Category: Hockey

Crazy Friday

I’m 94 minutes away from a long weekend. There is talk of watching Hot Fuzz tonight. I need this work day to end now. It’s been wacky from the word go. Uncle! That’s me crying uncle for the day. Enough. Here, I’ll do it again, Uncle!

I have a research project to do this weekend. There is talk of a Roomba. Do I want to open the door to the oncoming robot apocalypse in order to keep my floors clean? The answer is probably yes, but it’s expensive.

This is also our last weekend with Bellana before she goes back to school. We must make it a good one, Roomba not withstanding.

WandaVision is out. The list of Marvel Cinematic Universe things I have not seen is now up to one movie and two TV episodes. WandaVision will be covered this weekend. Thor II… someday.

The Boston Bruins are 1-0 on the season. A perfect 56-0 is literally in our grasp. No it isn’t, but statement like this after one game are pretty obligatory.

Trump is still impeached, again. Trump’s term ends in five day.

88 minutes until the weekend. I need a vacation. I need a Covid-19-free vacation.

In Other News

Now that the impeachment vote is done and we have to wait six days for the senate to do… anything and the cheeto’s term ends in seven days anyway, it’s time to briefly think about something else.

The Bruins open up in New Jersey tonight. A 56 game, soon to be covid riddled season. I know at least one team had to be shut down already. Dallas I think? Forgive me for having other stuff on my mind the last week or so.

Last I heard, Marchand is back from surgery, although there was something at one of the last practices that might keep him out, Pasternak is still out and I don’t know when he’ll be back, and Bergeron is now the captain… duh.

Game time is 7:00. The playoff bubble is gone but there are no non-division games to cut down on travel (though… does it?) and there are still no fans in the stands, though some states say it’s okay so there might be some, which is friggin idiotic.

Go Bruins.

Still Waiting

I haven’t heard anything from the House of Representatives today. The expectation was they were going to be debating something about the 25th Amendment. Can the Congress force Pence’s cowardly hand? I don’t know. They can vote on whether or not to impeach the terrorist in chief, but it sounded like they were waiting until tomorrow for that.

Why are they waiting? Every minute cheeto remains in power is one minute closer to a catastrophe. Remove the fascist terrorist now. Get him out of there. Stop putzing around and DO SOMETHING. He orchestrated an armed assault on the US Capitol building. He needs to be in jail and he needs to be there six fucking days ago.

It’s so freakin’ frustrating. It’s like the entire Congress wasn’t paying attention when the mob stormed their chambers. What the ever loving fuck?

I can’t even distract myself with hockey yet. The NHL opens up tomorrow and the Bruins open up on Thursday. I thought we would have a new, temporary president by then, but nope. Terrorists are only punished when they pray to the wrong version of god. That’s the precedent the US Federal government is setting right now. Nice job, folks. Let the evil run free. Good work.

On the up side, I coded a custom utility today. I usually let my staff handle tasks like that, but it’s been so long since I’ve done it I felt the need to make sure I still know how. I do. At least until it gets to peer review and the reviewer skewers it. That’s gonna happen. Until then, good boy, robbie.

Now REMOVE THE GOD DAMNED TERRORIST. Pretty please.

Fall To-Do List

Hockey is over and it won’t be back for a while. Baseball is over and it won’t be back for a while. Movies are over and they won’t be back for a while.

What’s to look forward to?

The Mandalorian comes out tomorrow. Season two. That’s something to look forward to. I have spoken. This is the way.

Star Trek Discovery is back. We’re a couple of episodes into season three but I haven’t watched yet.

The first Marvel series on Disney+ is coming out in December.

I have a new guitar pedal coming. It shipped this morning. National Solo Album Month kicks off on Sunday. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Christmas? Thanksgiving? Covid-19 vaccines? That’s all up in the air still.

Election day? I’ve already voted, but I am cautiously optimistic that the fascists will be eradicated.

NHL Playoffs Predictions Wrap Up

Oh thank you, thank you, thank you hockey gods. Last night the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup giving me one final correct prediction and making my full post season record a tiny bit better than flipping a coin.

Whew!

Here are my win/loss records per round:
First round: 6-2
Second round: 1-3
Third round: 1-1
Final round: 1-0

That gives me a record of 9-6. That looks like a 60% success rate to me. Much better than the 53% it would have been if Dallas had won. So even though I hate the Tampa Bay Lightning with a passion because they beat my Bruins in the second round, I have to tip my cap to them, congratulate them on their second(?) franchise championship, and thank them for making me look good in the end.

Thoughts on Playoffs

There was a chance that Tampa Bay could have won the Stanley Cup last night, but Dallas ended up beating them in double overtime. It feels like Tampa has spent so much time in overtime that they’ve played an extra round or two.

In the past few weeks I’ve been making my playoff predictions for each round of the NHL playoffs. I’m going to end up with a positive record no matter who wins in the final round, but I am only slightly better than 50/50. If Dallas wins I will actually effectively be 50/50 at 8 right and 7 wrong. Where am I going with this?

