Houses & the Hockey

I feel like I should post something, but I don't have a lot to say over here lately. I've been playing, but poorly, and it's not much fun lately. Monday games have been a bit of a chore. Women's league, we're 0-5, and it's not like we have a bad team, so... maybe it's the goalie?

I dunno. I'm just in the dumps and not enjoying the game much and, even worse, not caring very much. I feel like I've lost my edge, mentally. I feel disconnected from the games I'm playing, almost like an observer more than a participant. Maybe it's a self-defense thing since I've been letting in so many goals. That's not really ME out there, is it?

Whatever the case, things are just off -- WAY off -- and as much as it's not fun to play right now, it's even less fun to dwell about it here.

Maybe I'm just missing some inspiration, and hopefully the hockey season will get that back for me and get me excited watching real goalies do their thing again. Maybe I miss my muse. Who am I kidding? I definitely do. But nothing I can do about that.

Fortunately, life isn't all work, suck at hockey, and sleep. We closed on the new house last Monday and it's been nonstop doing things around the house to spiff it up. A stream of estimates on windows, paint, electrical, moving. Updating the awful gold fixtures with sleek nickel ones. And a lot more.

I'm really in my element and having a lot of fun with the work. In fact, I call it play, so I guess it's not work at all. Thankfully, I am having fun and success at something, even if it's not hockey.

So, that's the state of the union, and since this isn't a house remodeling blog, that's why it's quiet and will probably stay that way for a bit longer.

Off-ice hockey stuff is spiking a bit this week, as Wednesday night, I'm doing a "hockey tutoring" session at the Leaf (naturally) with @AGirlintheSouth, author of Tales from the Juice Box, an Astros blog.

She's a baseball girl, but she wants to learn about hockey, which is pretty cool and I'm happy to help however I can. Especially if there's beer and the Jays are on.

Then on Thursday, I'll be back at the Leaf for free cheesecake. Oh, and to meet the new Aeros coaching staff and president. But mainly for free cheesecake. I'll have to replace a lot of gold door hinges to work that off, but it will be worth it.

Meanwhile, Major is sitting here next to me, farting up a storm and I can't take it any more, so I'm out. Sticks on the ice, my darlings.

Speaking of muses...

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2 down, 1 to go

Ahhh, feeling like myself again in nets. Meaning, the more frequently I play, the more I'm on a roller coaster. Monday night, I was happy with my game. It was one of those "drive home with the windows down and music blasting" kinda nights.

Didn't do anything spectacular, but I just felt like I got some saves I wouldn't have normally and my confidence was good and I was seeing the puck well. I haven't felt good about that ice time in a long while.

But tonight at women's league... yuck. We lost again. 3-0. The bright side is that I got to see Kelly get her first ever shutout. I told her it's WAY too early in her career as a goalie to be getting a shutout, but she earned it. She doesn't remotely look like she's only been playing a few months.

Strong skater and good positioning. She's a natural. Which is kinda irksome for me. :) Damn rookie making it look so easy... ;) Seriously though, she's cool, she battled for it, and I'm happy for her.

I didn't feel too bad about the goals against and really, unless I was going to get a shutout, too, we still would have lost. But I do like my team a lot. They work hard and stick up for each other when things get a little unsportsmanlike out there, as it tends to sometimes.

Oooo, speaking of which... Not-Brusty rescued my night by being awesome at just the right moment. Not-Brusty, if you recall, is the goalie who has Brusty's old pads and therefore inspires a little panty-soup-by-proxy. Helps that he's quite good at stopping pucks.

Well, tonight, as I was leaving after a little beer and pizza, I stopped behind his net to watch the B league boys play a bit. So he gets a shot from near the bottom of the circle and bobbles it a little on the ice trying to cover it. The shooter comes up and starts whacking at his glove, trying to free the puck. And I'm thinking, "OOOO BITCH IS ABOUT TO GIT IT."

And indeed, Not-Brusty JUMPS up and starts shoving the guy, all pissed off, and his d-man joins as the ref starts to break it up.

I'm glad he didn't turn around and see the GIANT grin on my face watching that. It was probably a little creepy. But that was hot and he's now been elevated from Not-Brusty to Brusty Jr. :) Didn't know what you were getting when you shelled out for those pads, eh? Haha.

