(no subject)

Mmm, thunderstorms.

So, yesterday, I decided to take my frustrations out on Rock Band. Step #Whatever of the wierdo Utena plan came down to "Who'd more likely want to play drums? Anthy, or Saionji?", and I decided that Anthy had -more than enough pent up frustration- to be an excellent drummer, and started a solo tour quite well before Steve tried to get me in a 360 chat, and I found out that trying to use the mic + drums = FAIL.

After some more misadventures, and the DSL being screwy again, Alex and I had some dinner and decided to pick up our World Tour again. (If you missed our previous installment, BanderSNATCHED! had just won a van, man!)

Hitting the mystery setlists in Seattle, LA, San Fran, and then a BUS COMPETITION, I took every song cold on medium and the lowest we came out of it was a 4 star with Alex at 95+ % and me at 91%. The bus competition was especially rawksome, as we came out of there with 5 stars on every star, a couple of 15,000+ point BIG ROCK ENDINGS, and a question of just what we had to do to get a 6th star, if we were so inclined.

Then we took the bus to Chicago, and going into "Detroit Rock City" cold whipped our asses. But we made it out of there with 4 stars (barely), and I'm quite pleased at how well we were doing.

Caught the end of the Flames/Oilers beatdown (-5 goals-. 5. And Edmonton picked up a -7 minute powerplay-, 5 minutes of it a major, which they doodled around for 4:30 and converted twice in the last 2:30), and the end of PHX/COL, and got to watch the Avs colour guy get so furious about Phoenix slamming the OT winner in under Budaj's pads that I thought he was actually going to vibrate himself into a new state of matter.

Alex's commentary was: "He's either a living bobblehead, or a tweaker who just hit the end of the road."

Then I slept, and I woke up. And we're having one hell of a thunderstorm here.

I have to go to work now. Here we go again!

You take the good with the bad.

So, for the price of listening to 2 hours of sales pitches and SE demos from Symantec (some of which, I admit, were pretty good - there's a very high chance that some of the stuff we were shown, especially application virtualization (yes, -application- virtualization, hot damn) will get picked up by SCI. Our datacenter operations guy was there along with a bunch of our open systems people, and he damn near creamed his jeans during that particular demo), I got to go to the Jackets game and sit in a very nice suite.

A very mixed bag of a night and a game. I think the Jackets deserved a win and got screwed on a few calls, but at least they got a point out of it. On the down side, LeClaire took a really nasty hit from a Capitals player that forced him to leave the game. Unfortunately, if Pazzy is down for more than a 5-10 game stretch....shit. That's bad. Really bad. I don't think it totally kills our playoff hopes, because you never know how the team is gonna respond to that (I suspect we -will- see Mason up in Columbus again. Sorry, Kitchener), but it certainly isn't helpful.

We watched the game from the not just a suite, but one of the founder's suites (even swankier than the suite I was in previously with flaggerx, which I didn't think was possible), and even better, we were -directly above the cannon and directly below the pyro charge.-

Some of the Symantec SEs and a few of the other clients at the meeting were out of towners who had never been to an NHL game or Nationwide before, and their reactions were -hilarious-.

Also, beyond the steakhouse cut calamari frites in roasted red pepper and tomato aoli*, wild mushroom soup with Parmesan reggiano, and Schezuan pepper coated seared Ahi, we got fed off a dessert cart literally the size of your average street food cart (all you could eat), and given white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate edible shot glasses, filled with Baileys, Kahlua, and Godiva liqueur, respectively.

Sometimes, it's a hard life, folks.

The other thing that really sticks out at me was the play of Ovechkin. I think Columbus did really well holding him to two goals (one of which was the OT winner). The man just...moves. It's amazing to watch him in person. There were times when it seemed almost like he moved across the ice like a laser beam. On one play, he was boxed in by Foote and Hejda, with Novotny coming up ice to seal the hole and get the puck, and then somehow he managed to just flow around all three like smoke, and only Nash getting down and coming over to block the shot kept him from shooting at LeClaire on open ice.

He also really, clearly, is having fun out there. He celebrated all of his teams goals like they just won the Olympics. He cheered for big hits, he cheered when there were fights, I think he might have even gone up to Nash and cheered him for his 5 on 3 shorthanded goal. He's got a huge amount of energy, and it's easy to see why he's the face of his team and the league.

I seriously wonder if he will get the C in Washington next year, instead of just being an assistant. I think only his English skills might prevent it. (I heard him interviewed on Saturday night. He does OK for someone who has only been in the US for 3 years, but I really wouldn't call it polished to the level he'd probably need to be the primary player responsible for speaking with the on and off ice officials.)

Also, during the pre-game warmups and skate, he was chewing bubblegum and blowing bubbles when he wasn't in drills, and I thought that was hilarious. He also skated around the Capitals half of the ice and threw at least 6 pucks over the glass for the kids that usually gather at the boards that I noticed, maybe more, which will always put a player in my good graces.

Pictures are up in my Flickr...and wow. I'm really tired now.

Have a good night, everyone. I'll see you in the morning.

*WTF. My spellchecker knows "Kaolin", and suggests it, but it doesn't know Aoli?

(no subject)

Not so fresh feeling news: Apparently my mom is on 2 weeks of medically ordered bedrest due to back issues and concerns about her sciatic nerve.

Yuck.

On the plus side, I forgot to mention that I won a Brassard autographed puck (better get a case for it) and a fuzzy blanket that wasn't signed by anyone, but seems like it ought to be warm.

Yes, yes, I'm really going to bed now. I promise.