Semi Charmed Kind of Life

My coworker asked me at the start of the year if it seemed like nothing was happening with this merger.

I told him yeah, but what is it supposed to seem like? Does he expect them to come in and paint everything highway yellow. All the lawyers and accountants are busy little bees right now.

There was this fantastic fucking news.

Aurora plant capital investment has stopped. Engineering of Opposite of Dog hydraulic shovels has stopped. +1, double-plus-good, Like.

Milwaukee will engineer and produce mining shovels for Opposite of Dog. The first twitch my brain had when this was announced that was that I’d have to move to Aurora. Not anymore.

So now I’m just enjoying living a few blocks away from a big frozen sheet of ice that has a bunch of guys who enjoy playing hockey on it and keeping it maintained.

The boys are going to be crazy good. They learn exponentially fast. At 2.5, having only gone skating 4 times Oz can stand up on his own, hit the puck around and shuffle skate. Carter can go full on forward with no support.

Brings me back to skating at Witter and Robinson. Some of my more lucid memories have the cold and/or outdoors associated with them. I'm fairly smart, but my memory of events in my life is pretty much garbage, sort of like a goldfish... a bit better than a goldfish, but not much.

Maybe that's why I like skating outside so much. It brings back those crisp, clear memories, not the haze or complete voids of most of the last 29 years.

An all 90's rock radio weekend can bring back some clear memories as well.



I don't really know if liking Third Eye Blind is a positive or negative memory.

When it was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered. We all felt saved.

Great line, but anyway...

We took the boys skating today at our local frozen lagoon in our neighborhood park.

Peoria can go fuck itself. You're too far south to even consider having outdoor ice for any meaningful amount of time, and your taxes are too low to support a massive park system this socialist construct of a city has.

Using something that is 120 years old , doing something as pure and amazing as ice skating, is so fantastic I can't even put words to it.

Spent too much this Christmas, head hurts, work room is a mess, things to do, bills to pay...

Fuck.

All.

That.

The ice, and the cool air, and the sun, and the sound of the blades on the ice make everything OK.

Playing hockey with my boys, or whatever it is they do as they flop around learning to skate and hit the puck, makes everything well with the universe.

The fact that, other than tomorrow when it's going to rain (WTF?), I'll be able to come here whenever I want for free and do this makes me the warm little center of the universe.

Feel free to crowd around me.

A Moose and a Beaver

That was a nice little blog break this weekend. My birthday was pretty good. I got some books, and some money, and some boxers. Then I put my self into an all you can eat sushi and Chinese buffet coma. Luckily I came out of it in time for some vigorous sex.

What a great weekend for hockey. Too bad the USA couldn’t pull it off, but a great game. It sucked Crosby got the game winner too. I would have rather seen anyone else on team Canada get it. Anyone, a moose, a beaver, anyone.

That game had some of the highest ratings of any sporting event in recent history. The NHL and Gary “I want to go on several dates with Sidney Crosby then make sweet, sweet love to him and have his baby” Bettman shouldn’t be too excited though. Olympic hockey is something special. I like watching NHL hockey, but those two USA-Canada games were the best hockey games I’ve ever watched. It cracked me up they were trying to somehow explain fore checking to NBC viewers by relating it to the blitz in football. Guess what? Hockey will never be anywhere near as popular as football, basketball, or baseball in the United States. Why? You can’t just go out and play it in 90% of the United States 95% of the year. (They say 60% of the time it works every time) It takes special equipment and a special surface. Those other sports require a ball and a surface you can find almost anywhere or make up on your own easily. Hockey will always be a niche sport, but that’s part of its charm. I don’t want every asshole to like hockey.

My team of misfits almost beat the second best team in our league. We were winning most of the game an only ended up loosing 4-3, this after loosing to them like 8-1 or something like that last time. I can not score though for whatever reason. I had a chance all alone in front of the net about 10 feet out, and I buried it right in the guy’s chest. I need to work on elevating the puck.

Now that I’m a Senior Engineer at work I feel as though I need to contribute in a more meaningful way. I rocked it out pretty well this morning, but when I rock it out I’m too good and then have nothing to do in the afternoon. I need to pace the brilliance out.