Baseball. The Red Sox have had one of the worst seasons (win/loss percentage wise, the season ends today after game #60 rather than the usual 162) in franchise history. I’ve been paying attention to final scores most days, but generally they were so bad I couldn’t watch. That lead to me sort of taking a pass on the rest of the league too.

Now that the playoffs are about to start, I don’t know anything about any team in the running except that I effin’ loath the effin’ Yankees. Other than that, I’m clueless. That, plus my lack of success in the NHL playoffs gave me an idea…..

I am going to make post-season predictions for Major League Baseball, but I am going to decide my pick for each series with a coin flip. Yup. This is going to be a case of is Robbie luckier than fate. I suspect that I am not.

I don’t even know how they formatted things this year. Is there a one game play-in round? All I know is there are bubbles involved. I’ll figure it out and let you know.

NHL Stanley Cup Finals Predictions

For a minute there, I was worried I was going to get both third round picks wrong. I hate you and you suck, Tampa Bay, but thank you for fulfilling my prophecy. Or something like that.

Going into the third round I was 7-5 for the playoffs. I was at risk of going into the finals at .500, but thankfully I’m still on top of things. I’m still better at this than flipping a coin.

My third round results:

Lightning vs Islanders: I picked the Lightning even though they are the slime that knocked out my Bruins. The Lightning won. I was right.

Golden Knights vs Stars: In Vegas, the house always wins in the end. I picked Vegas and Vegas beat me. Dallas won and I was wrong.

First round: 6-2
Second round: 1-3
Third round: 1-1
Total so far: 8-6

One round to go. The whole enchilada. The be all end all. The Stanley Cup Finals.

Stars vs Lightning: I have no idea. None at all. No clue. They’ve both screwed me over. The Lightning screwed me over by beating the Bruins. The Stars screwed me over three times by beating a team I picked. Should I go with Dallas just because of that? I don’t know. I think I have to pick Tampa Bay because… well… they are awesome and kinda deserve it. They deserved it last year too (it pains me so much to say that… I really freakin’ hate them) but choked in spectacular fashion. Will they choke again? Ah crud, who knows. I’m picking the Lightning.

The series starts tonight. The last hurrah for the bubble. During the pandemic in 1918 they made it to the finals before they canceled the season. This time, the bubble seems to be working. I think we’re going to have a champion this year. Unfortunately, it won’t be the Bruins. Crud.

Not Today, Maybe Tomorrow

I fully intended to get up early today and do car vocals. I actually did get up early but… As I mentioned last night… that last song I worked on… the lyrics were so bad. It just took the umph out of the situation, you know? I need to rewrite.

So… fasting. What’s up with that? Give yourself an eight hour window each day where you can eat to your heart’s (stomach’s?) content, then the other 16 hours you don’t eat. In my 56 seconds worth of Google “research” it looks like most people set their eating window at 1pm-9pm. Outside of breakfast, that works okay for me. I want to cut down on between meal sowing. Something like this could gimmick me into cutting back some. Also, my 56 seconds showed me that zero calorie drinks (water, diet soda) are allowed during the fasting times.

I found an app I wanted to try to use to help. I thought you’d plug in times and it would tell you when to eat. It doesn’t. You turn it on when you’re fasting starts (9pm) and it tells you when it’s over. Okay… I guess I’ll start this fad tonight at 9pm. consider today’s breakfast my breakie swan song. What the hell, it’s quarantine. Let’s jump on this (a/any) stupid bus.

After my horrid performance trying to predict the winners of the second round of the NHL playoffs, I went into the third round with a tiny bit of optimism. Then on Sunday night the West series started and my pick lost game one. That’s okay, I guess. It’s just putting my pick into a statistical hole that is too big for the majority of teams to crawl out of but that’s okay, right? Ugh. I had this bad feeling that when the East series started up last night there would be another crushing loss. I checked the score just before bed. Would Tampa crush my heart again? Nope. They were up 7-2. I checked the final score today. They won 8-2. I feel a tiny bit better now.

Television. Season two of The Boys is out. I forgot that Amazon released shows weekly. Crap. At least they put out three on the first day. They are good so far, but now I have to wait for Friday for episode four. On top of that, Jen and I started watching Cobra Kai. We plowed through the first season. It is so much better than I thought it would be. I expected it to be goofy and silly and a bit of a farce. It was, sort of. Not a lot though. It was just good. Yeah we saw the series finale coming miles away, but it didn’t lessen the effect. I’m looking forward to season two, and season three is supposed to be on the way. I’m paused on The Watchmen for the moment, but I’ll get back to it. Same with Breaking Bad. Eventually I’ll get to Lovecraft Country too. For now though… I’m up to season four episode 15 of Agents of Shield. The rewatch continues.

For now though. Let’s have a good work day on this, the first work day after Labor Day. The first work day after the symbolic last day of Summer. Today is probably in my top three least favorite days of the year.

Ugh.