There’s a hilarious post / song over at Andrew Osenga’s website. He lost a toe five years ago. One of his friends wrote a song about it. You should listen to it.

My boy and I are up early-ish this morning, and the conversation has gone like this: (Imagine a two-year-old inflection)

Luke: Want see Mama

Me: Well, we’re trying to let Mama sleep, so you need to just play with daddy. Want to come look out the window?

Luke: Ooh, Mr. Brown’s car!

Me: Ooh, it rained all night.

Luke: Yeah, rain rain. It’s wind?

Me: Yep, the wind is blowing. We need to talk about some breakfast.

Luke: Maybe some blue macaroni?

Me: That’s not breakfast.

Luke: Oh, just crackers.

Me: That’s not really breakfast either. How ’bout toast or cereal or oatmeal?

Luke: Maybe… play motorcycle?

Me: Wow. You have the opposite of a one-track mind, don’t you!

and so on. It’s a fun morning!

This is a clip from CTV’s Olympic morning, hosted by Jay Onrait of TSN, the Canadian sports network, along with Beverly Thomson. Jay Onrait is known for saying outrageous things on SportsCentre, but in this case, putting him with a news team that isn’t necessarily used to working with him, well… lets just say that he manages to keep the only straight face in the building. Best olympic clip ever? Close, but not as good as Sid’s winning goal. That was epic.

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and a mystery.

- H. G. Wells

It’s a frequent conversation here in West Virginia. “I’d watch hockey if I could follow the puck… now, back when they had that red dot over it, I loved it…” This is most frequently said by people who love me and know that I probably hated the red dot. But, occasionally, I hear it from random people.

For those of you who are blissfully unaware, when Fox had part of the NHL rights deal, they decided to embed a microchip in the puck that would then allow them to digitally put a red dot over the puck to make it more obvious for television watchers (pronounced “Americans”). It was an attempt to make watching hockey easier, I guess.  Thankfully, no real hockey fan thought it was a good idea, so when Fox dropped out of the hockey broadcasting business, the system dropped out with them.

However, it does raise an interesting issue. If you haven’t been watching hockey for very long, apparently it can be tough to track the puck. I won’t pretend like I know what that feels like — I don’t remember a time in my life when I couldn’t track the puck for the most part. Of course, hockey’s been on in my house (and the winter game of choice) since I was born. But, in an effort to help, I’ll tell you how I watch the game.

1. Follow the little black disc. Yeah, self explanatory. If you can obviously see the puck, you probably should just stick to that.

2. Flow of game. Check what color the goalie is wearing. Look in the direction he’s looking for a guy who is not wearing the same color as him. You’ve found the puck.

3. Beware the dump and chase. Frequently, teams will “dump” the puck into the opposing team’s zone, and then chase it in hopes of setting up an offensive opportunity. Dump and chase takes place around the boards, the hope being that a good body check will get the defense off the puck and provide that opportunity. If there are guys skating hard and you can’t see the puck, check around the boards.

Hopefully those tips help. For the record, my Toronto Maple Leafs are still winless. They play tonight… maybe they can get out of this streak.

David Wells is one of the smarter people I’ve ever read.

“In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.”
— David F. Wells

If you read enough “how to blog effectively” articles, you’ll find “letting your readers into your life” listed somewhat frequently. Something about emotional bonds and stuff.

That’s not my motivation today. I had a lousy day yesterday. I want to talk about it. It’ll be therapeutic. My twelve step group doesn’t meet till next Tuesday. (That is a lie. I don’t have a group. I do meet with a therapist on a semi-weekly basis, but he’s my brother-in-law; we don’t meet for therapy, we meet to eat.)

Wednesday night, we got to our small group meeting in “Backwoods, WV” (name changed to protect the innocent), 45 minutes from home, on time. We were glad to get there. I parked in the wrong place, and when I endeavored to start the car to move it to the right place…

Read the rest of this entry »

I love Churchill. He was a) British, b) ridiculously motivated, c) responsible for saving the world. That’s quite the resume. So, today, I’m going to let him give us a quick little motivator.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

All the existential, po-mo stuff you can come up with can’t top that.

Okay, here’s a confession: My favorite team in the National Hockey League (if you have to ask… well, it’s the Maple Leafs… and you haven’t been here long, have you? Allow me to introduce myself… I’m Andrew Mackay. I write things here. Welcome. Glad to have you.) has undergone some changes in the off-season.

In particular, we’ve loaded up on scrappers. That means that every game that I watch this year featuring my favorite team is likely to feature more fighting than any three games in previous years.

I think I alluded to this last week, but let me say it full out: I do not see the point of fights in hockey. I understand all the various arguments — particularly the one that says that if the other team pulls a dirty play on your star player, you need a scrapper to go remind him not to do it again.

But, as far as I can tell, if we got serious about dirty plays, we wouldn’t have any need for fighting. And, we have rules against dirty play already on the books… so why not get serious?

Now, I’ll admit, I’ve watched a hockey game turn on a fight. It definitely causes a momentum shift. But, it’s kind of like a horse going down in a horse race. Does it shift the momentum? Sure. Is it a good thing? Probably not.

So, Brian Burke, if you could, can we get rid of some of the scrappers and bring in some guys with talent moving the puck? We could start a revolution right here.

Nah, he doesn’t care what I think. Well… bring on the fights.

I think that everyone has something that they love that other people have a hard time understanding. Case in point: my wife and I had a discussion recently as I was getting ready to spend roughly 13 hours babysitting a pork roast on the grill. She didn’t understand the sense of doing it that way. She’s right, too, there are easier ways to roast a pork shoulder.

But, I love the process. I love the science of it, I love the challenge, I love the pay off of having spent hours on something and having it turn out well.

It did, too. It was delicious. Well worth waking up every couple of hours through the night, and then checking it every couple of hours through the day until it was ready. Sometimes you do things, I guess, just because you love the process, not because it’s the most expedient or easiest.