When my promo announcement comes out I have a feeling there is going to be some unhappy people. My nonbeliever status in regards to overtime doesn’t go over well with the dudes putting in 50-60 hours a week. That’s not really my fault though. Fuck taking a pay cut. Find a metric a manager cares about and hang your hat on it. The rest will follow.

I’m attempting to cut my soda intake. I’m backing it off slow, like a junky trying to get clean. I’m limiting myself to 2 cans at work and one at home per day. In a week I’ll cut it to one at work and one at home. Then hopefully one in the morning and that’s it. My 29 year old body can’t handle all the high fructose corn syrup and mercury and aluminum.

I have a Couple Rhetorical Questions.

The first being, Is it wrong that I find women’s curling mildly erotic? Strange I know, maybe it’s just pornography escalation coming full circle back to the mundane.

This has by far been the worst month leading up to my birthday ever. It hasn’t been all bad I admit, but the highlights have just been muted, like my promotion. I’ve only had it dangled in front of me for like 6 months, so getting it wasn’t full of elation, it was just a well yeah, I’ve deserved that for way longer than this.

Just people dying, relationships fracturing, frustration escalating, and fear rising.

The only thing I can think of to make things better is to make detailed plans to make things better, which in some cases I have.

As a birthday/promotion/make me feel better present to myself I think I’m going to buy some new hockey pants, Warrior brand of course. With gift money from my parents, remaining fun tax money left over after buying my new shin guards, and money from selling my old shin guards, they’ll only cost $29 of real money. I think I deserve that. I’m such a whore for Warrior gear. I think that’s about all the Warrior stuff I could buy other than shoulder pads, but they would be so overkill for a no check league it would be ridiculous. (Some dudes don’t even wear them, and I cut off the hard plastic pads on mine anyway.)

Looks like I’m going to make it. One more post tomorrow on my birthday and I’ll have done it. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, maybe I’ll be able to keep it up, maybe not once a day, but I’ve been able to see the anecdotes in daily life now again.

Second question: Am I less of a man for really, really liking show tunes?



Substitute Peoria for skid-row and downtown, too many syllables I know.

OMG

This is it, final week of posting every day. Friday is my birthday. Have you picked out my gift yet? I’m pretty difficult to shop for.

Did you watch the USA vs Canada hockey game last night? It was probably one of the best games I’ve watched in a long time. The way the bracket is set up now, either Canada or Russia can’t win a medal. Neither of them might if they lose earlier or later, but if you asked someone to predict who would medal you would have said Russia, Canada, and Sweden, maybe the United States if they got their shit together. Now who knows how it will go down?

Totally unrelated, I know that if you’re religious it really matters to you, but I really can’t stand people who are so obsessed and into it that it’s the only thing they talk about. Yeah, I know you love god and it just makes you so great, but stop talking about it. Remember what Jesus said about the Pharisees. I vaguely do, so you really should know because you love Jesus so much. Carter loves Jesus and he’s only 4, and we don’t ever go to church. I guess that’s god trying to lasso me back in. At least he’s just being subtle and not shoving it in my face like all his crazed followers constantly do.

Marcus Aurelius is Dead

I walked out of my first hockey game earlier tonight.

Let me set the scene for you.

Our goalie doesn't show up. He didn't realize we had a game tonight, so when I called him he was at a Rivermen game. Ok, I can deal with not playing with a goalie. It sucks, but at least we still get to shoot at a goalie. It's implied we are going to lose. I can deal with that. I just want to skate hard and get better personally.

So we play and it's like 4-1 at the end of the first, so the game is pretty much over. One of their dudes skates over and is like, hey why don't we switch ends and our goalie can play for you for one period.

mmm, no thanks I say, because then it will be dumb because we'll just take a bunch of cheap shots to try and get up and then you'll just take a bunch of cheap shots to win the game. Let's just keep it how it is and roll with it. You guys are going to win, whatever.

Period two starts and they score a few more goals. Then I'm on the bench and halfway through the period they just say hey we're switching ends and we're going to shoot on our goalie. I yell from the bench "No, no way!!" They just go right ahead and do it anyway. I say, fuck this, I'm out of here. You don't get to win, and get to shoot on your own goalie for half the game and have him let a few in if we happen to get close on the open net. Fuck that. I have better things to do on a Saturday evening than pay a babysitter so I can shoot at a shooter tutor.

