Close Enough

Tags

Canucks, hockey, nhl, parenting, toddlers, vancouver giants, whl

PH is seriously pissed off about the whole NHL lockout thing.

I don’t blame him. It’s really hard to have any sympathy for rich guys who squabble over money while depriving the little people of their entertainment.

In retaliation, and also because it came with free entrance to Playland as an enticement, PH got tickets to Giants game. The Giants are WHL, which is not the Women’s Hockey League (which would make sense) but the Western Hockey League –  a step down from NHL, and unaffected by the current strike.

Fine with me. Cheaper than Canucks tickets, and Owl doesn’t know the difference.

Canucks. Giants. Close enough.

He loved it, of course, because he’s a raging extrovert, and he loves hockey.

He cheered and gasped in awe.

“Oooh!”

“WOW!”

and then, as he pointed enthusiastically at the players, his little voice rang loud among the hockey fans.

“OOOH! SOCCER!!”

Close enough

 

Owl’s First Haiku

Tags

baby, haiku, hockey, poetry, toddler

Hockey hockey ball
hockey ball, hockey ball ball
hockey hockey, yeah.

The Vancouver Riots Weren’t About The Stanley Cup

Tags

hockey, idiots, news, riots, stanley cup, Vancouver

Perfect Husband went downtown for the game, but he left as soon as the game was over. Good thing, too, because I’m sure you have all heard what happened in Vancouver last night, after the game. All PH saw was a mailbox overturned and a mugging, but not long after he left, a car was flipped and set fire to, not five meters from where he had been standing.

When he got home we watched the news until nearly midnight, as people rioted in the streets and Vancouver burned.

At first I was disgusted with sports fans.

“I understand that they’re disappointed,” I said to PH, “but how does setting fire to someone else’s property make anything better?”

As I watched the live footage, though, I realized something – people weren’t doing this because they were pissed about the game. They were laughing, dancing, waving at the cameras. They were pulling ridiculous stunts, like jumping onto a flaming bimmer only to slip and fall right into the flames. They were taking pictures of themselves in front of broken storefront windows. They were watching criminals looting. They were beginning to realize that there was too many of them, and not enough of the police. They were realizing that they could DO ANYTHING, and probably not get caught.

And then we saw human nature at its finest.

What would YOU do, if you could do anything you had ever wanted to do, and you were sure that you couldn’t get caught? Would you run up a “down” escalator? Shout in a library? Break a window just to hear the glorious smash? Or grab an iPod touch?

A friend of ours was downtown and posted video of people looting. We can hear our friend hollering, in an amused tone of voice, “Seriously? What do you guys want to steal makeup for? Is lipstick worth going to prison? You must be REALLY ugly…”

They weren’t doing it because they wanted makeup, of course. They were just doing it because they could.

Most of us have a hidden criminal deep down inside. I didn’t even know that I had it, until I realized that the London Drugs that was being looted was directly across from the massive downtown Chapters. And I thought, “to hell with looting London Drugs, imagine looting a CHAPTERS!”

Of course, I knew that I would never do it. Even if I were in a crowd full of people and knew that no one would ever catch me, that I could do it with impunity because everyone else was doing it to. I wouldn’t do it because I feel that it is WRONG to steal. I don’t just withold myself because I might get caught, I honestly refuse to do it.

But the thought was there – the thought of how awesome it would be to have a freeforall in a book store.

There are a lot of people who just don’t do things like that because they don’t want to get in trouble, not because they have sat down and worked out the morals of it. When you remove that risk, when you put them in a place where everyone is just doing whatever they have dreamed of doing their whole lives, when you say, “here, everyone else is doing it, so why not you?” there are a lot of people who go “AWESOME” and live out their fantasies.

THAT is what happened last night. This wasn’t a matter of Vancouver being a sore loser. This wasn’t outrage at the Bruins.

This was just an excuse to be the complete and total moron that everyone had always dreamed of being. This wasn’t about sports. This was about people having a great time being giant assholes.

I had to laugh at the news anchors, because they kept talking about what COMPLETE idiots everyone was being, and they were right.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=PctPVoiB3v0&feature=related]

GO CANUCKS!

Tags

babies, Canucks, hockey, photos, play-offs, stanley cup

I’m getting ready to fly home, so a short picture post today, featuring Babby as a hockey fan.

Hockey stick!

"Can I eat hockey?"

"Is this not the usual way to watch hockey?"

I Am Super Productive/Murderous!

Tags

black thumb, Canucks, flowers, gardening, hockey, plants, productivity, sun, weather

Dude.

