Last night was probably one of my best games since a 2-1 win over the Bees almost 1 year ago. I must have made the hockey gods happy somehow because I was getting a lot of lucky bounces and pucks getting stuck in my gear. I also had a slapshot from the point that deflected off one of my players, tipped my glove, and clinked off the post and into the corner. Another was a centered pass that went from behind the net into the slot and I got a piece of the shot with my toe. I twisted backwards to see it slide ever so slowly in the post and just sit there.

We were losing 1-0 (a turnover low in the slot that went top shelf blocker side) when we tied it up with minutes left in the game. No one scored in the first 3 rounds of the shootout so we went to sudden death. Our player skated in and roofed it over the goalie's glove to give us the lead. All I had to do was stop this shot and we would win. I came out to challenge like always and could tell right away he had no interest in deking. He got to the middle of the slot and just tried to rip it on my right side. I sucked everything in and felt the puck hit the sideboard of my pants and watched as it bounced wide into the corner. I have a shutout already this season but this win felt a lot better than that one.

I now have the 2nd lowest GAA in the league at 3.33. If I can average 2.2 throughout the rest of the season I should finish at 3.00.

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Filed under: Hockey

Today was Rachel's first day with kids and it sounds like it's going to be a stressful year. It's also the beginning of the 2nd week of Lucy staying in the cage while we are both at work. She is handling it pretty well and has been able to hold herself until we get back but then she is ready to burst. We've learned what can and can't be in the cage with her, though. She can have: her kong with peanut butter and her water bowl that clips to the cage. She can't have: anything else. She has destroyed three different chew toys that we left in there and sat her fat butt on the water bowl but luckily it only fell and didn't break.

Last night I made good on my promise to build a storage system for my gear in the garage. I went to Lowe's and got a shelf for $10 and a set of rubber covered hooks for another $10 or so. Everything but the leg pads are off the ground and out of the way. We should be parking in the garage in no time. I've promised myself that I'm wearing the new leg pads in my game this Friday so I have to go to drop in tomorrow and I'm not leaving until I'm 100% with them. I almost wouldn't mind it if there were any skaters so I could just focus on movement and shooting. I got the sliding toe bridges from Pete Smith so hopefully my ankles won't hurt as much as last time.

Pictures of Lucy and the hockey locker.

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Filed under: Hockey    Lucy    New House

Last Thursday was a pretty huge game for our hockey team. It was our first win and my 3rd shutout since we moved to Phoenix and I started recording my stats. I felt like I played pretty well but except for a few breakaways, most of my shots were from the outside and not necessarily quality chances. The team played really well and we won 4-0, scoring more goals than we have so far this season.

Next weekend is our first wedding anniversary. It's technically on Monday but we are going to stay at a hotel in town on Saturday night. They have a waterpark and everything is supposed to be pretty nice. I still need to post pictures from Disneyland.

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Filed under: Hockey    Life

My gear showed up a few days ago and it's pretty sweet. I took everything to a pick up session that I was pretty sure no one else would show up to. I wanted to get a chance to just go out and skate with everything one without worrying about playing. Right away I had a hard time walking to the ice with the pads on because of the intense curve. I also didn't know just how much they would rotate when I went into the butterfly. The first time I did it they spun around so quick that I didn't even know it happened. Then the groin pain started. I realized that this was a totally different butterfly than I've been doing for the past 9 years. I was using muscles I've never used before and discovering how inflexible I am in certain areas. A goalie walking out of the rink saw me and told me that my straps were still too tight. I loosened them up but it was still awkward.

The next night I had a game and just couldn't decide if I was ready to play in the new pads. I eventually went with the old pads and new gloves. I think I need to go to one more pickup session with live hockey before I can use the leg pads in a game. I feel bad because no matter what there is going to be an adjustment period where I'm worse than my old pads. I will probably just wear them in pickup until I feel comfortable.

The gloves are pretty awesome, though. They are smaller in order to be NHL legal but they are also tighter so I felt like I could move them faster. I bought all the gear here: GoalieMonkey.com

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Filed under: Hockey

My first day at UTI was short and interesting. They took me to Pappadeaux for a welcome lunch and I could only finish half of the Pasta Mardi Gras. I then left the other half in the fridge so I guess that is my lunch tomorrow. Today was also their Employee Appreciation Day so the higher ups were serving up free Ben and Jerry's ice cream in the lobby.