So I pack my shit up, shower and leave. I was fucking pissed. My guys just went along with it and switched ends. Did they really think they were giving us a chance to win? I'd already said at period break we weren't going to do it. I'm the goddamn Captain.

I'm over this town, and now I'm starting to be over this hockey league. Jackasses poaching down into lower divisions, that can't even win gracefully. If you can't win with some class I'm not going to be your wiping boy you let shoot at an open net to try and feel a bit better.

Working Title

To wrap up my discussion of my new Warrior Hitman shin guards, which I’m sure has been enthralling for everyone to read, they are fucking awesome.

They are much lighter than my old ones, although I don’t know if this is because they have less dried sweat on them or if they are truly lighter. They fit more snugly than my old ones. The strapping system is better, and the inner material doesn’t slide on your skin as easily. They have more of a curve and contour to them as well which make them hug and fit your legs better. I’m super happy with them. I had a couple goals at rat last night, and I can really only attribute them to the new shin guards… or something.

I don’t really have any special plans for this Super Bowl weekend. I got invited to a party, but I don’t know that I’ll go. We’re going to take both boys skating earlier in the day for sure.

I've Got Special Unique Specialness.

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"

Why did I cause so much pain?

Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?

Can't I see that we're all manifestations of love?

I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong.

We are not special.
We are not crap or trash either. We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.

And God says, "No, that's not right."

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.

I long for a phone call from any company in the Milwaukee or Madison area I've applied to. I'm a really good engineer. I swear it. Don't take all the negative things I say here seriously. It's just where I come to blow of some condensed water vapor. (See I didn't even call it steam. Steam isn't visible. I'm super smart.)

I have no desire to start working on another machine at work. I like (or in some cases can put up with) my D6 guys and don't want to deal with other people's quirks and expectations.

My lusted after shin guards are somewhere between here and St. Louis right now. They will be in my hot little hands by tomorrow, in time for rat hockey on Thursday, and I even already got my Federal tax return so they are paid for too. Not that I dropped all that money just on shin guards, I just allotted some for fun stuff, not just fixing and paying off stuff.

Pulling a Stupid Face

Ever crossed the road and looked the wrong way? And hey presto, a car's nearly on you, so what do you do? You freeze. And your life doesn't flash before your eyes, 'cause you're too fucking scared to think – you just freeze, and pull a stupid face.

We lost our hockey game 1-0 tonight. It was disappointing. I had a few good chances, but their goalie was hot. He didn't let any rebounds. I was on the doorstep waiting 4 or 5 times.

I almost died too, well, maybe not died, but broken ribs or who knows what. We were in our defensive zone on the penalty kill. There was a scramble in front of the net and I got pushed down. The puck squirted out to the point. Their defense-man got the puck. I was between him and the net laying on the ice. I see him pull back for a slap shot. This is one of their best players with a hard, hard shot. My instinct is to pull up in the fetal position. My whole body tensed, and I'm pretty sure I pulled a stupid face, like please don't kill me. A second passes and I'm not feeling shooting pain in my ribs, or blood oozing anywhere. He's faked the shot and is handling the puck.

I told him thanks during intermission.

I'm usually a dick on the ice, but I'd like to think I'd do the same. I know I will now, since I was spared.

Check out 1:25



I also love the line "Now we are fucked..."

Weekend Posts are Hard

This is where I might have fallen off the wagon with my post a day till my birthday thing. It's just harder on the weekend.

I'm currently lusting over these shin guards.



For a while I was into Mission products, but now Mission has been sold to Nike-Bauer so I'm getting into Warrior stuff, which is a bad thing because it's kind of a premium brand.

After I get these shin guards, whenever they go on clearance to make way for the 2010 models, I'll really have no reason to buy any new gear for quite some time.

Game tomorrow. One we have a chance to win. I really need a goal though. I'm on a bit of a dry spell. I can score at will in Rat Hockey, but in a game I just get all tense or something. I need to relax and just try and have fun.

What are you doing, Ness? You just gonna do your taxes right now? Is that hot? Is that what's going down in the streets?

Got about 95% done with my taxes in the past few days. Found out I was getting more back than I thought.

