Catching up, popping up

It's the rare week that I'm too busy to blog, but this was one of those weeks. With a big release at work last night, covering the Aeros for the Chronicle yesterday, and getting ready to do a story for theAHL.com, it's been a busy one.

But I did play Wednesday night just to keep the rust at bay and it was a mix of frustrating and decent. The frustrating was getting scored on in that hole over my goddamn blocker side shoulder 3 times in a row. The 4th time, I got my head in the way. Normally I don't mind a shot off the mask if I make the save, but I was so peeved about the prior 3, that it still annoyed me and was devoid of the usual post-save feelings of victory.

Oh well. I vote we round those corners off the net even more. Who's with me?

Otherwise, I had some okay saves. I didn't know if the style this bunch plays would last but it really has. There are almost never any scrambles around the net or anybody coming in close to try and punch it in. Just shots from several feet away. Which is kinda what I needed after struggling with my angles lately. I felt a lot better on that front and most shots were hitting my stick, meaning I was square to them.

The one thing I did that I've never been able to do before is, say a player fakes a shot and I butterfly, used to, I'd just knee shuffle from there until the puck was either out of danger or they took the shot. I didn't want to be caught in an awkward balance situation getting up when they actually did shoot.

It looks absolutely terrible to see a goalie doing that, and Scott TFCG rightly, but annoyingly, gives me loads of grief about it. But I just didn't have the strength to trust getting up quickly enough, and most shots come low where I play, so I was playing the odds.

But Wednesday, one of the better players faked a shot from inside the circle blocker side. I go down and he doesn't shoot, so I pop back up. HUH? I literally didn't even believe I'd done it myself. And then I did it a few more times later on. Just without even thinking. In fact, annoyance was the dominant feeling I recall having in that moment. Just take the fucking shot. I hate when rec players do that, but luckily I hate it in a way that makes me really determined, so I guess that's a good thing.

It seems like such a simple thing, but in my head, that whole butterfly recovery thing has been a really difficult thing to get going. I guess the work I've been putting in on that front is helping. Nice to see some results before I was really even expecting them.

The other thing is that I tried out my new heart rate monitor on Wednesday. It was all hunky dory during the game. I get to the room and turn off the monitoring, figuring I'll look at the results when I get my gear off. Well, bad plan, genius, because I hit the "start" button again while I was getting undressed and lost my game data. FUCK. Lesson learned.

Anyway, I'll give it another shot next week. Drop-in Monday and women's league Tuesday vs. the Orange team, who I hear have a hot new player. Not hot as in *wolf whistle* but hot as in, assign two people to shut her down. They needed the help though, so it's okay.

Sounds like one of Mr.C's friends and her Canadian boyfriend will be coming to watch me play Tuesday. He referees apparently, so I dunno why he'd wanna come watch us play. I'm sure he sees plenty of slow hockey already, but whatever. Maybe it's just an excuse to catch up. My goal is to recruit her. She runs marathons, so I'm going to bill it as cross training. He can teach her to skate! *evil scheme*