I mean, really, it triggered some kind of primal response, right? Here's a tall guy, good goalie, wearing Brusty's pads, and then defending his crease? Oh my lord. THE BUTTON, YOU HAVE PRESSED IT.

So, that redeemed a disappointing night in goal (though women's league is always fun regardless because I like the gals so much) and I kinda got my hot goalie itch scratched, rec-style.

Tomorrow night, I'm on the ice with the Harpies. Just a little 3 in 3 since Mr.C is out of town. As stupid hot as Memorial City is, I kind of enjoy that they have tables around the end of the ice where random Mall People just hang around and eat their Mall Cookies or whatever and watch us play.

It lights a fire under me because I know they see my ponytail sticking out and I feel like I've gotta sorta represent women's hockey and play well against these big guys with hard shots. :) If I can get one more person to say, "Wow, a girl goalie? That's cool!" than to say, "Oh, that poor girl. She sucks." then I'm calling it:

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Serious Research Findings on Hockey vs. Baseball Players

I've been doing some "research" on Twitter, following various professional athletes who are either:

1. On my teams
2. Goalies
3. Funny or otherwise interesting, as in potentially a trainwreck, or 
4. Just plain good at Twitter

This includes both hockey and baseball players, though the baseball players are limited to Blue Jays because all the other baseball players are lame, except Lyle Overbay.

So I follow all these guys and they tweet crap about the fish they're catching or how cute their dog is or whatever, but they also are performance machines. And naturally, with any performance machine, fuel is a big source of interest to them. 

As such, we get lots of pictures of whatever they're eating or tweets like one from Mark Dekanich last night telling us what he had for dinner:

Taking Romeo for a nice, long walk then having dinner. Jerk chicken with broccoli and asparagus tonight.

Broccoli and asparagus, y'all. For a SIDE. And there wasn't even a tweet after that saying, "Chocolate ice cream for dessert to make up for only having broccoli and asparagus with my chicken!"

I love hockey players but I could not fucking live with one. Mix in a goddamn potato. Also, asparagus is nasty, I don't care how you cook it.

Now, it appears Dex is one of the more... um... uptight about his eating habits but it does seem like hockey players in general are pretty obsessed with body fat and too often really act like girls (of the annoying, princessy variety) about their eating habits and their lean figures.

All the more reason I love guys who don't fit that mold. They seem like you could have a meal with them and you wouldn't have to sit there and watch them pick the 8 pieces of shredded cheese and all the croutons out of the salad with fat free dressing on the side. For christ's sake, be a man. You'll burn that shit off in your sleep tonight with all that muscle.

Baseball players, on the other hand, (and mind you, the Blue Jays are my only research sample), seem to eat like relatively sane people. They have pancakes for breakfast! Breakfast sandwiches from Starbucks! STEAK and lots of it, if you're Travis Snider.

And they seem to feel no guilt about it whatsoever. I think in hundreds of food related tweets from my Jays, I've seen two where a less interesting, more hockey-player-esque diet was mentioned (and in those cases, I assumed the account had been hacked).

If you're not sold yet, look at what Ricky Romero's girlfriend (*ahem* MISS USA) made him for dinner. Meat and heart-shaped potatoes, baby. And did he panic about his ass getting bigger? No. He chowed down and then went to bed with MISS USA (who probably had lean meat, broccoli, and asparagus for dinner).

On the flip side, however, baseball players don't ever seem to knock back the booze with quite as much abandon, on as quite a regular basis, as hockey players.

Maybe my Jays are just more discreet about it, but even the well-behaved hockey players talk about the occasional night out. And having been around hockey more, I hear some pretty great stories and have seen a bit of it myself. It's no surprise to me that the Flyers' "Dry Island" scheme didn't work.

And really, who'd want it to? Drunk hockey boys are pure fun. And the Flyers sucking is also fun.

Drunk baseball players evoke visions of a nasty gongshow of chew and sunflower seeds in places you don't want them.

The conclusion I draw is that if I'm looking to drink myself into oblivion, gimme a hockey player. But if I want to break bread, give me a baseball player every time.

It's not a "who's better" or "who's worse" kinda judgement really. Just a "if I had a choice, here's my choice" judgement.

Naturally, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to eat with hockey players or drink with baseball players, and maybe my little theory here would be proven quite wrong. In fact, I'm happily accepting all offers to drink and/or eat with any pro hockey and/or pro baseball players. SCIENCE!