I woke up yesterday morning, and the sun was shining. As someone with a tendency towards S.A.D., a good dose of sunshine is like a big happy kick in the butt.

It helped that Babby had actually had a decent sleep, only waking a couple of times and just briefly during the night, and he actually slept in. Perfect Husband woke me up (because I was going to drive him in and take the car for the day) and I sneaked out of bed and showered while the baby was still asleep.

When I dropped PH off at his work, I spotted a gardening centre and thought, “YES!”

Babby and I spent an hour browsing through plants, trying to get a good deal. We eventually picked up 12 plants and a pot for 50 bucks, all of which I really needed.

You see, my yard is still hideous, although it’s WAY better than it was last year.

the land where weeds go to die

My mother dug up the whole yard when she was here last summer, and re-sodded it and seeded it, and bought plants for it. Some of the plants didn’t make it through the winter, but others have.

The new grass sprung up tall and thick (as you saw), but many of the dandelions returned. PH weed whacked (our yard is too small to mow), and I’ve dosed them with vinegar and salt, because digging them up proved too time consuming when I had a Babby munching soil on a blanket next to me. I’ll re-sod and re-seed soon, and the yard should look better.

I came out of the gardening centre with three seedling geraniums, some pansies, a fuschia, lavender, chocolate mint (It smells like peppermint patty!), sweet basil, some “Jack Frost” to cover the backyard, and a deliciously aromatic curry plant.

Problem is, plants tend to die in my care.

Many plants have succumbed to my black thumb. There was my Phinneas, my ficus, which dropped its leaves and died as soon as I brought it home. There was Charlie, my little blue pine, which gave up on life when I replanted him in a bigger pot and stuck him on the balcony. There was the ivy I hung in the kitchen, which I forgot to water, and the rose bush, a birthday present, which was dead in two months. Then there was Bling, my poor money tree, which survived me hardily for a year until we moved to the new house and I placed him in the kitchen window, which gets Eastern sun (the rest of my house is North facing and largely dark).

Poor Bling, sitting in his Window of Death

Well, that sun burned poor Bling up dead, even though he struggled bravely for nearly another year while I ignorantly tried changing pots, water more, watering less, wiping his leaves and so on, completely unaware that he just needed more shade (since the kitchen is in shade for most of the day, and I don’t really do mornings, I just didn’t clue in until it was too late).

RIP, Bling. I'm sorry.

No wonder we’re having money problems.

I KILLED THE MONEY TREE.

Here’s hoping the new generation fare better. I chose the plants carefully for either sun tolerance (East facing) or shade tolerance (North facing), and then researched them further on the internet to decide whether to keep each one inside or outside, potted or planted.

curry plant, lavender, annuals

The lavender is in the sunny front, planted in a bed. The pansies, snap dragons, and two of the geraniums are planted there also, although they may get too much shade from the adjacent hedge. The curry plant is in a pot on the stoop.

Jack Frost and a fern

I put the Jack Frost in the shady yard, where hopefully he will cover the moss and weeds.

jade plant, chocolate mint, sweet basil

I put the sweet basil and the chocolate mint in pots in the kitchen window, next to the jade plant which has survived in my care for 9 months now.

fuschia

I hung the fuschia in the kitchen where the ivy used to be (must remember to water).

geranium

I hung the last geranium in a hanging basket in the yard, in a sunny patch. I did all of this while Babby napped (with screen doors and a baby monitor turned up high) because the sun was shining and I apparently operate on photosynthesis.

I am now placing bets on how long until the first one dies. I may turn this into some kind of giveaway. Price is Right rules apply. You should probably know that I got the sweet basil for free because it was so sad looking already.

Oh, I am also taking suggestions for names for my newest victims, so I can mourn them properly when they die horribly.

Then I went and got a hair cut, and then I drove to a friend’s house where I met PH and we watched the Canucks MURDER the Sharks.

Go Canucks!

All in all, a productive day.

…as long as the Canucks win the Stanley cup, and my plants don’t perish instantly.

Then We Make Love To The Stanley Cup

Tags

Canucks, hockey, Ivan Hrvatska

I am not a sports person, but I do care about hockey.

As long as the Canucks are doing well.

See, you probably think I’m a Canucks fan because I live in Vancouver. Well, you’re wrong! I’ve been a Canucks fan ever since 2004, when I still lived in New Brunswick and my roommate discovered this song :

Of course, it’s very old now, and most of those team members are no longer on the team. So you can imagine how jubilant I am about this:

Committing Sports Blasephemy: My Ideas To Make Sports More Interesting

Tags

baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, sports, super bowl sunday, wacky ideas

Perfect Husband is a Packers fan.

