Hockey

Split

Like the cur­rent Stan­ley Cup Finals series, the Apron­Strings House­hold is split.

For those that aren’t sports nuts like the two of us, that means that the Chicago Black­hawks and the Philadel­phia Fly­ers are both tied with two wins apiece after Game Four in the seven-​​game series.

Not that I mean to say that Hubby & I are at odds with one another … well, at least when it comes to our rela­tion­ship. Rather, we’re at odds when it comes to cheer­ing on which hockey team we think should win the cov­eted Cup.

I should start off by say­ing that, first and fore­most, I will always cheer for my home­town Detroit Red Wings wher­ever we live. But since they failed to make it to the finals this year … I had no choice but to choose an “adopted” team.

I should also add here that if I had my druthers … and if the Red Wings weren’t going to make the Finals … I would have absolutely loved to see two dif­fer­ent teams vying for the Cup this sea­son. And those two teams would have been the Van­cou­ver Can­nucks and the Mon­tréal Cana­di­ens. To me, it only seems fit­ting that the year Canada won Gold in a Cana­dian Olympics, then they should also deserve to have Stan­ley return home … at least for the year.

And yes, Mrs. Spit. I know this would have made you very very happy, also. :-)

Instead now, Hubby & I find our­selves — for the first time in our mar­ried lives — root­ing against each other. Him cheer­ing for a team, sim­ply because they’re con­sid­ered the under­dogs of the series. And me cheer­ing for a team, for the mere fact that this team’s town has become my adopted town.

Hubby cheers for his team, sim­ply because his oppos­ing team has long-​​been rivals of the Detroit Red Wings. While I cheer for my team because it’s been 47 years since this team has won the Stan­ley Cup.

Either way, it’s been fun watch­ing the series with Hubby. And it’s def­i­nitely made watch­ing the NHL’s “sec­ond sea­son” much more interesting.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Meet Al the Octo­pus; the Detroit Red Wings mas­cot. For Wing Nuts, like our­selves, throw­ing octopi onto the ice dur­ing Play­off Sea­son is a long-​​standing tra­di­tion for the Red Wings Franchise.

As for how Al got his name … he was named after Al Sobotka, the gen­eral build­ing man­ager for Joe Louis Arena; and the won­der­ful soul that picks up every thrown octopi and twirls it over his head.

Not Gold, but …

Goalie Miller, after the OT Gold-​​winning goal by Team Canada

Whew. I can breathe again.

What. A. Hockey Game!! Of course, it wasn’t the out­come that I wanted … but it was sooo excit­ing! AND, at least I got to prac­tice singing the Cana­dian National Anthem. And I’m sure that Lori­beth & Mrs. Spit are more than happy to see their National Team win. AND that the entire nation of Canada can now breathe a sigh of relief.

But still … would have been nice to see the US, the under­dogs in the tour­ney, win. Would have been nice to see the MVP, Ryan Miller (and some­one with Michi­gan ties, to boot) get the gold.

Well, at least Canada’s team was built and coached by all those Detroit Red Wing staff! ;-)

At least Canada can, once again, con­tinue claim that that Hockey is still *THE* Cana­dian sport. Next to Lacrosse, any­way. But just like hockey, that sport has his­tor­i­cally been more pop­u­lar in Canada than in the US (although it’s gained much more pop­u­lar­ity since Hubby played back in high school).

Yami doesn’t want the Olympics to end, either …

I guess … well, I guess it’s the Red Wing fan in me that just reaal­lly doesn’t like Cindy — oops, I mean Sid­ney Crosby. Don’t get me wrong, he’s tal­ented and incred­i­ble. BUT … this goes back to the whole “this is a team sport and not a Superstar-​​plus-​​Team sport.” And Crosby? Well, in the NHL, he’s that “Super­star” that the league seems to be bank­ing on; plac­ing all their prover­bial eggs in the bas­ket. I know that it’s not nec­es­sar­ily his fault that the media places him in such a huge spot­light, but yet I’ve never seen him redi­rect the empha­sis back on the team and team­work. Who knows? Maybe he has … and I just have never seen it.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

With that out of my sys­tem, tonight is offi­cially the last night of the Olympics. But more impor­tantly, tonight is the last night for Feb­ru­ary’s NaBloPoMo.

Which means that I’ve offi­cially posted a blog entry a day for the past 28 days. While it’s not an Olympic Medal, at least I can put this “medal of honor” on my blog.

And well, hey; since I still am going to be post­ing daily until Easter, which is April 5th this year, I might as well just sign myself up for March’s NaBloPoMo. But before I do, let’s at least fin­ish up on this entry:

Good Deed O’The Day. This one is a “good deed” (if I can call it that) for myself; which, and fol­low me here, will ulti­mately be a good deed for those that I work with. And that good deed is this: I did NOT do any work today, or any day this week­end. In fact, I mostly relaxed this week­end (with the excep­tion of gro­cery shop­ping, of course).

