Favourite. Commercial. Ever.

I love you, Red Wings

I just...

OMG.

The thing with being a long time Red Wings fan is that even with as awesome as they are and can be, you have seen them totally blow it so many times that you have this fist in your gut just knowing that the next heartbreak is around the corner.

And that's where I've been since Game 3 on Tuesday.   Okay, fine. that's where I am from the beginning of the playoffs.  It just has been THAT much worse since Tuesday.

Datsyuk, you've been well and truly missed, and your presence on the ice was electric.  I agree with whichever of the CBC dudes who said "Everyone's been asking what's going on with Holmstrom's play.  I'll tell you what's wrong.  He missed Datsyuk!"

Hossa is just snake-bit on scoring this series, but he played his heart out this game, and the CBC announcers were so adorable all talking about how all the "Red Wings were rallying around him to make sure he knew he was playing well."

And the Wizard of Oz got himself a shut out AND an assist!  Can I get a HELL YEAH?

LET'S GO RED WINGS!

One to Twelve.

Ohhhh, we're halfway there
Oh-oh, living on a prayer.

I find myself twittering so much during games that I have little to say about them on LJ.

Except FREAKING TALBOT.  IF YOU FREAKING SPEAR OSGOOD AGAIN, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND KICK YOU ASS.

Punk.

Loved Z beating down Malkin after Malkin picked a fight.  Am pissed that the NHL immediately waived the automatic suspension Malkin should have gotten.  (Not that I like the rule, but if the rule's there, it's there and waiving it immediately just looks crap.)

LOVED Abdelkader scoring his second NHL goal after the first last night.  Love the hometown and MSU boy who apparently is too shy to look at the cameras while being interviewed.

Oh yes, and I ABSOLUTELY ADORE my boy Osgood.  Man is playing out of his freaking mind, and I love seeing it.  Keep it up, Wizard.

*breathes*  We haven't won anything yet, and everything can change on a dime, but we're a hell of a lot closer than this time two days ago.

I just watched the end of BSG. 

( Spoilers if you know Pern well enough... )

Patrick Roy as the next coach of the Avalanche is NEVER going to stop being funny to me.

I keep picturing him behind the bench talking to himself like he used to do during games. 

*dies*

Wings game, baby!  Yes, that made me happy.  Who's surprised?  The game felt like the Wings were tiiiired, and I honestly was half-expecting a loss after they played 7 hard-fought games against Anaheim and the 'Hawks had a good bit of rest.

Nice to see them pull it out though, and even nicer to see Ozzie really take control of that game and steady his boys from the backstop.

I listened to the game on the way home from my mom's house mostly.  Sad not to watch it, but I had to bring my mom's car back to her after keeping it for over two weeks.  It was definitely weird being back in my tiny, roughly-running Saturn after driving the manual, smooth-as-silk Camry for so long.  Also my foot kept looking for the clutch.  The third pedal on the Saturn is the parking brake.  NOT A GOOD IDEA.

We also headed out to Hoffmaster for a walk.  I wish I had my camera because the day was beautiful, and the beach has changed so much over the winter.  That plus the higher water levels led to really neat 'cliffs' of sand as high as my head just a few feet away from the water's edge.  I'm sure they'll collapse in the next few storms, but they were really interesting to look at. 

Also my blue jeans are still wet because I couldn't keep myself from rolling them up and wading along the edges of the waves.  The water was so warm (well, in the 50s but warm for May!) and it was a beautiful day, and, yes, wading was called for.  Dammit.

Totally took this photo this week because I thought it was absolutely hilarious.  But it describes today a lot too so you all get it even when I haven't actually updated with much of anything in the past few weeks.  I've started trying to catch up on my flist today, but y'all are talky meat, and I have a lot to catch up on since I haven't actually checked it out since woodface  landed in Chicago two weeks ago.  But I am reading everything and trying to comment  even if very, very late.