I think we'll pay off the remainder of my student loans, fix some stuff, buy some more things for the basement to finish it off, and I'll either get the warrior shin guards I've been lusting after or some more tattooing.

My hockey team has moved into 5th place. If we can manage to win the next two games I think we could jump up to 3rd, not to bad for a team that only has one A-league player and several BC level players.

Last week we won, but I didn' t play particularly well. I pulled out some old Lawryde play and got into some shit with some guy on the other team.

There was about 30 seconds left at the end of the game and they were down by two goals. Their best player takes the puck down the left side and he comes into our zone and I take away the outside with my body forcing him to pass it into the middle of the ice to one of our players.

He didn't like it for whatever reason and said some bullshit to me about watch out or something. I, of course, tell him to go fuck himself. (I'm not very nice on the ice.)

As I skate away he decides to slash the back of my legs. I don't take kindly to this and skate up to him getting well into his personal space and ask him if he'd like to fight. He's a little less confident with someone 4-5 inches taller than him staring down at him and smelling if I needed a breath mint or not. He doesn't say anything so I turn away again. Again he gets his stick inbetween my legs trying to trip me.

I've had enough and skate into him, my full cage hitting his half visor. He thinks I head butted him because my cage hit his visor. The game ends and I skate away. He doesn't shake my hand after the game, even though I offer it.

As I'm skating off he asks me why I head butted him. "It's just men's league," he says. I shake my head and tell him whatever and hit the showers.

I'm not the smartest dude in the world, but I knew enough when I wasn't wearing a full cage to not start shit with someone wearing one. I had nothing to lose, I was fully protected, my team was winning, and I was taking one of their best players out of the end of the game. He had his teeth, jaw, and the game to loose.

It was good fun, it brought me back to fun times in C-League.

The Candy Man Can

I know, I know… I suck. It’s been like, another 2 and a half weeks since I last wrote something. Like I said before, it’s so much easier to just write a sentence and post it as a facebook status update. It’s the death of blogging.

I feel better than I did last time I wrote. Things got moving along so I could process the things that were bothering me. 11 hours in a car listening to some tracks I haven’t in years was good. Let my mind deal with everything.

Then there was Halloween. I was Willy Wonka, the Gene Wilder version of course. It was pretty sweet. My wife and I went out two nights since my parents came down to visit and watched the kids. It was pretty great, and we both had a lot of fun. I need to remember to send a thank you note to the woman my wife was a being a Doula for, for not going into labor until the Monday after Halloween. It allowed my wife to drink. On Friday we went to a party of a coworker of mine. A dude ended up getting shot in the side with a bb-gun, so you know it was a good party, and the beer was free. On Saturday we went out with some of my wife’s friends and I had to listen about divorce for the first part of the night which was a big downer, but then we made our way to the gay bar because the women “wanted to dance”. Whatever, if the day prior had told me anything is that I was entirely heterosexual so I went. Now I’d never been there before with out my normal facial hair. Mr. Wonka is clean shaven so I got rid of the beard for the costume. Little did I know that clean shaven lawyrde = gay magnet. I get it, I’m a good looking skinny dude, and without facial hair I look a lot like I did when I was 18. I got hit on like 4 times (I’d like to top that hat! Leaving so soon! Dude in drag grabs the air behind my ass and tells my wife to keep me close to her.) and got a simulated bj from Cher. It’s good to feel loved.

Had our first hockey game, interleague playing down against a C-league team. We destroyed them 8-2. I had two goals, the very first of the season on my first shift which felt good. Something seems to have clicked inside me lately playing hockey. I feel way more confident. I think the key is getting low. You watch a good player and their legs are bent and they are crouched down. Shitty players are almost vertical. You don’t get any power skating and you can’t make tight turns like that. I played pickup last night and scored a sweet top shelf goal that made even some of the better players give me an atta’ boy.

I think we may get destroyed by some of the better b-league teams, but I think we’ll still have fun. I put together a good group of guys. We’re the expansion team so it’s kind of expected we won’t do very well.

The Long Hiatus

I haven’t written anything for a long time. Don’t really know why. I guess it speaks to twitter and facebook’s popularity. I’d rather just condense my thoughts into one sentence rather than a long drawn out story. Maybe this is the death of Pure Gonzo Engineering. More people look at my facebook status than this blog. Maybe I’ll try and be more in depth with my facebook status updates rather than: Lawryde is eatin’ lunch or Lawryde is sleepy or the other bullshit that I and other people ramble on about.