While it seems like a rather “self­ish” good deed, I know that this is a deed that needed to be done. Quite frankly, I’ve been run­ning myself ragged since the end of Decem­ber and work­ing pretty much 7 days a week. And even though I’m not quite work­ing the whole 8 hours on the week­end, the fact that I am doing any­thing work-​​related on those days I should be relax­ing is a sign that I’m over­work­ing. SO … by doing noth­ing but things I liked to do these two days allows me to unwind a bit so that I’m charged up and ready for the next week.

I think Rain looks bet­ter in a tiara than Julia Mancuso

Grat­i­tude and Thanks: As I men­tioned before, things have been pretty tight with our monthly expenses. Hav­ing both a monthly rent and mort­gage pay­ment has been killing us. And see­ing as the hous­ing mar­ket in Detroit ain’t turn­ing around any time soon, we don’t see any res­o­lu­tion with this issue in the near future. SO … what I’m grate­ful for right now is that: #1, I have a job dur­ing these dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times; and #2, I have fam­ily that love and sup­port us. Because if it wasn’t for all that they pro­vide, Hubby & I wouldn’t be able to pick our­selves up and forge for­ward dur­ing this dif­fi­cult period.

So there it is. Last post of Feb­ru­ary. Look out, March! Here I come!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Overtime Ties

Keep­ing my TIES with Detroit …

Whew. What a day. What a work week! And the sad thing is that my work week ain’t even over.

Yes. That’s right. I gots myself more work to do. And not just the nor­mal “sign into our sys­tem from my lap­top at home” –type of work. Nope … Tomor­row I get to schlep my butt back down­town and work at my won­der­ful cubi­cle. And that’s because the rest of my team is com­ing in for a lit­tle over­time work as well.

Sigh … Why does it always seem like the begin­ning of a busi­ness year is less about “new begin­nings” and “fresh starts” and more like “left­overs” and “pilot projects”? Not like I already have a pretty full plate …

And it’s only Feb­ru­ary! Can’t *wait* to see what’s in store for the rest of the year.

So yes, work has been insanely busy. What I had thought would be a break from insan­ity after the big audit in Novem­ber has only brought more insan­ity. Which has been slowly build­ing since … well, November.

Okay, so maybe I’m just going into panic /​ anx­i­ety mode right now. Maybe I need to go back to my happy place (which always seems to involve sand, beach, water and palm trees) and just relax. Yeah … that’s what I should do.

Alrighty … enough com­plain­ing. Let’s talk about other things. Fun things. Like … the con­ver­sa­tion I had with a fel­low super­vi­sor today about sports. Yes, sports … one of many things I love, like music and movies and books.

It’s been fun talk­ing to this co-​​worker about sports; espe­cially because of our love of our home teams; mine being Detroit and hers, Chicago. Her Bears and my hap­less Lions. My “Bad Boys” Pis­tons to her “Michael Jor­dan” Bulls. My “Justin Ver­lan­der” Tigers and her “Mark Buehrle” White Sox.

But today’s dis­cus­sion hap­pened to be one of our all-​​time favorite sports: Hockey.  And specif­i­cally Red Wings and Black­hawks Hockey. We had talked about how both our teams were doing (hers *really* good, ours … not so good) and the con­nec­tion that our hockey teams shared.

Yep, that’s the slap shot that Che­lios taught me!

One of them is obvi­ously Chris Che­lios; who had grown up in Chicago and played for the Black­hawks for many MANY years. Except … as I chided with my co-​​worker … Che­lios never won a Stan­ley Cup Cham­pi­onship until he played for the Red Wings.

This, of course, led to me shar­ing a dream I had of Chris Che­lios a few years ago. One where I sup­pos­edly won a con­test to par­tic­i­pate in a Red Wings pre-​​game prac­tice. And in that dream, I vividly recall hav­ing Che­lios teach me how to set up a slap shot. Yeah … only *I* would have these types of dreams; but at least my co-​​worker appre­ci­ated it!

Any­way, the other con­nec­tion that both the Red Wings and the Black­hawks shared were that they were part of “The Orig­i­nal Six” hockey teams of the NHL.

From there, the con­ver­sa­tion went on to the whole “expan­sion” of the NHL over the years, and how some of these “new” teams were dif­fi­cult to remem­ber. (Woulda thunk Colum­bus, OH or Nashville TN would ever have an NHL team?!) Or what we’d do if we ever moved out of a non-​​Hockey city.

Specif­i­cally, we had talked about what Hubby & I would do if (when?) we move out west. Port­land doesn’t have a hockey team; and nei­ther does Seat­tle. Would we go for the Ducks? Or would it be the Can­nucks (out of Vancouver)?

As it turns out, we both decided that we could never “give up” our home team; her Black­hawks and my Red Wings. That despite a move to a dif­fer­ent city, we would always root for our home teams … we’d still hold on to our TIES to our home­town sports.

And I obvi­ously do … as it’s been over a year since mov­ing to Chicago and I still cheer … not only my Red Wings … but for all the other Detroit home teams as well.

I always loved that Cameron Frye wore a Red Wings Jer­sey on “Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off”

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Admin Shtuff

Other Related Strings

Archives