Collected Thoughts

Even though this is my second play offs, it is the first full year (season, whatever) of hockey I've followed so I'm really paying attention. I only really watched Tampa last time and this time it's everyone. Plus I know who more players are -- even the West Coast guys.

Also, this is the dawn of the "New NHL" (I hate that phrase) and lots of changes, most of which are invisible to me. But I've heard complaints and predictions and proclamations about what the New NHL means.

There's the columnist (who I'm pretty sure was an espn.com columnist but damned if I can find the column) who predicted that this new era would usher in the end of play off overtime. The new style of playing just doesn't lend itself to ties, or something like that, so he didn't expect to see much over time this playoffs. HA! Detriot-Edmonton went to double overtime and Anaheim-Calgary went to ot.

I've also heard on various boards "oh noes!! This new nhl crap means the end of physical play!! oh noes! The refs will call penalties and the playoffs will be boring!!"

I watched some really exciting hockey. Except Tampa losing, that was just heart breaking in an inevitable way (not Tim picking up the phone heart breaking though). But it was physical -- Marty St Louis ran into Zdeno Chara at one point and they jockeyed for position (or something, that was hours and 2 games ago for me) and Chara elbowed him in the head, which got Chara a high stick. Then later Marty checked Chara in the boards!!

For those of you who are reading this and don't know who I'm talking about Marty is generously listed at 5'9" and Chara is 6'9".

Things that suck:

OLN!! omigod ! I haven't really watched the games on OLN recently bu twhen did they start the dark band over the long graphic with the names and score??? I mean seriously there's freaking hockey going on that you can't see because of the stupid ass dark thing. WHY!!!!!!

Plus the camera work sucked. And they switched to CBC feed for one game and showed all of Calgary-Anaheim with CBC feed so everyone can see how sucky OLN is and what kind of graphics to use -- a bug in the corner. That's it!

Bobby "The Cheif" Taylor of Sunsports! He's a homer. He's worse than a homer, he's this whiny cry baby crappy guy to listen to. I don't even pay attention to him. In fact he's so used to complaining that interference was called against the Sens --- I forget the player but he was interfereing with Boyle-- and cheif goes on his typical rant when penalties aren't called and says "How is that NOT interference!!!!" Very quietly our play by play guy said "it was" and then gave info on the penalty.

I stayed up way way too late but it was totally worth it! And I get to watch more in a few hours!!!

This morning I got a phone call from some company that wante3d to consolidate "(Dad's name)'s student loans". He woke me up so I was kind of pissy. When I said that no, I wasn't the Dad, he asked if there was a wife or child he could speak to, I told him no there wasn't and why was he calling anyway Dad graduated in the 70s. The caller told me that there records show Dad signed or co signed a loan for someone and did I have siblings that he could have signed for? I told the guy no, I don't know anything about this. He got frustrated with me and I got even more pissy and said "It's none of your business! Don't call!" and he hung up.

But it got me thinking, if I originally played along and pretended to be Dad, could I have gotten information about my Dad out of this guy? I don't know what kind of information I had but now I wish I could have found out.

Also, Mom was complaining about this class she was taking, it's a professional development class and on the sign in sheet you have to put your name and social security number. It's a sheet that just sits out there for any one to see, but Mom only puts the last 4 digits. Anyone could have looked at the numbers, written them down, and started compiling information. Business use social security numbers, or at least the last four digits all the time for verification purposes. Say, someone saw the information and wrote down someone's name and ss#, they'd just have to look up the person in the phone book or online to get their address. Armed with that information a theif could do a lot of damage.

I watched hockey most of today. Mom reached her limit and I left. Tomorrow is more hockey. I probably should have dones omething today instead of just listened to the rain. I'm going to bed relatively soon because I'm so very tired. It rained here all day so I didn't go to the farmer's market or anything.

I don't want my weekend to be mostly over. I'd miss watching the afternoon game tomorrow but I really want to see Detroit play.

There were a lot of penalties in the Rangers-Devils game. A Lot and then it looked like Jagr hurt himself on some dumb play. I watched a bit of the Buffalo game and it was interesting because I've still only mostly heard the Sunsports announcers and the guys on NBC, and the guys for the Buffalo game were more hockey ish. They used hockey lingo and stuff, it's hard to explain. I like Rick Peckham the Sunsports play by play guy (but he could be better and god anything is better than Bobby Taylor) but they don't use a lot of the hockey slang, etc that other announcers do. Does that make sense? Mom asked me to translate some of it. Which I could !

Although they do say "he got good wood on that" which makes me snicker.