I have been working harder than I normally do. Not for anything more like I should be getting, but because we are understaffed. OMG, we got rid of all kinds of people and have a shit ton of work. This would be like if I crashed a dozer into the side of a building. Manager’s are allowed metaphoric crashes all the time with no repercussion. I’d be fired. I reported like 20 hours of overtime last month which is unheard of for me. I’m an 8 and out the gate type of guy. If I worked 20 hours of OT then my young single coworker worker like 100 hours of OT last month. Dude is here till like 7 or 10 at night all the time. I told him he needs to stop that shit. People will just start to expect it, and you won’t get anything in return.

I’ve begun to search for Gonzo Engineering work in Wisconsin, had a phone interview this Tuesday. I felt like a fucking idiot. When I was interviewing in college, when I got like 6 offers, I was a fucking professional interviewer. I knew what I was going to be asked, and I had stories for each of those questions. It was a think of beauty. Interviewers loved me. Last name Ever, first name Greatest. Now I’m all out of practice and my stories aren’t current. I stumble and repeat myself and have a hard time getting to the point, trailing of in incomplete sentences. Hopefully this one will be good practice for any future. Get me back in the game. I guess I’ll know if I was any good or not at this one depending on if I get an on site interview or not.

I’ve got this elitist hockey team I put together of(almost) all Opposite of Dog employees. We’re going to be the yellow team. (Ha ha ha get it, yellow… Opposite of Dog.) Can’t be really affiliated with the company in any way, wouldn’t want to sully the brand in any way. God knows I would, in the locker room and on the ice. The team seems like it will be OK, but there’s all this underlying anger towards Opposite of Dog and towards those that work at Opposite of Dog within the community. Hating the popular kid sort of thing, so we may have everyone step up their game to humiliate us.

Ahhh, this felt pretty good. Maybe we can do it again some time, more frequently than once a month. (ha ha, that’s funny right coming from a married man… that old stereotype of never getting laid once you’re married ha ha ha ha) (suck it lol, I type out my laughter, you can’t just box it up in three letters like that.)

This Means I've Progressed

Yesterday I played the most fulfilling hockey game of my life.

It was the last game of the summer league, and it was against the team myself and two of my coworkers played on last winter. Those guys are dicks. I was ready to breath smoke.

They took our best forward to play goalie because he is super talented and can do that to, just so we would have an actual game. Also JJ, one of my coworkers and ringer didn't show up because he had the game time wrong.

So I wasn't feeling great when the puck dropped, but as the period progressed it was a close game.

They scored first in the second period, even after we had been getting tons of shots down low off rebounds. I scored my first goal of the season off a lose puck in front of the net, sending it far side. That felt good, tying it up against the team that didn't want anything to do with me. I drew an interference penalty on one of their guys, but we didn't convert.

They went up early in the third, but we answered with 15 minutes left in the game. With about 5 minutes left we scored again.

The last shift I had was like 3 or 4 minutes, but there was no way I was going to let anything happen. Time was winding down, and their captain Todd got the puck near their blue line. I was about 10 feet away as he drifted to the right boards. I glanced at the clock and saw their was about 30 seconds left. There was no lengthy decision in my mind, I just acted. I made a line to where he was going to be and chopped down on his stick and then hip checked him into the boards.

I heard him cry, "Come on" in a high pitched girlie voice as I got up and skated to where the action had continued. We touched up with 20 seconds left and I made my way to the box. The running clock expired and we won.

It was so fantastic. They didn't make eye contact as we shook hands after the game. I talked to another guy they booted from their team because he wasn't "good enough" and he thought they hadn't won a game all season.

So I got the goal, the drawn penalty, the most likely double minor, and the sweet, sweet tears of Todd Lanning. It was awesome.

My Hockey Skill is Directly Proportional to the Length of My Hair

Last night was our first playoff game. We destroyed the team we played. I had a pretty tits goal, my second game in a row I’ve scored. We had an odd man rush. Our center carried it into the zone wide on the left side and I broke hard to the net. I got behind the defender and the center passed it to me. I put it in about mid net glove side. I was kind of shocked it even went in and didn’t really even celebrate. Our next game is Saturday, but there are a bunch of our guys who won’t be able to make it.