I also just ordered new hockey gear today. I had been trying to decide between the Itech 7.8 X-Wings or the new RBK 8k "Turco Break" pads. I ended up going with the RBK's because of reported build quality and I want a pad that will be very "boxy" when I'm in the butterfly. I will add pics as soon as they come in.

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Filed under: Hockey    Life

Well, my time with High-Tech Institute is almost over. I updated my resume with the job sites back in January when we started having layoffs. I wasn't laid off in that group or the next but I never took my resume down. I was constantly getting bombarded with recruiters telling me about jobs in the area. One thing that I noticed was they all paid significantly more than I'm making right now. I bit at one of them and got the job. Starting on the 30th, I'll be working at Universal Technical Institute doing pretty much the same thing that I'm doing now. The benefit is I will be making about 50% more than I make now. I'm going to miss everyone I work with now but it's too good of a deal to pass up.

In home news, Lucy is officially the most spoiled dog ever. We could only take 2 nights of her whining and yelping in her cage before she ended up sleeping in our bed. She had a pretty bad case of ticks but I think we got them all so far. She is still having a hard time not peeing and pooping in the house. There are more pictures of the brat in the Photos section.

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Filed under: Life    Lucy    New House

We finally fulfilled our dream of getting our very own puppy! Her name is Lucy and she is 10-12 weeks old. We ended up adopting her straight from the vet's office because she was still there from getting spayed earlier. She wasn't sure about us at first but realized that once we weren't going to examine her like a vet she could start licking us. More puppy pictures here.

It has been requested that I take pictures of our house now that everything is pretty much done. I'll have to do that this weekend after we clean up. Summer hockey starts up next week. I want to build a locker in the garage so that I can hang everything up to dry. We still have a box or two to unpack in the garage and we still haven't done anything with our DVDs. Maybe Lucy can help me clean the garage this weekend, she has already shown how good she is at catching crickets.

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Filed under: Hockey    Life    Lucy

Friday night was our last hockey game of the season as we got bumped from the double elimination playoffs by a score of 8-2. We did win one in the playoffs which isn't two bad for the bottom seed. It's better than 2 of the other teams can say. The slightly shorter summer season starts on June 18th. I'm working on a side project right now which should give me enough money for a new set of gloves and leg pads. Mine are 8 or 9 years old at this point and starting to show it. My blocker is falling apart and my glove is on its last legs. I think I'm going to go with the Itech 7.8 X-Wings.

Yesterday I placed an order with NewEgg for everything to build a new computer for Rachel. She has been using my old laptop since we met and it doesn't have enough power to edit videos. She had to use my computer a few times and that wasn't going to happen more than a few times! The case is similar to mine except it has a large pink part on the front and she will have a single 22" monitor. We searched everywhere and actually found a black and pink keyboard/mouse combo. It should all get here sometime this week and I should be able to get it together before her mom and brother come to visit next week.

If gas prices keep going up the way they are, I'm going to start working on that teleporter myself instead of waiting for someone else to invent it.

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Filed under: Computers    Hockey

Sorry for not posting in a month and a half. I've been busy with my Wii Database Site and Mario Kart. I'll try to catch up this weekend.

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Filed under: Life

Never mind the cabinets, fridge, and stove. Forget that it was basically one wall. Just know that our kitchen now has 8 coats of paint on it now! We started off with a primer and did 2 coats of Behr paint that we bought from Home Depot a month ago. This is the same paint (different color of course) that we have used on the rest of the house so far and every room came great. That was until the kitchen! DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!!!!

After 4 coats of the Daredevil red, we realized that this paint was just going to blend into itself. We had stayed up until 3 AM Sunday morning paint and put the last coat on the next morning and could still see all of the brush strokes and some very dark areas. Rachel did some googling and found that Behr is actually a crappy brand of paint and that we should have gone to Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams. We drive up to a SW store and decided that if primer + 2 coats of this stuff didn't fix it, we were going to just hire someone. We talked to the dude at the store and he said it sounded like we did everything right but just had crap paint.

We did our primer + 2 coats and it came out pretty good. The only problem is that there is so much paint on the wall that when we took the tape off it really wanted to peel. Rachel edged all of the tape with a razor blade and is going to touch up most of the sides by hand. We've gotten a lot done now but I feel like there is still so much to do. The bright spot is painting the guest bathroom this weekend is our final paint project.