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Hot and Cold

Oh, hey there!

You know what sucks? Not having my Monday night drop-in.

You know why? Because I stink up the first period at Women's League on Tuesday after not seeing a shot for a week.

A least it was only 3 goals last night instead of 4 like the week before. Maybe next week we can hold 'em back and get a win and get that ugly 0 out of the win column. :\

But yeah, first period, I stunk. Wasn't seeing the puck well, wasn't moving well (even for me), was antsy and unsure of myself. I was terrible in warmups and usually that lights a fire under me and my game ends up okay.

Not last night! Things started to finally pick up about midway through the second, and in the third, I played MUCH better and stopped lots of shots.

My captain actually helped me a ton by pointing out one of their better players and how she almost NEVER passes the puck. They had a lot of good players so this gal wasn't really sticking out for me, but she had several good chances in the third period and I was ready for her. She passed once the whole period and telegraphed it so hard, I was ready.

So there's a tip for you skaters, at least if you're playing against me: If you're dressed sort of non-distinctively, like no loud colors or unusual socks or bright green laces or red breezers or whatever, I'm not going to necessarily pin down your tendencies as well as someone who stands out visually.

It's funny though, my captain was trying to tell me who she was and she was telling me about her helmet. And I'm like, "Yeah, I don't see heads. I see socks and down." She finally had to point her out to me during play. "Oh! Buffalo Socks!" And lo and behold... shot, shot, shot from that girl. Yeah, bring that on, honey.

Save of the night was against one of my favorite girls from my team last season (which I'm still not over that I have to play AGAINST my teammates. I'm hardwired toward loyalty, especially since I really loved that team, so I don't adjust quickly to that change.)

She's a VERY good French-Canadian player and honestly, as good as she is, I've never seen her embarrass a goalie. She could easily dance around our D and deke us into next Sunday, but she dials it back and plays within the context of the league while still playing hard. I don't know how she finds that balance, but she really does.

Anyway, that said, she came in on a short breakaway on my blocker side looking for a hole short side. I don't give her one, so she comes across the top of the crease and tries to poke it 5-hole as I'm pushing across.

DENIED. Ooooo, baby, that's how it's supposed to work! Got a big "AWWW!" from her and then a pat on the shoulder for a good save. Told her, "I honestly thought you had me." But nope. Snagged it just inside my knee stacks. Phew! Save of the game!

Nice to finish the game on a good note.

Even better is that the hottie league plays after us on Tuesday nights. It's like B level guys and they're all young and foxy and move nicely on the ice. My Brusty-pads goalie plays that league, too, so double-bonus for me! If you're looking for some foxy hockey action to scratch your Aeros itch, get down to SLICE on Tuesday nights. Rawr!

That's it for me and hockey for the week. Apart from that, mostly my life revolves around vacuuming and dusting my house almost constantly (thanks, dog) and getting paperwork/vendors/utilities/etc. ready for the new house to close in a little less than 3 weeks.

I'll be really glad when we're moved into the new house and I'm not constantly on Dog Fur Watch here in the house we're trying to sell. Gotten lots of positive feedback on the place though, so I feel good that we'll find someone who loves it as much as we have sooner than later.

Here's to the government not fucking the whole thing up with their shenanigans. Idiots.

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Dirty Minds

I really need to find a way to make money writing humorous-but-dirty stuff about hockey players. I feel like it's my calling. Some day I'll write a super-trashy hockey novel and make all my hockey girlfriends read it, but somehow keep Mr. C from reading it. He'd be scarred for life.

My latest picks for the 5-Hole Fantasy League are particularly scandalous and another former B-Sens player, Jason Bailey, falls prey to my affections. I know they won the Calder Cup and all, but really, their GM should be applauded for assembling one of the handsomest teams in the history of the league.

Here's the article and I have to say, Jason was a good sport about it and loved the article. He's a fox and a gentleman (hopefully not TOO much of a gentleman though...)

So currently my team, the Johnson City Sausagemen, looks like this:

Goalies: Barry Brust (C), Alex Stalock, Joey MacDonald
Forwards: Mikko Koivu (A), Cal Clutterbuck, Jason Bailey
D-Men: Michael Del Zotto, Clayton Stoner, Roman Josi
IceMen: Travis Snider, Drew Barrymore, Lyle Overbay

OMG, I love them so much. Once all my picks are done, I'm gonna photoshop a team photo together. That's gonna be epic.