His obsession with sports is one of those humanly flaws that I tolerate because of his general perfection as a spouse.

I didn’t grow up in a sports-oriented home. When I was little my father would sit on the floor with his legs crossed and I would sit in the nest they made and we would watch golf together and I would recognize Greg Norman by his hat and cheer when Fuzzy Zoeller went into the rough.

That’s about it for sports in my family. I don’t do sports.

I like hockey all right. I enjoyed playing street hockey as a kid, possibly out of a sense of patriotism since I was a Canadian in an American International School. I believed that I must be good at hockey because of my nationality, and I made a great goalie.

Now, living in Vancouver you hear a lot of hockey talk. Vancouverites are all rabid Canucks fans, which I respect.(I was a Canucks fan before I even came out to BC because of Ivan Hrvatska). Being a Canucks fan is sort of like being a fan of the Boston Red Sox. The Canucks have a great team but they never win the Stanley Cup.

“How about that game last night?” is as common a conversation starting point as “so, it sure is raining, isn’t it?”

I can handle the hockey, even if I tend to say things like “Stanley Crosby is from Dartmouth, right?”

Football, though, I don’t do.

Perfect Husband’s family is American.

From the start of the football season, our cable is plugged in (PH and I get free cable but don’t usually take advantage of it, but right around football season, it comes back on again…). PH watches every CFL and NFL game that they will televise on basic cable.

I can’t get into it.

They run and they fall down.

Then they run.

Then they fall down.

PH says it’s chess with 300 pound men, but I can’t keep track of the action enough. They run. They fall down.

I keep telling PH that I would watch more sports if they just made them more interesting. Right now, as it is, the sports just aren’t exciting enough to get me to tune into them voluntarily. When I make suggestions, though, PH tends to whimper and cringe as though I have just sexually molested his childhood.

So, in honor of the fact that I am going to be a Super Bowl Sunday Widow anyway today, here are my suggestions to the sports world:

1. The NHL Winter Classic should not take place on a regulation sized rink built in a football stadium. It should take place on a rink that comprises the entire football field. Goals and similar demarcations should be made to scale, the players should be given novelty-sized sticks and they should play with a giant puck the size of a car tire. It could be called the Lillipution Winter Classic.

Even better if they hold it in Canada, because CFL fields are bigger than those piddly NFL fields.

2. There should also be a Summer Classic, wherein the top scoring hockey players of the season should play each other in an intense game of table hockey with full commentary and good macro lenses on the video cameras.

3. Sports commentators should no longer give the appearance of trying to outdo each other in a Who’s Uglier contest. In place of the gap teeth, bizrre chins and eye-blinding clothing, all colour commentary should be performed by Isaiah Mustafa, in bath towel.

4. Points should be deducted as part of penalties. So a game could hypothetically end up with negative scores.

5. The duller sports, like Baseball and Golf, should be covered by Foley artists with entertaining “boing!” and “wawawa” noises.

6. Basketball should be played on a giant trampoline and the nets should be much higher.

7. Tiny land mines should be placed randomly in a football/soccer field, which go off unexpectedly during the game. Not enough to hurt anyone, just enough to knock someone off of their feet with an explosion of dirt just as they catch the ball.

8. In Baseball, introduce dogs to the field.

9. In Curling, make rocks explode when contact is too jarring, so you have to tap a rock gently in order to keep it in play. This will prevent those clean games which are so boring to watch.

10. Sports teams should have political affiliations, so we can root for a team based on our personal belief system. That way, instead of it just being the Bears vs the Packers, it could be the Homophobic Pro-Lifers vs the Universal Health Care Soppy Liberals. This would really help create better stakes when watching two groups of men play games with each other at two in the afternoon on a Sunday.

Also, as a general advisory to the sporting world, I would like to see more:

• Cheese Rolling (people tumbling head over heels down a steep hill for the sake of cheese? What’s not to love?).
• Bossaball (bouncy castle + volleyball = awesome).
• Extreme Ironing (because, come on. It exists).
• Man Vs Horse (see above).
• Octopush (it is hockey UNDERWATER).
• Murder Ball (people who think that sports played by people with disabilities would be boring have never watched Wheelchair Rugby).
• Timbits Games (because they are adorable).

…You may now begin the pelting with rotten tomatoes. Perfect Husband probably won’t speak to me for days.

NORWAY’S PANTS… and reflections on Sidney Crosby

Tags

curling, gold medal, hockey, introvert, norway's pants, Olympics, Vancouver 2010

Perfect Husband came back from the Gold Medal hockey game understandably wound up. After a couple of hours of him shouting incomprehensible things loudly every few minutes, he began to settle down.