Opposite of Dog announced they are going to layoff another 2500 people, mostly production employees, almost 1000 in East P. I didn’t even know there were 1000 production employees in East P. Apparently no one is buying tractors. I’m guessing first quarter results are going to be ugly. I wouldn’t be all that shocked if we were in the red.

They’re dropping all these retarded edicts down on us to “save money”. “Shutdown your computer overnight, it uses as much electricity as a refrigerator.”

Here’s a little word problem related to that bit of wisdom.

Refrigerators, and my work laptop apparently, use 0.057 kw and electricity costs about $0.10 per kwh. I bill my time out at about $100/hr. It takes about 10 minutes to fire up my computer, log in, and start all the applications I need to use for the day. How much money will the company save if I turn my computer off each night? (Show your work)

0.057 kwh/h * 16 hours = 0.912 kwh per day

0.912 kwh * $0.10/kwh = $0.0912 per night shutdown

$100/hr / 60 min/hr = $1.67 per minute

10 min * $1.67 per minute = $16.70 in lost work

So the company loses $16.61 every day in lost efficiency by me shutting my computer down each day. Even if I leave the bastard on all weekend it only costs $0.27. I’m also pretty sure it’s not actually using as much electricity as a refrigerator.

I know, you’re screaming that I should just work 10 minutes of unpaid overtime to cover that startup time. I’m salaried and that is real money they pay to the electric company. Whatever, in principal it’s a stupid idea.

How about I only charge my cell phone and laptop at home and eat that cost to save the company money, only run on battery power at work. How about pay toilets, and bring your own toilet paper? Brilliant!

For the Very First Time

As Opposite of Dog stock keeps dropping, it’s at 24.77 right now (from a high of like 90), I went to my local tattoo shop to discuss how I could stimulate the local economy. Apparently the tattoo industry is recession proof. When I went in, one guy was getting tattooed, one guy was getting done with a consultation, I was up next for a consult, and a couple came in after me to get a consultation. The first appointment time they had was the first week in March, that was one week ago.

I just went in to get Kalib working on drawing the chest piece idea I have. Yes, I need to get my left arm wrapped up, but I have the strong desire to get a chest piece. Chest pieces are bad ass. My wife’s is fucking awesome, it always looks awesome peaking out from shirts that are cut low enough to see it. I also love looking at old pictures of dudes with ink. They’ve got their shirts off with dress pants and sharp ass shoes (There was a time when everyone whore a suit to the grocery store), and they’ve got these sweet chest pieces of eagles or ships or ladies.

Getting this piece plays into one of my several fall back positions, should I get laid off. This fallback is being an extra in prison / crime movies / television dramas.

My idea is the following. The whole piece will be old school in style. Coffin in the center of my chest with an hourglass in it, DaVinci style wing framework sprouting off the coffin with bits of feathers on them, random candles on the wings, dead roses around the coffin, and the banner phrase: Death is the Debt that All Men Must Pay. And yes you can go fuck yourself I did get that from National Treasure 2, that doesn’t make the words any less powerful or thematically correct for the piece. I also like it because it’s sexist in wording, and I’m a big sexist pig. Hopefully I’ll get the first session done some time in March. I’m guessing 3 sessions to complete it. It should cover the span of my down to just below my pecks.

I took the oldest boy skating for the very first time ever.




Hopefully his first experience wasn’t like mine, which turned me off to skating until I was in High School. He said he enjoyed it, so we’ll go more and see if he can progress at all. I got him some pads so he can just go and fall and try to find his balance.

I got a misguided compliment from the biggest jackass on our hockey team last game. We lost like 6-1, but I scored the only goal. I feel like I’m understanding where I should be now, and I’m just trying to skate as hard as possible for 2 minutes at a time. Midway through the game the dude says to me, “You’re going to score a hell-of-a-lot more goals if you skate like you are tonight. You’re busting your ass out there.”

Um, thanks, I think. I felt like a kid being lectured by his overbearing dad. I think I’m a couple years older than this dude too. It made me feel good, even though I didn’t want it to. I shouldn’t need the validation of jerk-offs like him.

