Collected Thoughts

I start belly dancing on Tuesday! A coworker and I are going to star them. It's an 8 week session, it seems pretty reasonably priced compared to what I've seen. Today I found another place that offers belly dancing for a similiar price, but there beginners classes are too early for me to get there from work, even though it's closer to work. Plus Spring semseter is almost over so there will be less traffic near work (I love when the college students leave).

Tampa lost. But it was a damn exciting 3rd period.

Artie totally got ROBBED. Robbed I tell you! There was no kicking motion, the puck deflected off his knee!! Damnit, he should have been on the board for his first play off goal. Even the OLN guys (who I think were biased to Ottawa) said it was a goal. Of course one of the Sens players took the puck off the ice, I guess to get back for what Taylor did (steal the puck the Sens wanted for Emery and then threw it in the trash).

I don't know what to think about Neil. He turtled. Of course he didn't get the penalty so maybe that was smart on his part. But he taunted Burke and Sunsports reported he made a rude gesture to the fans. I didn't see it so I can't say anything.

My boy KUBINA!!! I don't want to hear one more negative thing about Kuby. He would have had two really great goals, but the first deflected off St Louis. But Kuby got his first play off goal.

Ranger!!! First two goals of the Playoffs. Good going.

Total Penaty Minutes -- 129.

Also, I'm really behind when it comes to music, I don't really listen to the radio, there aren't many choices and...well music has never been a big thing for me. But anyway, I was watching VH1 the other day and saw videos, normally when I look at it all they have is the BEst Week Ever or the best of the 80s. But I saw a video for KT Tunsall's "Black Horse and The Cherry Tree", I can't explain it -- acoustic, drums and bass, I like the sound and it makes me want to dance around. I'm actually sure what the lyrics are though.

Then, I tried out some James Blunt (uh before I bought anything on iTunes--- but then I bought an EP on iTunes). Wow. I really like Goodbye, My Lover and Alright Tonight, and So Long Jimmy.


Also discovered how yummy Hagen Daz's Pineapple and Coconut ice cream is...especially served over pound cake with black berries on top.

Now, I'm going to bed. Work tomorrow (yuck). But Thursday is Admin Professonal Day so it's something to look forward to.

They win!!! They gave up two stupid goals, I'm not sure what was going on with three of our guys trying to go for the icing, but R2's lapse when he went for his stick I'll blame on inexperience.

We won!!! Does the dance of winning!! A good physical game too, Tampa has really stepped it up and started hitting more.

Detroit didn't do as well as I hoped, but it was a fantastic game. It was kind of weird to watch because there were so few penalties called and the guys were really going at each other and in the Devils Rangers game everything was being called.

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.

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.

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!!!

I'm officially declaring Mom a hockey fan. I haven't asked her if she agrees or not. I went over and watched the game on OLN and she watched most of it with me and was excited through the whole thing. Dallas v Detriot, she started rooting for Dallas and had fun.

OLN only showed a tiny bit of the Atlanta WAshington game and at the end of the Dallas Detriot game they took some time recapping the game when they should have been showing the Thrashers LOSE!! HA! Enjoy the golf!

Mom looked at me like I was a freak when I did a celebration "we're in the playoffs! Atlanta sucks!" dance. Although this was tempered with the knowledge that tomorrow Tampa plays Washington. The Caps won tonight 6-4, and it's going to be a tough game tomorrow. I hope my guys do well. If Tampa and Montreal win tomorrow or if Tampa loses and Montreal wins then the standings won't change.


Tomorrow is a huge night for the Eastern Conference and teams are still jockeying for position. I don't know who I want Tampa to go against -- Ottawa or Carolina-- but I can't wait for playoff hockey!!

I watched the Tampa game!! It was so good! My guys were back!. Excalmation points all around!

I feel kind of weird refering them to "my guys" since I haven't been a fan long, but heck I refer to the FSU players as my/our guys so I'll run with it. They played aggressively and there was actual hitting, although Kubina got a totally bogus call in over time. It was nice to see Artukhin play physically (and not get sent to the box for it).I wonder why they haven't played like this all season. I hope they play this well against Washington, the Caps maybe out of the playoffs but they aren't playing like it.

Prospal went out towards the end of the 3rd period with an "upper body injury" and is listed as "day to day" this worries me. I've seen speculation that maybe he's been hurt and playing through it because he's seemed "off" recently (more off than the team as a whole). Hopefully he'll be able to play, he's a fantastic player and and he has a lot of energy -- I love watching his reactions/celebrations after goals.

I've been following Vegan Lunchbox lately and as a result I've been reading some vegetarian boards and sites. I noticed some people type "veg*n" instead of "vegan" and that confuses me. Does anyone know why they do it?