I’ve had three heart attacks so far. There is no score in the first, but Canada is going onto the power play. We’re only nine minutes into the game and it’s already the most stress I’ve felt since the Cup Finals last year.
My step kids just started a spontaneous, USA USA USA chant.
The second round of four games in the Men’s ice hockey tournament Quarterfinals happened today. I mentioned earlier that Sweden beat the crap out of Slovenia. In the second game of the day we saw a gigantic upset as Finland (lead by Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask) beat Russia, 3-1. Russia had been one of the gold medal favorites, and here they are bounced out in the quarterfinal.
At noon today there were two huge games. First, Canada beat Latvia by the skin of their teeth, 2-1. At the same time, the USA was beating up on the Czech Republic, 5-2.
There are four teams left, and three medals to hand out. Team USA is in pretty good shape… except…
The Semifinal round match ups are all set now. All four teams have tomorrow off, and then on Friday at 7:00am Eastern time, Sweden plays Finland in a battle for Viking supremacy. I think Sweden is the better team in this one, although I will be rooting for Tuukka and the Fins.
Later on Friday, at noon Eastern time, the battle for North American supremacy will commence. Canada vs The United States of America. This is a rematch of the gold medal game from last Winter Olympics. That game was quite possibly the best hockey game I’ve ever watched. The only negative about that game was the the US had to settle for the Silver. Now I will be wearing the red white and blue on Friday, and there is no doubting where my hockey loyalty lies… but it’s hard to see anyone beating Canada. Although, they haven’t quite been the monster everyone has expected, and the US has been dominant in all but one game. I think we have a chance. I think we have a shot at making it to the gold medal game.
Coincidently, if my two predictions come true we will see a rematch of the 1980 gold medal game between The United States of America and Finland. I could definitely get into a match up like that.
Go USA!
As expected, Sweden pummeled Slovenia last night by a score of 5-0. Of the eight teams playing today, six are what you might call powerhouses. Sweden is the first of those to advance.
Next up is Russia and Finland at 7:30. About an hour from now.
It’s been a busy morning so far. Busy and freakin’ cold.
I spent some music time. I redid the rhythm guitars on song #12 and also did the rhythm guitars on song #13. I actually did that one twice too. After I finished it I listened back and didn’t like it, so I just did it again. I then did the lead guitar on song #12. That one is about two measures of drums away from being complete. I wrote 12 and 13 at about the same time. I had listened to 1 through 11 and decided I was lacking in dumb rock songs. 12-14 were meant to fix that oversight. Unfortunately, 12 and 13 sound really similar. I might glue them together. After making a nine song, 34 minute suite in November, I wasn’t going to do anything like that this month. Now I think I am. Song 14 was supposed to rock too, but after adding the drums it feels a teeny tiny bit funky. About as funky as a fat, white, Irish American can get at least. I might make that one acoustic. We shall see.
After the music was done, it was time to watch USA play Slovenia in men’s ice hockey. After one period it was Slovenia 0 and Phil Kessel 2. I thought I’d run outside quickly and clean off some of yesterday’s snow. In one of those happy magical events, a plow dumped snow just off the side of our driveway. In doing so, the driver completely cleared the snow bank. Thank you, oh blessed plow driver. You made my day 100000 times easier. I will forever appreciate your kind gesture.
So after I shoveled and cleaned most of the ice off of the cars, and dug out the fire hydrant again, I went slightly crazy. The previous owners of our house left one of those roof shovel things in the garage. We had major icicles hanging of the gutters. We also have ice dams. Yippee. At first I thought I’d take that roof shovel thing and just knock down the icicles. After I finished the front of the house I went nuts. I couldn’t reach too far up onto the roof, but I dragged down as much as I could. There is still an ice dam that seems to be located mostly in the gutters themselves, but there is a lot less snow on the edge of the roof itself. I did the back of the house too. In some places I sank knee deep into the snow. I’m something like six feet five inches tall. Knee deep on me is chest deep on normal people. There is a ton of snow out there.
So team USA won their game against Slovenia. They are 3-0 in the preliminary round. Amazingly, Russia and Slovakia are scoreless in overtime right now. If Russia loses again… damn.
Later today we are going to go to my nephew’s third birthday party. I am still not feeling terribly well, and my wife woke up with the same bug today and is really feeling sick. Therefore we are going to go to the party, but we aren’t going to stay very long. We need to go home and let my love get better.
In unrelated news, I started a backup of my Flickr account yesterday afternoon. It’s about half way done. I have so much stuff over there, you can’t even believe it.
I might try to do some more recording later today. We’ll see how the day turns out.