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Filed under: New House

Well we had another round of layoffs at work this week. Another developer in our group was let go so now we are down to me and another developer, a graphic designer, and my boss. Someone said that the company isn't allowed to do more than round of layoffs within a 30 day period. I wouldn't be surprised if I or the other developer were let go next month. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing but I think it won't sting if I'm just prepared for it. The only silver lining is the company has been giving enough severance that I'm confident I could find another job before it ran out.

I started carpooling with two coworkers since moving into the house. The same guy drives but we give him a certain amount of money per day to cover gas. It really works out well for all of us because the money I'm giving him is half of what I'd spend on gas driving my jeep each day and we are both maybe a mile out of his way. He's pretty much making $30-$35 a week to make a small detour. I'm driving in tomorrow though to borrow a ladder so I can hang our family room ceiling fan and paint the kitchen this weekend.

When we were driving home this afternoon, I saw somebody driving a few lanes over from us that had a dummy sitting in their passenger seat! I did a double take and stared the second time to be sure. I'm sure that they had some kind of foam block sitting upright with a dark colored mophead on top to look like hair.

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Filed under: Life

It's been 19 days since we closed and we've got the following things done:

• Family Room painted
• Office painted
• Guest Room painted
• Master Bedroom painted
• Ceiling fans in the office and guest room installed
• Linen closet door repaired from when I broke it by pushing the mattress up the stairs

The ceiling fans are killing me. The first one in the guest bedroom came out nice but the one in the office has a bad wobble at top speed. There isn't much I can do because I know its the screw in the base sitting at a bad angle. On the next two fans I'm going to use the cordless screwdriver and drive it straight up. I'm not looking forward to the larger fan in the family room with the extra foot on the ceiling.

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Filed under: New House

We just have the final inspection and key pickup left. Signing took 30 minutes to do and will take 30 years to undo.

UPDATE: We are in! We got the keys around 3:30 and spent a few hours and hundreds of dollars at Home Depot buying paint and ceiling fans. We taped up the family room and entryway so that we can start painting it Desert Camel tomorrow night. I'm exhausted already. Pictures from today are here.

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Filed under: New House

We did the first walkthrough of our house today. We met with our service rep who will handle anything that is wrong with the house during the 1 year warranty. He spent 30 minutes or so explaining how everything works, how to report problems, and things he has already noticed. We took the camera but Rachel wanted to check everything out and not worry about taking pictures. We will have to get those when we go back Wednesday for the final walkthrough. All we are waiting on now is the title company to call and set up what time we will sign our papers on Wednesday morning. Then we will be homeowners.

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Filed under: New House

I had one of my best games of the season on Thursday night. I felt calm and focused and felt like I played my angles well. Near the end of the game, the other team was getting desperate and starting bombing shots from the point. I was partially screened on one and saw it once it was halfway to me where it made a hard impact with my face mask. The cage rang and I had a ringing in my ears for a few seconds. I wasn't sure if I had a concussion as I started developing a headache back in the locker room after the game. I'm pretty sure I didn't because I wasn't nauseous, didn't have double or blurry vision, and the headache went away after I got some Powerade and Excedrin. The shot dented the cage in where it hit and I knew that I just couldn't play another game without replacing it.

I couldn't find the cage for my mask anymore because Itech quit making them a while ago. I ended up buying a new Eddy GT mask with a dangler. A guy on the Goalie Store Bulletin Board said he'd sell me a cage for the price of shipping only. Once I get it, I'll sell the Itech on Ebay and try to recoup some of the cost of the Eddy.

After getting the Eddy home, I put it on to wear for a while to get used to the heavier weight and different fit. It feels like it fits my face better than the Itech did but I didn't like how the chin cup was tighter than I was used to. I felt like I would have a harder time talking in the mask which could hurt my communication with the team. I took the chin cup out of the mask as well as the strap that goes underneath. Not it is very comfortable but it could come off my head easier. I'll have to try it a few times to see how it works. I'm also thinking of replacing the foam pads inside with Maltese Gel. They don't absorb sweat and are cooling during a game. They supposedly also offer better shock protection. The only downside is the $115 price plus shipping. I might use my birthday or stimulus money to get it.

You can see the new mask here.

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Filed under: Hockey