February 2006 Archives
February 25, 2006
Well, I got an e-mail from my new captain last night. There are 14 players, including the goalie, on our team (which seems about average for the league), and 8 teams. I'm not on the same team as anyone whose name I recognize, but then anyone who knows me understands that I could nonetheless recognize some teammates once I see them. :)
Sadly, I won't be using the number I had hoped to; some other fellow took #13. Ah well. It also appears I'll be playing some forward position, which hopefully will work out better than it did during the evaluation skate. :-D Our first game is March 5 at 7:15pm, which is unfortunate; Jenny's qualifying exams are that weekend, and that is of course the night of the Oscars, so I feel bad about not being around for part of that. :(
Oh, also, it appears that our team name is the "ATX Blades"; I have no idea what that refers to. :)
February 23, 2006
So as mentioned, Tuesday was the New Player Evaluation Skate for the league. There were actually two skates, a B/C skate at 7:30 and an A/B at 9:00. I'm a C leaguer (A is the highest skill level, C the lowest), but I couldn't make the 7:30, so I ended up skating with A/Bers (and I think 2 or 3 other Cs in the same situation).
In some ways it was good--there were fewer players, so I got more ice time--but man, it was tough to keep up. :) I didn't have a shot on goal all night (although I almost had a pair of breakaways), but I played all right on defense (broke up a couple of 2 on 1s and even a 3 on 1), so hopefully I didn't look too bad out there. Those A leaguers are fast, though; even turning around and skating forwards I couldn't keep up with most of them.
It was a heck of a skate--we did skating/shooting drills for 15 minutes just to show off our level of ability, then we scrimmaged for an hour straight, no breaks, just roll the lines. That was kind of a new experience for me--never played organized ice hockey before, so the whole line change thing (when to get off, getting over the wall both ways, shifting down the bench) took me a few shifts to get used to. I about killed myself getting over the wall once; tossed my leg up over it, lost my balance, and crashed to the ice on my back. I'm sure all the captains were impressed. ;)
All in all, I was exhausted, but I actually don't feel too bad about how I played. I'm not sure how many of the C captains stayed to watch; hopefully at least a few. I did get to see the last half hour of the B/C skate, and there were a lot of C leaguers out there who were a lot newer to the sport than I am, so if any C captains did stay I think I'll come off all right.
Anyway, we'll see Friday or Saturday when my new captain contacts me. :)
February 15, 2006
So I am officially rooting for the Italian men's hockey team for the rest of the Olympics. I just finished watching their game against Canada, and the way they managed to hang with the Canadian squad for so much of the game was inspiring. They may have lost 7-2, but they did it in style, no doubt about that. And you have to love how excited their fans get when they're doing well.
Of course, I was rooting for Kazakhstan against the Swedes, too. I have something of an affinity for underdog teams, maybe because I was never on a winning team in any league I ever played in. Ever. Not soccer, not tennis, not indoor soccer, probably not even T-ball as a little kid. :) I'm hoping that will change with the upcoming hockey season. We'll see. ;)
February 14, 2006
This year was an interesting Valentine's Day. Jen and I very rarely do anything super special (last year was an exception)--it's right in the middle of her semester, and I'm not all that romantic at my best. :-P
This year I was planning to make our "special dinner" staple (Salmon in Puff Pasty with dill cream sauce, and asparagus with lemon-butter sauce). Unfortunately we didn't have any puff pastry, so I stopped on the way home to buy some and accidentally picked up puff pastry shells instead. Which would be great for making little fruit tarts, but aren't really useful for packing salmon into. :( So I fell back on the phyllo dough we still had. Which was old, and dry, and cracking all over the place, which made it kind of difficult to wrap around the salmon and rice. A little creative brushwork with the egg-and-water "glue" helped quite a bit, fortunately, and it turned out all right.
Then, of course, the raspberry creme brulee took longer than expected to cook (probably my fault--I put cold water in the pan instead of starting with boiling, so it probably took forever to get up to heat), so by the time it was done cooling Jen and I had fallen asleep. So I broiled the sugar on top, wrapped them up, and popped them in the fridge for another day. Hopefully they turned out good. :-P I don't know what it was, today was just not a good cooking day for me. In retrospect I should have made the brulee on Monday.
All in all it ended up being a good Valentine's Day. Jen gave me some very nice gifts, and I officially signed up to play in an adult ice hockey league; the new player evaluation skate is next Tuesday, and the draft is the Thursday after that, so we'll see what happens. :)