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Women's league starts back up tomorrow. Super excited. I have the same captain as last season, and I adore her and her partner, so that's comforting for me. Haven't played with any of my other teammates before, but a little birdy tells me it's a good group of gals.

The teams are named after space shuttles and we're Discovery. Oooo.....

It'll just be awesome to play a game that matters again for the first time since April when we won the championship.

Since Mr.C is set to be out of town, I'm jumping on the ice with the Harpies Wednesday, too. Enjoy playing with that group quite a lot and don't do it more because a) I prefer to play for free and b) they built a friggin' Cheesecake Factory next to the quiet, mostly-ignored corner of the mall parking lot right by the back door to the rink. So suddenly you're parking a quarter mile away, unless you get lucky, and then dragging your gear from and to your car. Not cool, Memorial City Mall. Not. Cool.

Genius idea for the day is a hockey valet service there. Drop your gear off at the door, they keep an eye on it while you go park in BFE. And the reverse when you leave for the night. Yeah? GENIUS. Or I may be a total candy-ass... or both.

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Go Sausagemen!

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Meine Torhüter ist nach Deutschland

I can climb down off my pins and needles now.

I have to say, it's not really the answer I wanted. In my sweet dreams, he signed with San Antonio. :) But that'll just have to be a dream, as Brusty has signed with the Straubing Tigers of the DEL.

Nothing but good wishes, naturally, to Barry and Los Tigres. I'm particularly amused that brust in German is "breast." So, the translations that include his name are pretty hilarious. Ohhh, Breasty....

My mission when the season starts is, naturally, to find some fantastic online feed of their games so I can watch him. I'll do my best to have a little update here now and again when I can figure out what's going on. Saw on the Tigers' Facebook page that fans have already found the KennedySMASH video and are fully on board with the signing. As they should be. Lucky bastards. *sigh*

Auf Wiedersehen und viel Glück!

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Up Up Up

Okay, feeling better since my last post. I've spent nearly every minute since then getting our house ready to put on the market. It's been a ton of work but I feel so much better having most of it done. Only about, um, 30 things left on my to-do list. Ha!

No hockey last week, and now my Monday night group is canceled for the month due to low attendance. I'm hoping the cancellation will light a fire under the skaters going forward so they understand if they don't act and it looks like the session won't make budget for the month, they're SOL.

Much to my chagrin, without drop-in, I have no excuse not to do goalie clinic. But it was actually really good last night.

Best part was that we kinda did our own warm-up, not a bunch of movement that had my legs burning before we even started. So I actually felt much fresher and better for the drills and got a lot more out of them.

What's really fun is seeing the goalies who did Camp Brusty and how excited they are about what they learned. As much as I say I only did that to get to ogle Brusty for a week, I have to admit, seeing their progress and enthusiasm is really gratifying.

I hung out with one of the other PFGS Houston goalies and a defenseman-skater who helped shoot at camp in the parking lot after working on some positioning stuff. It's fun to just talk shop, especially with a more experienced goalie and really thoughtful defenseman.

It's funny to me how intensely, deeply humbling goaltending is. Especially learning as an adult. Especially when you're the sort of adult who's not really faced a lot of adversity. *raises hand* Like, last night, I haven't skated since camp and I step on the ice and my skate doesn't move across the ice. It was like I'd stepped on the ice with spikes on instead of skates.

So, of course, I face plant HARD. Water bottle goes flying. I sit up and look at my skate blades to see what the fuck is wrong with them. Nothing. Just something weird with the ice right there (someone in skater skates said they got stuck right there, too).

Sure, it was a little embarrassing but old Ms. Conduct would have been blushing and cringing for days over that. New Ms.Conduct just got up, rounded up her water bottle, and carried on. Honestly didn't think about it again until just now. Hey, everybody's hit a rut and face-planted at some point if they've spent enough time on the ice.

Seems like a silly thing to ever have been mortally embarrassed about but I would have been for sure. I guess I never did anything before hockey that I wasn't pretty naturally good at from the outset. I've never had to fail so much and keep finding the will to come back again and again.

I guess it's a lot like golf. Except for the part where there's a team depending on you to not suck. That's the hard part, eh? :)

Hey, look at the new necklace I got!

Awwww. :) You can have one, too.

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