Go Team USA!
For the first time we are skipping Weight Watchers. It has nothing to do with fear of the scale. Nothing to do with the fact that we threw a birthday party for an 11 year old last Sunday, and that the cake was gigantic and absolutely magical in It’s deliciousness, and therefore is gone.
No. We are skipping the weigh in and the meeting because the USA vs Russia hockey game starts in 13 minutes. You can take the Cold War out of the international political climate, but you can’t take the Cold War out of the Olympic Ice Hockey fan.
USA! USA! USA!
It’s been so long since I’ve watched live hockey at any level.
It’s a huge game today for fans in New England. This time of year it doesn’t get any bigger than this.
For some reason my gut is telling me that Jarome Iginla is going to light things up in the second period. I have no basis for that feeling except that Iginla is awesome. He’s a shadow of his younger self, but I am seriously digging the fact that he is finally a Bruin.
note: you didn’t think I was talking about the Patriots in the AFC Championship game, did you? Honestly, I could care less.
Hello, and welcome to the worst day of the year. At least from my point of view.
We just completed the best weekend of the entire year. Four days. Thanksgiving. Nothing but time spent with the family. A great time was had by all. What a fantastic weekend!!
And then today…
Reality.
Urgh.
The worst of all bad Mondays. Today. It’s here. Yippee and all that happy crappy.
The kids disagreed with me. They feel that the first day back after Christmas vacation is the worst day of the year. If I still had a Christmas vacation I would agree, but I don’t. That leaves the return to work following the four day weekend as the worst day of the year for me.
I got caught up on The Walking Dead this morning. Now what. George Romero, the king of the zombie genre, has referred to The Walking Dead as just a soap opera that happens to have zombies in it. There was one character who you know is gone… but in soap opera terms… you never actually saw him go, although it was greatly implied. Is there a soap opera-esque resurrection in the show’s future? Maybe if the ratings dip? I don’t know. TV makes me cynical.
Now that NaSoAlMo is over, and The Walking Dead is on mid-season hiatus, I can do things like read books and watch hockey games again. It’s weird to have so much free time again! WOOHOO
This has been the craziest busy day ever. Everyone seems to be cramming a full weeks worth of crazy into one day.
I started mixing another song last night but decided I would be better served by sleeping. Good thinking on my part.
So The Walking Dead… I knew they were working on a spin off, but I thought it would be all new characters somewhere else in the world. I didn’t think it would be just about The Governor, and I didn’t think it was replacing the original show. Did the main cast need a vacation or something? Two weeks in a row of side story. I’m ready for the main story arc to come back now. Hell, I was ready seven days ago. That being said, the crazier that character gets the more fun he is.. and he’s getting pretty crazy again.
The Bruins play the Penguins tonight in a happy playoff rematch. Remember how the Penguins were heavily favored and then got swept by the Bruins? Remember that? Do you think his Bruins teammates let Jarome Iginla forget that for even a second? Tonight is a match up between the two top teams in the East. I probably won’t watch much, but I might catch some on the radio. There are just so many things going on right now.
I had planned to finish up the last two or three songs worth of guitar parts today but I watched zombie television instead. The whole project this month is completely disorganized. I don’t even know how many songs are left to finish. After the big chunk of work I did on Friday, I expect it to get finished on time. I just don’t feel very good about the whole thing. My guitar playing has been so bad it’s painful. It’s painful to listen to, and it’s painful to play. My finger tips are still burning from Friday. My playing has been bad enough to take a lot of the fun out of this. If I don’t keep practicing between now and February I might not do RPM. I mean, I know I suck but at least when I’m at my best I can fool myself into thinking I don’t suck too bad. I can’t do that right now.
I took today off with the express purpose of finishing as much of the seven national solo album month songs as I can. I want to at least have the vocals done and any acoustic instruments (re: 12-string) as I can. I can sneak the electric guitar parts in later if need be, but ideally I’d like to have all of the tracking done today.
I started feeling sick yesterday. Coughing and a little stuffy nose. I am not better this morning.
The music project might be in even more trouble than I already thought.
I blame all of this on the Bruins losing to the Blues in a shootout last night. I listened to most of the game on the radio and then somehow fell asleep with the shootout tied at one. How did that happen? Maybe if they’d played 10 or 20 minutes of overtime instead of five minutes I would have been engaged in the game enough to stay awake. Shootouts are gimmicks. I don’t like them. Four on Four overtime is a gimmick too, but at least it still looks like a hockey game.
Anyway… wish me music luck. I think I am going to need it.
Inside the Red Head's Head 