whee!

So, after a productive morning in EVE and a very fun TF & Pancakes with ardaniel & Co., Alex and I rolled out to meet flaggerx and members of his church choir to go to an OSU hockey game.

It'd been about 3 years since I last went to one, and it was different because last time we'd been right up against the glass, and this time we were up in the loge area.

Observations:

A) Michigan State (the opponents) are -really- good. They beat OSU 4-0 and didn't look like they were really challenged after they got up 1-0 in the first.

B) OSU started strong, seemed to deflate a little after the first goal, but were coming back up and doing a pretty good job getting the puck in as the first period ended, then went to the locker room and came out without energy and playing extremely sloppy. I can only blame this on coaching - something was said in that locker room, and it was clearly The Wrong Thing.

C) The retro-styled jerseys with scarlet and grey stripes were really neat. Actually, all the OSU hockey jerseys I saw the team or the various people in the stands wearing looked pretty nice. I might make a gander to the team store at some point here.

D) College hockey feels like the players are at a slower pace than NHL hockey. Nobody really seemed to move with a lot of speed.

Still, we had fun, and it was a nice time out!

Then, we headed to Barley's smokehouse, got ourselves fed very well, and I drank pints of the Maclennan's Scottish ale (good), Cherry Porter (also good), and Raspberry Wheat ale (oooo, good. Went really well with the bbq sauce.) Most of the meal was excellent, but the kitchen closed before we could get dessert, and our server wasn't clueful enough to ask us "Hey, would you like me to put a dessert order in before the kitchen closes?", so that was disappointing, especially since they added some really nice sounding new desserts.

After dropping Dave off, we started on our way home before realizing we needed cat food very badly, and really wanted dessert. So, an entertaining interlude was spent at Meijer, followed by Mythbusters and the consumptuon of Bavarian Creme danish.

And all was right with the world.

(no subject)

Got asked/told that my family wanted to do a "birthdays" dinner for my granda, mom, and dad (all within about 2 weeks of each other), and kindasortastretched to include myself (2/20) and Crystal (2/5).

We drove up to Mohican lodge again, and my impressions really come down to "Wow, the lake is really pretty frozen over", "The appetizers and soup were really good", and "Y'know, when I order a steak medium rare, I really shouldn't be able to cut into the medium-well part." Aside from the (admittedly quite beautiful, and at times breathtaking) scenery, it's really -not- worth driving an hour and a half each way.

Seeing people went reasonably well, and I was impressed at how awkward conversations were mostly avoided until my Mom decided to start leaning on me again about singing (how many times do I have to tell you that I have -no. enjoyment. from singing. anymore. before you get the fact that I don't want to join your choir, make a CD for you, join the CSO choir, or compete anymore?) and for some reason, she's decided to start a grassroots movement to abolish the Electoral College (nevermind that I think there already is one?) and said she wants me to do something very important for it before I managed to derail her and go to the restroom until the table conversation had moved to safer ground.

My mom's increasingly starting to act in a way we call "Fucking Crazy". I'm wondering if maybe I need to run silent and deep for awhile in regards to my family and just claim that work is eating up all of my time for the next few months.