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Under the Weather Again

January 11, 2009 / Paul posted in Family and Friends, Hockey Talk, The Day To Day, Travels, Videos / No Comments

I am sick once again. Usually there is substantial time in between illnesses. I’m currently blaming the weather and the immunosuppressant that the doctor gave me to bring down the swelling around my eyes. If I’m not better by tomorrow, then I’ll go into the doctor.

Enough about me, Alexis has had a huge jump in traffic on her website. She usually has about four or five unique visitors a day, but on Friday she had 450 unique vistitors. This happened because Alexis’ brother, Jeremy, linked to her website to show his readers what great work she’s doing with shrinky dinks. Jeremy’s blog is focused toward games and Alexis has made several shrinky dinks based on a game called Final Fantasy XII. I believe Alexis is going to be selling them once she has a years worth.

Here’s a retro commercial if you’re not familiar with shrinky dinks.

I left out a couple of things that happened during my trip to West Texas. The day we arrived in Odessa; Alexis, Tyler and I, went to a Jackalopes hockey game and had a blast. We had seats two rows away from the glass behind the home teams penalty box. They were so close to the ice that when two opposing players fell near the boards we couldn’t see what was happening. It wasn’t until the referees pulled them up that we realized they had been fighting. The Jackalopes dominated the first period, but fell into penalty trouble in the second and the visiting team mounted a come back. In the third the Jacks came out on top. There were a couple of fights in the game, hard checking, and great puck handling which made the game enjoyable to watch. At the end of the game as the players skated to the locker room, they threw T-shirts to the fans and I managed to grab one. I also forgot to mention the fun I had giving my nephew a personalized blanket, which has his name, birth date, birth time, length, and weight. He’s too young to appreciate it, but I think he will eventually. Alexis helped me find a store to order the blanket from, which fortunately is located in a huge building in downtown Dallas. Instead of paying for shipping, I could pick it up. Even though I work downtown I’m not familiar with the area around the big buildings, so I called ahead to ask where I should park. The guy who answered said he would meet me at the street and to call when I was close. Curb side service was a nice surprise.

Go Stars

May 25, 2008 / Paul posted in Hockey Talk / No Comments

Yes, I know they lost, but they were able to give the Red Wings a run for their money. Dallas lost for three reasons. They did not finish off the San Jose Sharks fast enough. The four overtime periods in game six wore our guys down for the first game against Detroit. The Stars simply were not able to score on the powerplay and could not beat the Red Wings’ exceptional defense.

So now I’m actually pulling for the Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup. I want them to sweep the Pittsburgh Penguins, because it will show that the Stars were that much better for putting up some decent resistance. Thus far the Penguins are failing miserably by losing both games in Detroit with shutouts. Game one was four to zero and game two was three to zero. If the Wings can sweep the Penguins, it will make it look like the deciding series was between Dallas and Detroit.

The sweep will also signal a change that NHL needs to make regarding cross Conference games during the season. The Eastern Conference teams don’t see much of the Western and the Eastern teams don’t travel as much as the Western. Both Conferences need to be evenly matched to have an exciting Stanley Cup final series. That doesn’t seem to be the case this year.

Mother’s Day

May 10, 2008 / Paul posted in Family and Friends, Hockey Talk / No Comments

For Mother’s Day I bought my mom a robotic vacuum cleaner called a Roomba. She had talked about them before and I never saw one, but decided to take a chance and order one from the Internet. When I first looked for one, I was put off by how expensive they were, but Alexis found a great deal on one. We took it over on Saturday and she was very impressed. After only a couple of hours of charging, anticipation got the best of everyone and we turned it on. It didn’t make it half way to the wall before it complained about being full. To no one’s surprise it was full of pet hair from the dog and the cat.

On the topic of Stanley Cup playoffs, it seems the Dallas Stars are struggling against the Detroit Red Wings. It wasn’t a big surprise to me. I know the Wings are a good team and they usually seem to be, similar to the Yankees in baseball. Dallas generally has to fight tooth and nail for their victories. They had the opportunity to sweep the San Jose Sharks in the last playoff round, but failed to do so. Instead they took the best of seven series to a sixth game, where they finally won in a game that lasted five hours. The Wings swept the Colorado Avalanche in their second round and were very rested in the first game against the Stars. The first game Dallas lost and lost badly. In the second game, the Stars looked like they were in it to win and played well. They lost because they couldn’t take advantage of scoring opportunities and couldn’t generate more chances. In order for them to win on Monday night, they need to take the fight to the Wings, get in front of the goalie, shoot more, and score when the Wings are off balance.

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