Today I was a little lazy and slept in. That's ok, given the fact that I will get little sleep tomorrow night. I'm driving home right after the men's free and then I have to be at work early on Monday morning. Real life is so overrated.

I went to breakfast with my gracious hosts, who I've barely seen the whole week I've been in St. Paul. We had some delicious banana pancakes at a local diner. My favorite part about going to different cities is checking out local hang-outs and new restaurants. After my own breakfast, I went to meet Daphne, Michelle, and Karen at their favorite breakfast spot. When I got there, they could tell I was a little frazzled. Two cars tried to cut me off on the highway just before I got there. And, to add insult to injury, I forgot today's event tickets at my host's house. This is one of those instances where I really want to blame someone, but I can't. It was my fault I forgot the tickets (and again, my fault I forgot my jeans – we are going in Day 5 without them).

Daphne and I made a pit stop for my tickets and were at the arena in time to see the last two groups of pairs. Keauna McLaughlin & Rockne Brubaker skated an amazing free program. It is so exciting to see someone win their first senior national title. I was also so happy that Caitlin Yankowskas & John Coughlin skated such a good program. They were so excited, jumping up and down and hugging each other. In such a small time together they've accomplished so much.

After the pairs medal ceremony, Daphne, Karen, and I went to the cat show that was being held in one of the rooms off of the skyway here in the Xcel Center. This was my very first cat show, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I enjoyed the movie "Best In Show," but that was about dog shows. My best friend and I really loved the James Van der Beek and Molly Shannon "Saturday Night Live" skit about dog shows – "Rocky Balboa and Mr. Bo Jangles!" But once again, that was about a dog show, not a cat show. Can they really be that much different? I took some really cute pictures of cats, though. My mom will appreciate those more than the skating photos, I think. Glad I can make someone happy.

OK, so this cat show had some interesting vender booths stationed around the edges of the room. The one I liked the most was run by Russians. They had matryoskha dolls, icons, and pins for sale. Their pin collection was amazing. Even when I lived in Russia I never saw a vendor with this number of authentic pins. Daphne walked up to the booth to take a look and I showed her a CSKA pin. For those of you who don't know, CSKA (Central Red Army Sports Club) is the famous Moscow sports school that produced great Soviet skaters – Irina Rodnina & Alexandr Zaitsev, Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov, and many more. I decided to ask the vendor if they had any skating-specific pins. I asked him in Russian, and he was surprised by my usage of the language, but said that I spoke well. He showed us a page devoted only to figure skating pins. It was so cool! There was a pin from the 1990 Europeans in Leningrad and another from the 1970 Europeans, also held in Leningrad. I kept saying to Daphne that the perfect person to show these pins to would be Johnny Weir. His love of Russia probably rivals my own. It was kind of ironic that right after we left the cat show, I saw Johnny signing autographs at the Reidell booth. That is no place to have an educated conversation about Russia, so I figured I'd let the idea go for the time being.

After the cat show, we took our seats for the free dance. All of the teams did great, and it was such a thrill to see the final flight of skaters. Each team brings their own unique quality to the sport. I had been looking forward to seeing Tanith & Ben's free dance live all year. I think their FD this year is one of the best they have ever had. I was also impressed by the changes Meryl & Charlie made to their free dance. I liked it so much better here than I have all year. The audience gave standing ovations to both Belbin & Agosto and Davis & White. Both programs really evoked the emotions of everyone here in the arena.

Now I'm off to shoot podium pictures for senior dance. That was quite the interesting ladies final. All I can really think about is who is the U.S. going to send to worlds?