I turn 28 on Thursday. Pretty meaningless. Just closer to being 30.

Narrator: [Tyler steers the car into the opposite lane and accelerates] What are you doing?

Tyler Durden: Guys, what would you wish you'd done before you died?

Man 1: Paint a self-portrait.

Man 2: Build a house.

Tyler Durden: [to Narrator] And you?

Narrator: I don't know. Turn the wheel now, come on!

Tyler Durden: You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?

Narrator: I don't know, I wouldn't feel anything good about my life, is that what you want to hear me say? Fine. Come on!

Tyler Durden: Not good enough.

I was talking to one of my coworkers (single and childless), and he said he hoped to be a millionaire by his mid-thirties. I just chuckled. He said he was investing around 2/3 of his salary. I just laughed again.

Everyone has their priorities.

I Keep it All Up Here So I Can't be Replaced

As the economy continues it's downward spiral into oblivion, Opposite of Dog is taking measures to continue making money. Kind of freaks me out. Back when I got hired it was kind of on the upswing of the 9-11 economic downturn, and I there were some times when we cut back on travel and hiring, but now they are doing things that concern me, getting rid of contract scum (and I say that lovingly), reducing or eliminating raises for promotions or developmental moves, checking cell phone records to make sure you're using it at an appropriate level. I'm guessing internet usage is next, that's why I'm posting this on a Sunday morning. I've made a concentrated effort to reduce my at work internet time.

I've also decided to block the Opposite of Dog IP addresses from this blog. I'm using toolator.com, and I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but it worked blocking my home IP so it should block the Opposite of Dog IP.

Some people are having less work to do, or are getting shuffled to other programs as certain programs get their budgets taken away or reduced. Luckily I work on a product that is high volume and high profile. It's one of those linchpins to future success. I've got tests planned out for me through 2009.

On a non-end-of-days note, I scored my first B-League goal (maybe that's not true, I can't remember if I scored at all during summer league?) during our second win of the season. It felt pretty good. I always feel like I'm being judged and evaluated while playing even though this is a fucking rec league.

I’m the Warm Little Center that the Life of the World Crowded Around.

We won our first hockey game of the year last night. We were playing the “best” team in the league. They had something like 2 goals against in their first four games. Their team was composed of a bunch of ex-Bradley players and other A-league players who got split up since there weren’t enough players for an A-league. We also only had two lines. We didn’t really have that high of hopes coming into the game.

We ended up beating them 6-5. It was pretty nice. They all had salty looks on their faces as we shook their hands after. I had two sort of chances I would have liked to have gotten goals. I was standing in front of the net, and one of our guys shot the puck. The goalie was on the far right side of the net. The puck came squirting out the left side. I had a wide open net, and position on the defensemen. The defensemen grabbed my stick and held it so I couldn’t take a shot. I could have kicked the damn puck in there was so much time from when it came out and the goalie actually realized where it was. I did draw the penalty.

The second, I was in front of the net, and I had a sweet tip from a shot from our defensemen from the point. It was about hip high and rising and I knocked it down. It bounced on the ice perfectly and ended up going between the goalies legs, but he dropped on it fast enough to cover.

After the first period I stepped on something and it jacked up my right outside edge. It made it so I couldn’t power turn to the right. I was playing left wing which made it incredibly hard to play the rest of the game. I couldn’t turn back the correct way when I had to transition from offense to defense. It really took away from almost all the other parts of my game. I was too preoccupied with thinking about compensating for that bad edge to effectively stick handle, shoot, or pass. I just tried not to fuck up too badly and cost us a bad goal.

I’ve got this nasty claustrophobic feeling at work now. I need to wear headphones more to just pretend there aren’t way too many people around me.

I Didn’t Think it Was That Obvious.

I went to Wisconsin this weekend to see my parents. I took Carter with. He and I don’t spend a lot of time together by ourselves. It was nice. We bought some good cheese. I upgraded my Dad’s computer to XP so he could run a webcam so they could see the kids more often. I almost royally messed up his computer, but was able to get it back and running better than before without too much loss of data. My Dad and I went to see the new Bond movie. It was kind of a disappointment. Casino Royale was awesome, and this one just seemed like a setup for future movies with a plot that was pretty thin.

