I drove 100 miles for a minor league hockey game…

again.

My sister and I have season tickets to the Lowell Lock Monsters of the American Hockey League.  My sister’s boyfriend is originally from the Portland, ME area.  Twice this year we’ve gone up to Portland to watch the Monsters play the Pirates…

And twice this year we’ve seen Lowell win.

Which is hard to believe seeing as Lowell won’t make the playoffs this year and Portland has already clinched the division.

Once again I brought my groovy camera with me, and once again I annoyed the piss out of everyone around me.

There are a lot of things about groovy camera that I don’t like.  In fact, the more I use it the more unhappy I am with the purchase… but I still bring it almost everywhere… but one little feature I like is that it can be set to take pictures in bursts.  There are two settings, one will take a burst of five pictures.  I use that a lot.  The other setting will take shots continuously as long as you hold the shutter down, but when you let go of the shutter it will only save the last four.  I like the idea of that feature, but I rarely use it.

Here is an example of the burst of five setting.  In these pictures we see Lowell’s Jeff Finger (I think, it’s a little tough to see the number) skating the puck through the neutral zone and into the offensive end.

Cool, huh?  Next week I’m going to a game in Manchester… the home of the enemy… and will bring the camera again.  I don’t know where my seats are but hopefully I won’t be behind the end zone net.  I actually prefer sitting in the end zone (my season tickets in Lowell are end zone seats) but the nets make for crappy pictures.

Groovy camera also takes video and I’m trying to post a couple to myspace.  One is a nasty little hockey fight where Lowell’s Cody McLeod gets his ass beat by Portland’s Shane O’Brien.  The other is about a minute and a half long and it starts with a face off and ends with a Lowell goal.  Lowell’s Keith Aucoin was given an assist on the score and that broke the Lock Monsters franchise record for assists in a season, and it also broke the team record for points in a season.  Mr. Aucoin has been really impressive this year, to say the least.  If myspace lets the videos through I’ll link to them from my profile… even though the profiles have a video link built in now… I’ll still do it because I’m kind of in an html nerd mood these days too.

Anyway, that’s my hockey nerd post for the night.