exact same ticket. "I should have run faster," he jokingly declared as he went off to fetch a steward. "Yes," I helpfully added, faking laughter and defending my seat with my life.

Speaking of the curtain, the man operating the giant red drapes is clearly not paid overtime. His curtain work was abrupt to say the least! At the end of the second act, the ballerina playing Sleeping Beauty had barely jumped into Prince Charming's arms when the curtain snapped shut in their faces. There was certainly no dwelling on the emotion of the moment! But then as there was no emotion either, that's probably just as well.

Tuesday

So which smart-arse decided lacrosse would be a good sport to take up? Me, that's who. The lacrosse team came into the studio, convinced me to give it a go, and I signed up for training on Tuesday nights.

Sam - labouring under the illusion that it couldn't get more painful than the acting in the ballet - accompanied me down to training with the Reading Wildcats, on a slightly damp but bearable evening.

It got a whole lot less bearable the moment I took to the tennis courts being used for training. Lacrosse stick in hand, I was thrust into the deep end, immediately joining a passing drill where I was streets behind absolutely every other player. "Novices welcome", the website will tell you, but you do need a fairly thick skin to survive constant failure in the face of people who've played for years!

That said, I'd hate to give the wrong impression. Everyone was very helpful, chiming in with hints and tips, and soon I was catching a good two-thirds of balls flung at me, even if my passing still leaves heaps to be desired. But then, as one new team-mate told me: "Think how many times you've kicked a football in your life. Now how many times have you picked up a lacrosse stick?"

In other words, it's going to take time. Having been thrust into a 3-on-2 attack-on-defence drill, I was hauled out by our North American coach Jared, who wisely spotted that I haven't the slightest how to defend in lacrosse. It got slowly better. Who knows - in months to come I may actually develop into a half-decent player. Certainly in the social game at the end, Sam and I both had clear scoring chances - her shot was fierce, on target and unlucky to be saved; mine bounced five feet over the top of the net from two yards out.

Wednesday

Everything hurt on Wednesday morning, most notably my back and shins - but there's no rest for the wicked, nor those suffering the after-effects of an evening's lacrosse, so into London I went for a meeting with the BBC Sport Interactive team.

I've been harping on about minority sports to anyone who will listen for months now, so to placate me a lady named Claire (who writes for the BBC Sport Editors' blog here) invited me to participate in a meeting in which the bbc.co.uk/sport team planned their coverage for the 2008 Olympics.

Obviously I've neither the memory nor the permission to elaborate on many details here, but it was extraordinarily interesting and great to be a part of the thought process. Staggeringly, my flood map made it into Claire's starting presentation about new ways of covering events, and she didn't even realise it was my baby! I was extremely chuffed by that. So chuffed that, in an incredibly sad moment, I took a crappy surreptitious phone camera shot of the meeting room:

Ahem, yes, so moving on. Very interesting to see the Sport Interactive newsroom, with neat frosted glass into which the BBC Sport logo is etched, at the very heart of Television Centre. I could put up with spending considerably more time in there, it must be said.

Friday

Has only just started, and it's another big day for reasons I can't really explain yet. (I know, everyone hates the pillock who builds artificial suspense for no good reason). So I'd better be getting some sleep. Good luck to Amy J by the way, who has a job interview coming up later on...