You know I’ve never seen the Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet? The one starting the legendary, immortal, genius, poet, starship captain William Shatner?

I am posting these here now so that I can watch them later. You can watch them too if you like.

Last night I was poking around looking at posts related to the RPM challenge that I made last year. I was curious to see how last year’s progress compared to this year’s progress. I was amazed to see that I finished tracking the bass parts on exactly the same date. This year I am working at the same pace as last year. That surprises me seeing as I feel like this year I’ve been slacking in a huge way.

Oh, and this is for you Mr Technorati: UZF9VHU6B6KW

So the Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey Quarter Final round is over. I was pretty surprised by some of the results.

The one game that went more or less according to plan was the USA/Switzerland game. I would have preferred to see the US offense explode and bury the poor Swiss by 8 or 9 goals, but I will take a 2-0 win if that’s what’s there for the taking. Their reward for their victory last night is a chance to get blanked by Miikka Kiprusoff. Let’s hope the offense has a better time against the Kipper then it did against Jonas Hiller.

Finland beat the Czech Republic. I like the Finns. Four years ago, after the USA was eliminated, I through all of my weight (figuratively) behind Finland. This year I get to root against them. They will play my home town team, the United States of America tomorrow at 3:00pm Eastern time. I have to admit that I sort of expected the Czechs to run away with this game. Maybe I still have memories of their gold medal in 1998 swimming in my head, but I thought they would do better. Of course, they did have to face Miikka Kiprusoff. USA take note, please.

In a major upset, the Slovakians beat Sweden last night. That is definitely a shock. Slovakia is no slouch, don’t get me wrong, but Sweden is a powerhouse and they beat them 4-3. Slovakia’s prize for beating the Swedish team? Nuttin’ much, just Canada. Just the best team in the known universe. I’ll be rooting for Slovakia. When the USA beat Canada Sunday night it was amazing, but I would prefer not to have to sit through that match up again in a gold medal game. Granted, if Sunday was a sign, it might be the best game ever. The pure hockey fan in me wants to see USA/Canada in the gold medal game. The hockey loving citizen of the United States of America wants to see USA/Slovakia. Again, no offense to Slovakia… but I bet they’d all understand.

The big surprise last night was the huge let down that was Canada vs Russia. I said yesterday that these two teams are on paper the best two teams in the world. I was expecting all of the excitement and drama and wonder that we saw in the USA/Canada game. Instead we saw Canada utterly destroy Russia. The great Russian Bear rolled over and died and let the Canadian team coast to an improbable 7-3 win. I expected Canada to win last night, but I also expected Russia to show up. I was flat out wrong on that front.

So tomorrow the medal round match ups will be decided. In what will go down as yet another NBC screw over of hockey fans, on the East coast at least, the USA/Finland game will be at 3:00pm Eastern time while everyone in the USA is at work and the Canada/Slovakia game will start at 9:30pm Eastern time when at least 25% of the United States viewing population will be asleep before the game ends if not before it starts.

USA!
USA!
USA!

USA beats Switzerland in their quarter final match up by a final score of 2-0. The USA outshot their opponent 8437584715702764081764 to 19. (that might be slightly inaccurate… it might actually have been 44 to 19 with the Swiss getting 11 of those shots in the third period)

Zach Parise scored both goals for the USA with a 0-0 tiebreaker 2:08 into the third period and an empty net goal with about 12 seconds left. It should, of course, be noted that Zach’s brother Jordan was a goalie for the Lowell Devils. I saw him play many many times. That doesn’t actually have any bearing on the story, it just means that Robbie likes to name drop even when he doesn’t know the person who’s name he is dropping or it bares no relevance to… well… anything.

USA will now play the winner of tonight’s Finland vs Czech Republic game which takes place at 10:00pm Eastern time. This semifinal game will take place at some point on Friday. The times are to be determined.

