Saturday, January 30, 2016

What's With The Corner?

Updates of stuff. Let's start with hockey because why not? Specific efforts have been made to improve my goaltending. First, as an Xmas present from my long-suffering wife I took a semi-private lesson with a coach who wasn't a YouTube video. His name was Jim and the rink we were in was about twice the size of the room you're in - go ahead, look around and soak that in and if you're in a library just forget you read that - and to say it was helpful would win an award for understatement of the year.

Basically I, as can be expected, was doing pretty much everything wrong. He changed the way I moved, the way I stood, the way I dropped, the way I filled my water bottle . . . okay, not the last one.I was excited to take what I'd learned and try it out before my next game filling in at goalie for the Scurvy Dogs.

Didn't happen.

In addition, our regular goalie found a pad upgrade for me on some sort of goalie network while at the same time suggesting that the ancient, well-traveled pads I was using now might just be holding me back a bit. So for a ridiculously small amount of money a set of gently used pads/glove/blocker were shipped in from Canada THE HOME OF HOCKEY. They're huge, big puffy white slabs of goodness that make me feel like my previous pads had been railroad ties I'd been strapping to my legs. I looked forward to getting to try them before my next game filling in at goalie for the Scurvy Dogs.

Didn't happen.

No, via a combination of free tickets, kids things, and a blizzard I went into my game having never even had the pads on before, having not tested out my new bounty of knowledge. Which Kit was going to show up? The one who had those glorious two nights in the fall or the one who coughed up 13 during the Mustangs' slow slog as league whipping boys?

Meh. Somewhere in the middle. I did okay, I guess. We lost 3-1, which isn't too bad, and I didn't get beat by any dead-on shots. The first goal was a shot I didn't see that caught me wandering off the post when the shooter came out of the corner in traffic. The second was a rebound after the guy drove out of the corner and then dove or was knocked down. Either way he scored while on his stomach, flicking it in as I dove to cover it with 7.2 seconds left in the 2nd period. DAMMIT. That made it 2-1, and the goal they got in the 3rd was a pass from the corner (again! Ye gods, what the hell was going on with the corner?) that went to someone uncovered coming down the slot. Never had a chance on that one. I don't know how many saves I made, but it was a few. There was still a lot of scrambling and being out of position and not recovering quickly enough because I'm freaking old and lack flexibility but the combination of better equipment and actual training seemed to help. We gave a pretty good team a challenging game and it was fun. I get to be goalie against another top team this week, but at least they kicked their mini-Gretzky out of the league for being too good.

Staying busy otherwise. Still plodding along on my website, but as soon as I get it launched I'll announce availability as a freelance editor/writer. Not that I'm not available now, but it'll seem more professional to have a site to point to. Writing every morning on a possibly silly project that turning out to be both challenging and fun to create, and I can only hope it fits the bill of what they're looking for. The inclement weather has caused work to pick up, which is a good thing. Getting ready to sign the kids up for softball/baseball and will be coaching as well. Looking forward to Rabbitcon. Irked at numerous scheduling conflicts in the future. STILL waiting on an Xmas present for Lola, but sure it'll be worth it. Either a great idea or a total flop. Nursing along a sprained wrist after being slewfooted in the previous week's game. Chalked off all of Friday night for XCom 2 playing. Priorities, gang. Priorities.

Okay. Have to go move things to allow for the delivery of a new washing machine. TRY TO CONTAIN YOUR ENVY

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