Last night’s game was the craziest I’ve been to so far:
1. Prior to the game, I saw a Diamond Ice Girl practicing her dance moves in front of the mirror in the ladies room. I should have seen the foreshadowing.
2. I also ran into a woman dressed as Flo, the Progressive lady. Halloween weekend and all that.
3. The Aeros pulled their goalie about 10 seconds into the game. This was a little disconcerting since that’s normally a desparate end of game kind of move. We figured that there must be a history between the teams that whoever scores first blood must win the games because otherwise, this was just sheer lunacy.
4. A kid in the row in front of us lost a tooth. I suppose he was wiggling it. His dad’s response was that “lots of guys lose teeth during hockey games” and stuck the tooth in his pocket for safe keeping.
5. The announcer all of a sudden summoned the team doctor to the locker room in the middle of the first period. As far as I could tell, none of the players were in the locker room and none were headed in that direction. freaky.

6. When I let the lady next to us pass me at one point, she stepped full on my foot and then looked down to see what she’d stepped on and said, “was that your foot?” like my foot had no business being there. I resisted saying, “Um, yea, it’s been attached to the bottom of that leg for 32 years now, fancy that”. I said, “yes” and she said “I’m sorry.” I was fine, but I’m still wondering where else she thought my foot would be.
7. At one point, when the Texas stars were down 1-3, a gentleman two rows back began yelling, “Go (ice) bats!” and mumbling “maybe that will help.”
8. I think the refs were high. They called an insane number of penalties but managed to miss several obvious calls.

-They missed an offsides call on Houston right before they scored.
-They also missed calling one of the Stars’ goals entirely.
-And what looked like a high stick to the face caused a bloody nose on Brunnstrom, but they didn’t call that.
-At TWO points during the game, so many penalties had been called that the teams were playing 5 on 3. Ref #45, you’re on my list.
9. Tonight’s game included the first real fight I’ve seen between the Stars and Aeros and it was hard core. At one point, they hit their knees but bounced back up and since the refs were under the influence, they kept fighting until they were really down.
10. On a night when the Rangers won game 3 of the world series, you’d think they could play nice, but maybe the Astros fans were a little riled up.
11. A tiny lady was yelling “Khudobin (Aeros goalie), you suck!”. We were all pretty ticked at this point since we had twice as many shots on goal and half as many points and he’s not THAT good. I supported her wholeheartedly. A guy responded, “shut up!” and she came back with, “you want a piece of this?” while she looked around at whoever was daring to challenge her right to heckle the goalie.
12. An Aeros player was sent to the penatly box; the Cotton-Eyed Joe came on and he actually started dancing and riding his hockey stick like a horse. fabulous!
13. The Stars played most of the last 3 minutes with no goalie, but were unable to score. Final score was 1-3.

In short, I do not think it is a good idea for the Stars to wear a different color jersey/use pink sticks. Tonight was a little bit of a disaster. On the other hand, I may just try to focus on how entertaining it was and that it raised a lot of money for a good cause.

Happy Halloween!

The Texas Stars had ladies night and Lisa was kind enough to join me on this little adventure. We both wore our tennis shoes and were not really sporting the Sex and the City look.
When we first got there, we had to register with State Farm and Lisa didn’t know her agent’s name, so that was recorded as “I don’t know!!!!!!” Yikes, we didn’t know there was going to be a quiz!
We were trying to find where to go for dinner and were going to look at merchandise on the way until we were warned that it was not time for that and there would be certain shopping time later (5 more demerits).
We ate dinner at the club level. Here is the view:

We got to tour the locker room. Krahn gave us a talk about his pads and how long it takes him to put them on. According to the other members of the team, he’s a lot faster than other goalies who are lazy and slow and it takes him about 7 mins. Rallo also spoke for a little bit.


Here’s the stick room:


Next, we moved to the Zamboni station where we learned it takes them about a week to put down the ice for the season. When there is a concert, they put composite planks down over the ice so, it is still cold.


On to the coaches’ station where we’d learn about rules and plays. We couldn’t always hear what he was saying, but we got to sit on the team benches while he spoke; that was cool. Also, because we were near the beginning of the line, we got to have players escort us over the ice to the opposing team’s bench and back. It was cool to be on the ice which is more slick than I recalled. I overheard a lady saying afterwards what nice eyes her escort had. I was fascinated that she’d noticed since I’d been mainly occupied with not landing on my arse.

We moved on to my favorite station, the autograph station. I already had my white cap ready to be signed, so I went down the table and got all the players to sign it (every player at the autograph table looked like a model). Then we went to the photo booth to get our pictures taken with Gazdic and Wathier who are conveniently very broad, good-looking and the same height. It was at this point that we realized that where each player was assigned was strategic. The “leaders” in the locker rooms, the pretty ones were signing autographs, the fan favorites were taking pictures and everyone else (mostly new guys) on the ice. To be fair, I think this was the point Lisa figured this out. I solidified the idea when I was reviewing my pictures after the fact.

We tried to go to the Miller Lite lounge a little early when we couldn’t see our leader, but were promptly stopped by Roxie (our fearless leader that it would have been easier to follow had she been taller). So, I went and bought a T-shirt for TH and got all the players to sign that while we waited for our turn. At this point, someone let us know our group was “leaving us” and we needed to catch up! Are you kidding me? They were within spitting distance.

Then we went to the press box before it was time to leave. They were playing the previous Sun. night’s kiss cam in the press box, so Lisa was able to see the replay. I was pleased to see that Charles and I didn’t look half bad. Ten years of practice, I guess.

Overall, a great evening and it was fun for Lisa and I to be the troublemakers, for once.

Well, I’ve got 100 rows left of stranded colorwork left before the lion is complete! :)
I thought at one point that I might not finish, but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here’s a photo of the floats on the back (I haven’t posted a pic of the front recently in case TH gets curious):

The one thing that has really paid off since I’m doing fair isled instead of intarsia is that the time I figured out I’d made a mistake two rows back, I was able to drop a couple of stitches, pick the correct color up and redo the stitches(using the floats rather than the original strands) and correct the mistake without having to rip out two rows! :)
Yay for floats (I prefer to say floats rather than “strands” b/c it makes me think of coke floats.)! :)

The Stars won Friday night in a great game. Krahn had 43 saves and Jamie Benn got a hat trick. The final score was 5-3 and I was thrilled! Hopefully they’ll win again tonight and advance. :)
Go STARS! :)

In other news, I saw Iron Man 2. If you liked the first one, I think you’ll enjoy it. I did…..except for the 15 year old boy next to me that couldn’t seem to resist repeating EVERY single quotable line after it was said and making noises too. He was wearing a national guard shirt, so maybe he’ll go into the military and learn to be quiet. His dad shushing him sure wasn’t working. And he was drinking milk rather than soda. I can’t imagine him on sugar!
Tip for parents: If you know you have to shush your kid during movies, have them sit on the end near the aisle.
I managed not to tell him to say anything rude despite the fact that he almost ruined the movie for me…….so, that was something.
and just last week, I was thinking that I don’t really have a problem with repetitive noises (like people clicking their pens or microwaves beeping)…..but you let a teenaged kid talk over my movie…..well, that’s another thing entirely.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Grammy, Grandma Katie, and my MIL.

Everyone else, Happy Sunday! :)

(5/9/2010 4:29 pm)