It should be noted (only because I do not believe it will jinx anything) that four teams advance out of the quarter finals, and three of those four teams will win a medal. Coming into the tournament I would have been thrilled to see my country earn any medal, but I really didn’t think it would happen. Now, after getting the top seed out of the preliminaries and already having beaten a huge powerhouse of a Canadian team…

Is gold too much to hope for?

USA!
USA!
USA!

For future reference, I followed todays game on three sites: Twitter, an NBC auto-refreshing score board, and a live blog featuring input from a few ESPN writers.

I can’t believe I forgot to set the DVR today. Team USA plays Switzerland at 3:00pm Eastern time today and I will not be able to see a second of it. I will, however, get to see team Canada play Russia tonight at 7:30pm Eastern time. There we have the match up that I was hoping to see in the Gold Medal game. On paper they are clearly the two best teams in the tournament. It doesn’t quite have the same flair as the USSR days (the Soviet hockey team is the only thing I miss about those days, and even that is only due to the 1980 miracle on ice game and the joy of rooting against them… like rooting against the Yankees) but it is still a definite marque match up. It should be a fantastic game. Crosby vs Ovetchkin once again.

I grabbed a table with the current tournament bracket from this site here. I just wanted a quick reference to see who will be playing whom when.

What a bummer of a day this is turning into. Rainy and dreary with snow in the forecast. Back at work after my wonderful five day weekend (that was probably five days too short). Team USA plays Switzerland in their first quarterfinal match up in Vancouver and some dummy forgot to set the DVR this morning.

Total bummer. I wanna go back home and go back to bed.

OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!OUCH!

Holy Shite my hand is KILLING ME!

Back in 1990 (I think) I was playing a gig at a CYO Dance in Tewksbury with the band I had started up with friends in High School (Tempest Fero… yeah, worst name ever but that’s irrelevant to the story). We were playing a song by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. One of the 80’s glammy ones, not the awesome 70’s Ronnie Dio metal ones, and my left hand started hurting. It was like a bad cramp or something. I couldn’t keep my fingers on the fretboard. It hurt like bloody hell.

That was the first time it happened.

Since then it happens on and off when I’m playing, regardless of whether I am playing a lot and in good “shape” or not.

This morning I drove Jen to work and then hit the basement in the hopes of getting three more songs underway and maybe starting to record bass parts or maybe some rhythm guitars.

I few minutes ago I was recording the drum machine and a guide guitar for song number 10 and my hand starting with the usual pain. Unfortunately the drum part I programmed ran for maybe 5-6 minutes. My hand started hurting so much I couldn’t fret the chords. Damn it hurt a lot.

I just took a few asprins and I am going to take a lunch break, but oh my sweet goodness did that suck. It doesn’t hurt right now because I am not squeezing anything with my fingers contorted into weird shapes, but it will probably come back when I start playing again. Let’s hope the asprin does it’s thing.

(by the way, I am pretty sure it’s not carpal tunnel because as far as I know carpal tunnel is a wrist injury and this is all in the fingers… so I’ve got that going for me I guess)

The good news here is that I’ve got 10 songs underway and am ready to start overdubbing over the drum machine tracks. The bad news is two fold. First, I have until February 28th to finish this. Today is February 23rd. That translates to “Fat Chance.” Of course I finished last year’s project in April so maybe I can beat that record. The second bad news is… well… OUCH!

Making a push on RPM this morning. Got miles to go though.

Never in the history of bad television has there been television as bad as the show iCarley. Oh my God it’s horrible.

After a lazy Sunday that was capped off with a shocking win by team USA over Canada in men’s ice hockey I am set for a pretty lazy Monday too.

I have today and tomorrow off. The kids are on school vacation this week so they will be with me today but they have some other things to do tomorrow.

That means watching some tube with the wee ones, maybe some board games and stuff like that to go along with some chores I need to do. I have already snuck into the cellar to do a little RPM Challenge work, I might try to sneak back for more if I get the chance.

Mostly though I’ll just be wishing my wife were home with us.