“You know what I think? The more and more I watch Sidney Crosby, the more I think he’s an introvert,” he said to me as we watched the Closing Ceremonies.

I opened my mouth to say that no one who ever played hockey could possibly be an introvert. But a mental image of Sidney Crosby flashed into my mind. Sidney Crosby, sitting quietly and thoughtfully on the bench while the other hockey players around him punched each other and grinned toothless grins. Sidney Crosby, so often accused by his detractors as entirely lacking in charisma, and called “wooden” or “bland”. Sidney Crosby, who has single mindedly dedicated himself to hockey since he was two, with a level of concentration that defies most people… while maintaining top grades in school.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “That… actually makes a lot of sense.”

“Well, I watched him getting the gold medal,” said Perfect Husband, “and I realized that whenever I see him in social situations, he always looks so awkward.”

It makes so much sense. Introverts make up a high percentage of the “gifted” population, and when it comes to hockey, Sidney Crosby is certainly generally considered gifted – either with natural hockey finesse or an impressive amount of dedication, depending on who you ask. Introverts have better concentration. They can have excellent social skills, but they rarely take the time to develop them, since dealing with strangers is so exhausting in the first place.

I think he’s an introvert. I think Perfect Husband is dead right.

GO INTROVERTS! GO FOR THE GOLD!

Speaking of which… the medal winning throw by Kevin Martin:

I loved the spontaneous hugs by the team when they realized that they had won. Kevin Martin looked SO happy. They all looked happy (the Canadians, anyway), but Kevin Martin was clearly over the moon. I actually saw him brush away a tear on the podium. We love you, Kevin Martin.

But let us not forget… NORWAY’S PANTS! Only they wore the red ones for this game. We were sad. They aren’t quite as awesome as the white ones.

Oh, and some women from the Canadian women’s hockey team were sitting behind us!

I asked them to hold my teddy bear, Timothy. He has been to the Eiffel Tower, and to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He has been to the Toronto Zoo, and the Vancouver Aquarium. He’s an active little bear. But holding the gold medal… that was definitely a high point.

Awwww, they’re so cute!

Tags

hockey, Olympics

Does anybody else feel that watching the Slovak and Swiss Women’s hockey teams play against each other is kind of like watching a timbits game, because they both suck so equally that it’s just kind of cute? Look! Dey tink dey can play hockey! Fwaw.

Guess what, Mum? I had sex and got knocked up!

Tags

hockey, parents, pregnancy

I have to say that it was a very weird experience, to call my parents and announce to them that I have a sexually transmitted medical condition. It was really awkward. It was even weirder to me for my husband to then call his parents and make a similar announcement to them. I am not accustomed to talking with my in-laws about my insides.

Love my mother’s response. A long, drawn out “Oooh…” in about seven different emotional flavours, from pleasant surprise to concern to horror to doubt to worry and back again. “OH…Ooo!ohh…OHHHOohh?OhhhOh!” Then after a pause that went a couple seconds beyond normal polite reaction time, she managed a “congratulations!”

So overall it went much better than I thought it would.

My mother-in-law just wept with joy, which was exactly what we knew she would do. All it took was my husband saying “So, you weren’t really stuck on having nine grandchildren, were you? Ten seems like a much rounder number.” And off went the water works. She’s such a sweetheart.

In other news, we went to the Canucks game vs the Penguins last night, as part of Perfect Husband’s Christmas present. Going to sports games is always a rather stressful experience for me because the atmosphere is SO very extroverted. They pack in as much flashing lights and loud noises as they possibly can, and every now and then, if they think the crowd is becoming understimulated by an unexciting or disappointing game, they instigate the crowd to make loud roars just to try and keep them happy.

We got stuck in front of a bunch of loud yabbos who felt the need to communicate constantly and at the top of their lungs. As they became more and more intoxicated, their wit levels dropped lower and lower, so that by the second period this fat American fuck was standing in the aisle with his sixth beer hollering “Hell ya, America starts random wars with people! You guys got oil? Our boys will come over and fuck you up! They won’t have a high school education! They’ll just have GUNS!”

By the third period he had slopped beer on my husband and was shouting insults at one of the other guys, who supposedly had an Irish heritage.

“Fuck you, Irishman! You suck. Is Ireland even in NATO?”

Perfect Husband can’t wait to bring The Babby to his/her first hockey game. We better not sit in front of any yabbos. But if we do, at least I’ll have the opportunity to teach my child about the stupidity of other people.