Winter hockey has started, and I’m playing in the upper division which is a combination of A and B league. Myself and 3 other guys managed to get ourselves on an established team of locals. (Fucking locals). Anyway, we’re 0-4 so the locals are all pissy. The “captain”, Todd, gave us a speech before the game about how if the game was close he was going to be calling lines, we had all paid to play, but we want to have fun and losing isn’t fun.

JJ, the ex-Canadian Junior and best player on our team, had called out on the bench last game that the locals should calm down that everyone paid to play and this was for fun. I guess the locals, including Todd, didn’t like that.

I wanted to chime in after Todd gave his speech that if you can’t lose and still have fun then why the fuck are you still playing? Winning is fun, but I like playing the game enough that I don’t mind if we lose. We’ve been competitive every game and a few bad goals have been the difference. So we were down like 7-3 going into the third last night, and then we start to rally and bring it to 7-5 in the last 2 minutes. I figure Todd is going to start calling lines, he doesn’t. What a dick. He scolds us like children and then doesn’t man up and act when we actually get a chance to win. We ended up scoring one more goal and losing by one. One of the four we brought into their team isn’t very good. He’s not a strong skater. The locals have singled him out as the reason for our terrible start. It’s not that none of them are really producing. It’s his entire fault. It’s always easy to blame someone else.

These guys are so obsessed with winning it’s affecting their game. If they would just focus on playing the game and having fun I think winning would take care of itself. It’s kind of like your campy teenage / college get laid or die trying movie. The more they obsess over it, the harder it is to achieve.

Lawryde Gets Ejected

For the first time in four years of playing, I got ejected from a hockey game. Of all the shit I’ve ever done in games before, this was the most benign thing to get ejected for. I didn’t have bloody knuckles afterwards. I didn’t learn something about myself by being in a fight.

Here’s how it went down. We were playing a team of young kids (16-20 year olds) who had a cheering section of their moms and dads. These were your spoiled hockey kids who think the world owes them something. They’re way too cool for chin straps. They’re also fast as hell.

We weren’t playing well. I wasn’t playing well. Their speed exploited all the faults I have coming up from C-league and only playing 8 B-league games. It was my poor defense that lead to 3 breakaway goals.

Near the end of the second period, my D partner JJ, who played Canadian Juniors when he was 15 and is fucking phenomenal, road this jackass kid with a nice knit jersey with a big captain C on the shoulder into the boards and knocked the puck away from him. It was a clean play. Kid got all pissed off that someone schooled him. He threw his hands up and knocked his own helmet off. (That’s what chin straps are for kids!)

Kid wants to fight JJ. Dumb move against JJ who would have destroyed this kid in a fight. Kid takes two gloved swings at JJ and hits his cage once. Why would you try and swing at a guy with a cage on? At this point I’m pissed at this kid because in our league, to fight is to throw a punch. I take it upon myself to pin this kid up against the board with my right fist against his shoulder. My mistake was that my stick was in that hand as well. It probably looked bad from the back, where the fat stupid ref was. I told him the kid to stay the fuck off JJ and held him there until someone pulled me off him.

Stupid fat ref tells both the kid and JJ to go to the box. Kids dad is shouting about how I should be ejected for pinning his son to the boards, essentially breaking up the fight. Goalie Mike tells the kids dad to shut the fuck up, he’s not on the ice.

Stupid fat ref tells me I’m gone for being the third man. What the fuck? I break a potential blood bath on this kid if JJ is unleashed, and I get ejected? Bullshit. Kid should have been ejected and suspended for throwing two punches. I hate this ref from past experience, but I just leave the ice because it’s not worth it.

Kid’s dad is still talking shit as I walk to the locker room. I tell him to shut the fuck up. He says some bullshit about how my friend would have needed the help. I told him I saved his kid from drinking from a straw for a while and to go fuck himself. He had some bad tattoos and was like 40 or so. As I got closer to him he realized I’m about 6’6” on skates and he started to shut up.

I showered and walked past him again as I left. I gave him a wink and a kiss as I passed, tattoos blaring: Please say something so I can explode on you. He said have a good evening with a shit eating grin. I growled the same back to him.

I went out for some drinks with some of my teammates, and we just laughed about it. It was just a bizarre situation. I guess it’s Karma for all the times I probably should have been ejected playing in C-League.