And I didn't get a chance to say it last night, but YAY RED WINGS.  OMG, I think I didn't take a deep breath all day until they'd won because I was so nervous about the outcome.  And now?  Original Six matchup.  Hell to the yes.  There was a quote in the Detroit Free Press that so summed up why the Wings pulled the series out:  "This was the scene in the locker room after the Red Wings put away Anaheim in Game 7 Thursday night at Joe Louis Arena: Henrik Zetterberg talking about his penalty killing, Darren Helm talking about his goal."

Um.  Yes.

Go Wings! 

The Importance of Elsewhere
~Philip Larkin

Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home,
Strangeness made sense. The salt rebuff of speech,
Insisting so on difference, made me welcome:
Once that was recognised, we were in touch

Their draughty streets, end-on to hills, the faint
Archaic smell of dockland, like a stable,
The herring-hawker's cry, dwindling, went
To prove me separate, not unworkable.

Living in England has no such excuse:
These are my customs and establishments
It would be much more serious to refuse.
Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.

~~~

I will never get over how much I love Philip Larkin.  I only discovered him a few years ago, and he just immediately spoke in all his glory and bitterness and sadness. 

My keywords for this icon are 'A Dream of Happiness.'  Partly because of the scene in canon that the icon is from, and partly because that really is the dream.

Thank you for all your birthday wishes today.  <3  I really appreciate them all.  I had a very quiet but relaxing birthday.  Went out to dinner at Mitchell's Fish Market with my mother and her husband and had a freaking amazing meal.  Oysters on a half shell, cedar planked salmon with roasted eggplant and peppers and sundried tomatoes and asparagus, and for desert an incredibly delicious chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and espresso fudge topping.  Mmmm.  Never going to eat again. 

But I'm still feeling very old (which, I know, half of you are probably laughing at me for feeling old and the other half are agreeing that I really am), and I'm a bit down about it.  Just in the overall scope of what I'd planned on accomplishing before I was thirty.  Which, I know, plans like that only survive the first encounter, and we have to be flexible in life, but it still makes me think of all the paths not taken,

And my poem for today even though I have failed again at posting every day of the month.

It's all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, -
Some on the sum could tell, -
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.
~Emily Dickinson

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

I didn't feel like a sonnet this year so have some Jaques instead (him who also gave my journal its title).

The Wings game is giving me a freaking heart attack.  Ten goals in under two periods?  That's pretty close to the total number of goals all series so far.  I keep telling myself that the Wings tend to do better in the playoffs if they don't sweep the first round.  The boys need to remember that they're not invincible, yo.  And the Jackets are totally stepping up their game to remind the Wings of that.

Of course, hearing the wonderful chant "Let's Go Red Wings" in the Nationwide Arena?  Almost makes up for hearing the evil Osgood chant.

It's been a much longer layoff from LJ than I meant to have.  Been having some troubles on re-entry to real life after the my brother's wedding - possibly partly because the weekend itself wasn't all that great but partially because I've just been in a painful frame of mind recently.  I'm also hugely far behind on my flist.  And most everything I should be doing both for online and real life. 

They ended up married though which is what was important, and I have pictures (not of the ceremony though which I could neither see nor hear despite being in the first row) which I shall totally share.  We ended up spending almost exactly 48 hours in Las Vegas so almost everything was rushed and insane, and I barely got to see either my brother or Lisette at all.  

The news that Yahoo is closing down Geocities for good has been making me all kinds of nostalgic for my 'middle' years on the internet where we all had totally geeky webpages in story format and there was the Village Green inhabited by many of the same people who still are wondeful friends here on LJ (and hopefully will be as all of our internet experiences change) - jennisis , merteuil , earthgoat , kalrany , defectivewookie  and all.  I mentioned to coltsbane  that I was bummed my old 'Anomily's Atrium' had disappeared from Geocities years ago, and she pointed out that the Wayback Machine might have it.  And it DID!  So I've spent the past few hours saving all the pages from my old websites and being alternately nostalgic and laughing at my 18 and 20 year old self.  Hopefully in 10 years, I won't be so facepalmy at me now.  :D