Finished my class. Caught up with Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech. Taped the Emmy’s, which I’ll never watch. Joining Weight Watchers tomorrow (are you required to tell them that you plan to stick around only until your pants aren’t so uncomfortable? Is there a special membership plan for this?)

Of course, now I need to carve out an extra 10 to 12 hours a week for the new season of “Dancing with the Stars,” which could be a problem, but I can fast forward through at least eight of those hours, so I think I’m OK.

I am back in blog land because without my touchstone, I feel like I have been dreaming this last week. Weeks?

At some point during this time, I also gave a library talk on my book, “Sweet Lou – Lou Piniella, A Life in Baseball,” which, if you enter my website in the conventional manner, you have been assaulted with for the last five months. This was my plan.  But ever since Piniella’s Chicago Cubs have been out of the pennant race (I believe sometime in mid-June), the talks have, well, lacked a certain punch.

The book is about Piniella’s life, a biography, and as such it should not be important that he has bombed with his latest team or that most Cubs’ fans would like to see him on the next bus to St. Pete. But because he happens to be wearing Cubbie blue on the cover, I get the distinct feeling that Lou, sweet or otherwise, is not necessarily a person of great interest.

For my next book project, I am thinking of perhaps something on the cast of “Dancing with the Stars,” as I believe this would be truly timeless.

In the meantime, I want to call back every radio show, acquaintance and anyone else with whom I have chit-chatted about Michael Jordan over the last few weeks and take back what I said.

For those of you who may be unaware, Jordan has been roundly and almost unanimously eviscerated for his recent induction speech at the Basketball Hall of Fame. People are not supposed to be criticized for their Hall of Fame induction speeches. This is like being booed while doing a eulogy. This was supposed to be a festive moment in which Jordan joined his other inductees, thanked everyone from his kindergarten teacher to the Bulls equipment manager (Johnny Ligmanowski, a really nice guy) and, if all went according to plan, cried while doing it.

Jordan did cry. This was the best part, according to most. I only saw the last few minutes live, which included a very nice, sentimental little passage that sounded like he took it from a collection of old athletic proverbs about limits, like fear, often being an illusion.

I liked that part, don’t get me wrong. But if he wrote those words himself, then I was the ghostwriter for all seven Harry Potter books.

The rest he wrote himself. And after reading bits and pieces and then passively agreeing with most that Jordan was inappropriate in his comments, I have now seen a tape of the speech in his entirety and I officially take it back.

It was neither inappropriate nor mean-spirited nor worthy any of the other silly critiques people have given it.

I covered Jordan and the Bulls throughout the 1990s and traveled with them as the Tribune’s beat writer during their early championship years. I liked Michael, but I do not pretend to be his friend nor to know him as, say, a psychoanalyst would.

What I do know is that the speech was quintessential Jordan. It was also as sincere as any of the speeches that night and not even close to him trying to be nasty. I’m not going to repeat everything he said. If you’re interested and haven’t heard it, there are about five million copies on U-Tube to replay.

I doubt most people really listened to it – the way he said what he said, exactly what he said. It was genuine and from the heart. It probably did require a passing familiarity with the man to appreciate it and for that, it might have been worth getting someone to at least proof it.

But he is a public figure, open to our probing and to our criticism, even for a Hall of Fame induction speech. It is the price he must pay. He knows this better than anyone. I’m just glad on this night anyway, he didn’t seem to care.

Someday when I retire, I’d like it to be on my terms. I’d like not to be laid off or given the “choice” of being reassigned to the e-mailroom at half the salary, or shown the proverbial door in any number of ways companies dispose of older workers while trampling on their dignity.

So I get Brett Favre just like I understood Michael Jordan, even while I was rolling my eyes.

I understand how someone who has attained a level of success well beyond their peers has a hard time walking away from what they love to do and just as significantly, walk out of the spotlight. And I understand how when they do decide to go, they want to do it their way.

Both Favre, a future Hall of Fame quarterback, and Jordan, an NBA Hall of Fame inductee, retired and came back, talked about coming back and didn’t. Both played beyond their prime. And both annoyed the cynics among us with their indecision and capriciousness.

By the time Favre finally convinced all of us he is really, truly not returning to football as he announced this week, even his fans were yelling, “So, leave already.” It was the same way Jordan fans debated whether his final years with Washington somehow tarnished his legacy.

On talk shows, some smart people and some not, speculated that it wasn’t football that Favre craved at all, but the attention all of his waffling was creating.

This is Brett Favre, one of the most acclaimed and beloved players in history. No one but Bears fans hated Favre and they would have knocked off any one of their many stumblebum quarterbacks in a heartbeat at the chance of putting Favre in a Chicago jersey.

Both Favre, who is almost 40, and Jordan, who retired at 40, were sore and arguably broken down when they retired, though Favre could probably still rank in the upper echelon of quarterbacks if he played this season. Jordan averaged 20 points on 45 percent shooting in his last season, scored 40 or more points on three occasions, and despite the fact that his Washington Wizards team was dreadful, they still sold out every home game in his last season.

But was the end the way they envisioned?

Jordan scored 15 points in his last game. Favre, who threw six touchdown passes against Arizona in the fourth week of last season, was intercepted eight times and threw for two touchdowns in his last five games.

They walked away somewhat awkwardly, hesitatingly, without the full acclaim Favre would have had if he had chosen 2007 as his last season, and Jordan, 1998.

That was the Bulls’ sixth NBA title and the moment that is forever frozen in our minds as we picture Jordan’s last moment of glory; the perfect ending as he stole the ball from Utah’s Karl Malone, dribbled upcourt and sank the game-winning three-pointer from the top of the key, his follow-through held just long enough for the dramatic flourish it deserved.

That would have been the perfect time for Jordan to hang it up, we said.

The ’07 season was the one in which Favre broke Dan Marino’s all-time NFL record for touchdown passes, led Green Bay to a 13-3 regular-season record, the division title and a berth in the NFC Championship game, which they lost in overtime.  But that was also the game in which Favre extended his NFL record for consecutive playoff games with a touchdown pass to 18, that last one a 90-yard pass to Donald Driver that was the longest in Packers’ playoff history.

That would have been a perfect time for Favre to leave, we said.

But it wasn’t right, at least for them. And they were willing to risk perfect endings for walking away when their hearts finally told them they had no other choice. As hard as it must have been, there was no question anymore, no doubts. On their own terms.

The way we’d all wish for ourselves.